About Us

 

Who We Are

We believe in fiction that carries a pulse. A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Its characters matter, its choices have weight, and its conclusion leaves us shaken — with laughter, with sorrow, or with the quiet urge to rethink our own lives. That’s what we’re here to publish.

Who We Aren’t

We have no appetite for vignettes that drift like smoke and vanish, or for political sermons dressed in prose. We aren’t interested in stories that mistake inertia for depth, or in journals that wear their politics on their sleeve.

The best writing doesn’t lecture; it resonates. It shows beauty, conflict, and truth without demanding you claw through nine layers of fog to find it.

Writer-First

Too many litmags are built like toll booths. They charge you exorbitant fees for the privilege of rejection, hide their work behind paywalls few readers cross, take half a year to reply, and bury you under contracts longer than your story.

We don’t believe in making writers bankroll our existence. We’re not here for profit; we’re here for mission. This magazine is a passion project, sustained by its editors and by the occasional donation or submission tip from those who believe in the same cause.

Readers Deserve Better

People read to be entertained, to be moved, to be surprised. They don’t want to wade through mood pieces or sermons; they want stories. That’s why every issue aims for fiction that lingers — the kind you want to send to a friend with a quiet note. Read this.

The Pretentious Literarian Isn’t Pretentious

We don’t begrudge the MFA crowd their workshops or their disdain for genre fiction. But we don’t want to read work that insists only melancholy fragments of “real life” count as “real literature,” while everything else is somehow beneath it.

If that’s your piece, we’re sure the Monocle Review will happily oblige. We’d rather spend our time with stories that go somewhere — and take the reader with them.