Born in WITD

A living, growing directory of published work by Writing in the Dark writers.

Hello, friends!

A few years ago, I started keeping a list: a scattering, at first, of the essays and stories and poems that began—some spark of them, at least—with a Writing in the Dark exercise, and then went out into the world and found a home in a journal, a magazine, a memoir or novel, or an anthology.

The list kept growing. It outgrew this post.

So it has a proper home now—a browsable directory you can move through by writer, by publication, by the recognitions these pieces have earned along the way.

Explore the directory →

A note on what’s gathered here: this list holds work accepted through a curated, outside editorial process—journals, magazines, anthologies, contests—rather than work we publish ourselves. This is not because self-published work matters less (I publish here constantly, and love so much of what I read across Substack), but because so many of you are reaching toward that particular kind of yes from an outside source, and I want to hold a place that celebrates it and quietly shows what’s possible.

But also, none of us needs to want publication. There’s a whole life, in fact, more life, in the practice of writing itself than in any experience of publication. But I’ve found that writing toward something outside ourselves—toward mattering to a stranger—tends to change the writing, and the writer, in ways worth honoring. So we honor it here.

The directory is, and always will be, gloriously incomplete. If something of yours belongs on it, add it—I’ll be so glad to include you. If you emailed me in the past and we didn’t get your work added to the directory, that’s not because we didn’t want to. It’s because Billie started grad school and I was without any assistance for nine months, but now we have Jorian (yay, Jorian!) who set this up in a way she can stay on top of, so, please send (or re-send as the case may be by using the link here:

Add your work →

So much to celebrate here, and so much more to come.

Love,

Jeannine