Next Contests and Flight Plan - July Edition

And the Introduction of The Depot

Jul 06, 2025

It’s Sunday, which is the Sacred Fundraising Day in The Republic of Letters. So please: give! This whole thing only works with robust community support, which means money…and, by the way, you’ll probably end up making it back anyway whenever one of your pieces runs.

Let’s itemize what we’ve achieved in the last week alone. We’ve turned Substack into a hothouse arguing back-and-forth on the merits of maximalism v. minimalism (that goes for anyone who’s not still arguing about whether Orwell was a hack or not). We’ve introduced a wider audience to Hannah Smart’s fiction and

Lewis Dimmick

’s poetry. We’ve thoroughly annoyed

Anthony Galluzzo

. We’ve been nicely mentioned in New York Magazine and The New York Times. We’ve interviewed the equally-fascinating

Justin Smith-Ruiu

and

Marilyn Simon

. We have, beyond any caviling, established our patriotic bona fides thanks to

Philosopher of the Oil Sands

. And we have, without fail, been more joyous than The New York Review of Books, more unpredictable than LitHub, and more cost-conscious than Air Mail.

Now that our categories are starting to take more coherent shape, let’s say a word about them.

Debates. The goal here is to whip LitStack into a lather on the sort of topic that you were merrily living your life with no opinion on — whether MFAs are valueless, that kind of thing — but that, once discussed in polemical form by intelligent people, is somehow like a burr under your skin demanding further response.
Contests. These are a bit different. Think of them like a charity run. Certainly there is an incentive for people to put in their best effort, but the contestants are coming to the finish line at very different times and, ultimately, everybody’s a winner. The greatest goal is uplift for writers who may have smaller followings.
Interviews. These tend to be ludicrously long, but I think you guys can take it. We’re trying to find a balance of people whose reputations are more inside, and then more outside, the Substack platform.

And now one more: The Depot.

It’s bothered us that people on the platform who’ve written books often seem to have a tough time getting them reviewed. We’ve pondered this problem….

…And what we came up with is The Depot. The way it works is that if you have a manuscript you’d like to have reviewed, send it to republic.of.letters.substack@gmail.com with “manuscript” in the subject line. If you would like to be a reviewer, write to republic.of.letters.substack@gmail.com with “reviewer” in the subject line. ROL’s magical sorting hat will assign books to reviewers. Reviewers are paid $50 for a completed review to be published in ROL. This only works, btw, if enough people sign up to be reviewers and then actually read the book.

We’re slowing down slightly on contests because we have so many pieces in hand right now, but we’ll announce two now.

1.Envy Week. Talk about someone who you admire, but really admire, like would want to be them — and why would you want to be them. Submissions due August 1 with “Envy” in the subject line.

2.Pride Week. Talk about something you’ve done in your life — however small, however apparently inconsequent — that you are genuinely proud of. Submissions due August 15 with “Pride” in the subject line.

All submissions should be sent to republic.of.letters.substack@gmail.com. All selected pieces receive $50 plus possible additional bonuses. There is no hard word count, but 1200-1500 words is a good target.

And now a word to contributors ROL has commissioned articles from.

All pieces ROL has solicited will run but it may take a moment — we just have a long backlog of good pieces and are trying, as much as possible, to run pieces in thematic sets. Sorry for any delay!
If you’ve had a piece run in ROL, and you haven’t been paid yet, it’s because the editor forgot, not because the editor is dodging you. If this applies, please send a follow-up note.
Going forward, please include a short bio (three lines ideal) in the e-mail body when you turn in your piece.
ROL has decided that punctuation is part of a writer’s expression and isn’t imposing any standard publication formatting. The one exception is periods outside of quotation marks, like so: ”. This is maddening and unfathomable to ROL and is like the difference between tucking your genitals underneath a piece of fabric when you are out in public and not. Unless you are like really British or something, please tuck in!