Over on Gab.ai (the best social media network on the internet as they allow free speech, don’t shadowban or ban anyone), I met a couple of editors and writers who had an ambitious project they wanted to launch. That project is the Uprising Review. The concept of this site is to provide true free speech for flash/short fiction. They accomplish this that by blind story submissions, no author names attached. The editors will read it and simply judge it based on the merits of whether your story is entertaining and well written. The submission bucket sends it along with no identifying markers in the document to judge the story by.
And It’s fantastic. This is a true commitment to real diversity, unlike the exclusionary garbage that’s put out by a lot of traditional publishers that knowingly discriminate intentionally by excluding conservatives, christians, men, white authors, etc in their magazines, anthologies or publication queues. It’s the opposite of virtue signalling. The story is everything, as it should be. As they say:
“Your gender, race, and sexuality do not determine your strengths as a writer.”
How refreshing. Not only that, but it allows authors who have been tainted by the Big Publishing groupthink’s blackballing in the industry to be able to publish their short work. Its very existence is a bold statement on the problems in the industry, and also on freedom of speech and expression for artists. Huzzah!
The editors reached out to me and asked if I would contribute an essay for the opening of their site, on the topic of the importance of freedom for artists, and the evils of blackballing based on my personal experiences, which I gladly provided. You can read it here: http://www.uprisingreview.com/the-uprising-review-op-ed-by-jon-del-arroz/
And finally, I had the honor of contributing what they chose as their first fiction for the website, the flash fiction of mine titled “Project Scarecrow”. It’s an extremely short flash fiction which I actually originally wrote for another publication that limited to 300 words. That went belly up before they got around to publishing my piece, so I submitted to Uprising Review. Normally, their fiction they’ll be posting will be 500-3000 words, but fortunately they enjoyed this one enough to post and make it their first. It’s a fun sci-fi piece like most of my writing. Enjoy: http://www.uprisingreview.com/project-scarecrow/
I look forward to seeing what Uprising Review does in the future and applaud this concept and their hard work in getting this going. Support them with your clicks!
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