After Dinner Conversation

"After Dinner Conversation is an independent nonprofit that promotes philosophical and ethical discourse by publishing short story fiction. We believe in fostering meaningful discussions among friends, family, and students. Our mission is to enhance humanity through truth-seeking, reflection, and respectful debate. To achieve this, each story is accompanied by discussion questions."

Prose Rejections

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Sending a rejection letter is never an enjoyable task. As our publication has grown, we have received an overwhelming volume of submissions, which has made it difficult to provide detailed feedback to every author. In an effort to be more informative, we have developed this longer form letter that we now copy and paste for every rejection. We hope that it provides you with some useful insights.

Firstly, we want you to know that everyone here at the publication is a writer, so we understand how difficult it can be to receive a rejection letter. We want to assure you that we read your submission in its entirety and gave it our full consideration.

Our decision to reject a piece is based on two criteria. Firstly, we assess the quality of the writing. Is it well-written with no typos or obvious issues? Is it easy to follow? Approximately 70% of submissions meet this criterion. Secondly, we consider whether the piece fits our narrow area of interest. We work in a very specific niche, which involves stories that ask interesting ethical questions that encourage discussion.

Despite the submission guidelines on our website, we find that approximately two-thirds of our submissions are simply not a good fit for the magazine. Therefore, there is a high probability that we enjoyed your writing, but that it simply did not align with our publication's interests.

If you are wondering what we publish, we encourage you to watch films such as "Ex Machina" or "Her," or to read "The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas" or some of our past published works, which are available for free on Amazon. We typically publish writers who have an innate interest in philosophy, economic theory, political theory, equality, or someone who studies what we publish and writes in the same vein.

In conclusion, we hope that this rejection letter is informative and helps you understand our decision-making process. Please consider this a good news/bad news email. The bad news is that we cannot publish your submission at this time, but the good news is that you now have a better idea of what we are looking for and how to get accepted for your next submission.

We have attached a copy of our monthly magazine as a sample, which we hope will give you a better idea of the type of content we publish. We are always open to reviewing additional submissions that fit our niche and encourage you to submit again in the future.

Finally, we frequently apply for arts grants, and they typically want to know demographic information. We know it's a pain, but if you have a moment, we would very much appreciate it if you would fill out a quick demographic survey. It is genuinely important to us that we provide a place for all voices to be represented.

-- Kolby Granville | Editor-In-Chief After Dinner Conversation Publishing