Electric Literature is Looking for Readers!

Calling all fiction lovers! Electric Literature is looking for new manuscript readers to join our editorial team. Recommended Reading publishes one story per week: a mix of original, previously published, and forthcoming, with an personal foreword by another top writer or editor to every story.

Because Recommended Reading receives a large volume of submissions, a committed corps of volunteer readers is essential to helping the editors find new, unknown, and/or diamond-in-the-rough talent. Recommended Reading is the weekly fiction magazine of Electric Literature, an organization dedicated to making literature more relevant in popular culture.

Specific responsibilities of the role include:

• Providing concise but thorough responses to ten submitted manuscripts per week, with a clear YES or NO recommendation for each
• Meeting weekly reading deadline, and clearly communicating with editorial staff when scheduling conflicts arise
• Closely reading Recommended Reading and other similar journals, with an eye toward the shape of contemporary short fiction

The ideal applicant is:

• An avid and attentive reader
• Self-motivated and able to meet deadlines
• Able to express herself clearly in writing
• Very familiar with the Recommended Reading back catalogue
• Educational and/or professional experience in literary criticism and fiction writing is a plus, but not required.

This is a volunteer position that requires a commitment of approximately six hours per week. Readers will work remotely and on their own schedules (as long as they meet the weekly deadline).

Current readers are not allowed to submit their own fiction for consideration in Recommended Reading.

For a sense of the kind of stories you’ll be reading, visit the Recommended Reading homepage here.

To apply please email a cover letter and a two paragraph critique of a short story published in the last month to editors [at] electricliterature [dot] com by Monday, July 24th, 2017.