minor beef[s] is a feature where you can express your literary gripes, complaints and pet hates …
Is there a writer you despise who is getting too much praise? a lauded critic whose opinions suck? a trend which makes your skin crawl? Let us know …
Pet whimsy. Newsflash: gushing over eight lawless cats, your adorabubble woof-pack, saucy chameleons, leporids, piggies, macaws, rats, hamsters, hedgehogs, ferrets, budgies, or guinea pigs hardly distinguishes you when interspecies bonds predate the historical record. Next, you’ll be telling us all about your opposable thumbs. Can’t wait.
Based in. What are you, a Sergeant Major General? Or did someone tell you this unfortunate choice would elevate your first move away from home? Glamorize instability along fictive jet-setting lines? Valorize that yearly economy flight back to the Midwest to visit your ma and auntie Rhoda? You live somewhere, don’t you?
Try-hard longies. You know who you are, listing every last publication, in magazines no one has heard of, plus every near-miss award, including that time you were fourth runner up in The Dark Abyss Review’s ekphrastic villanelle contest. The way insecurity is measured in long lists of minor (and sometimes even major) accomplishment[s]. Assume we’re all estimating the size of your dick in direct inverse proportion to the length of your bio.
Conversely, those nameless international journals (throughout the whole wide world, and elsewhere) fool exactly no one.
Snack and beverage obsessions. I guarantee you, you don’t love a macchiato more than the rest of us, nor despite its acidic zing does your addiction to lemon sherbet make you an interesting writer, or person.
Creative writing academics. Word: a doctorate in creative writing does not a scholar make. Sorry, Drs. So-and-So-and-So.
Unceded territory. Good, you’ve cottoned on to white settler colonialism. Bad, we have no fucking clue where you are.
Calling yourself docta puella as if it were clever or charming. Girlfriend, shake off the patriarchy already. Puella is no more compliment than homines addressed to a bunch of sad sacks in the forum. Then again, if the hetairai vibe turns you on, rhyme on you crazy diamond.
Intersection of isms. This isn’t a funding app. And anyway, you are more than your obsession with identity markers. Aren’t you?
The professor emeritus one liner. That’s some desperate clinging to what once was. To misquote Shania Twain, it don’t impress us much.
Two initials for single praenomen. Hey, you international man of mystery you, hate to break it to ya, but there will never be another Thomas Stearns.
Hobbies. So you like gardening and spending time with your family, huh? Is that cover for your secret double life as a BDSM dungeon master, or are we in fact meant to care how your zinnias are faring this year? Save it for your dating profile. Your MacArthur Fellowship. Slow your roll, Genius. Remember: it’s a dirty Schadenfreude world out here.
minor literature[s] 