Line Break will be participating next week—Thursday, April 28—in the
Queens Literary Crawl. The night-long event will feature more than a hundred writers reading at various neighborhood venues in Forest Hills, Queens, and it benefits the
Queens Books Festival.
Line Break will have its own stage. We'll have our own microphone. The one thing we don't have yet is you.
We expected to have one hour of programming to fill. Instead, we've just learned that Line Break will have three hours of programming to fill—from 7:00 to 10:30 pm, with a couple of breaks thrown in.
Needless to say, this is a tall order to fill at the last minute. If you're interested in participating, we're looking for all types of prose writing, whether fiction or non-fiction. Short stories, essays, memoirs, humor, novel excerpts—it's all fair game, so long as you can hold an audience's attention.
To be considered for one of our available 12-minute slots, please email us at submissions@shunn.net/lb, following these guidelines:
- Use "Lit Crawl Submission" as your subject line.
- Tell us a little about yourself, about your work, and about what you'd like to read for us. Be sure to let us know if you've read live before. Include links to audio or video if you have them.
- Include the piece or pieces that you'd like to read by pasting the text into the body of your email. (We prefer not to download attachments.) For prose, limit your submission to 2,500 words or less (which is about all you can comfortably read in 12 minutes.)
- Please also indicate during which of the following hours you're willing to read: 7:00 to 8:00 pm, 8:15 to 9:15 pm, and 9:30 to 10:30 pm. We're trying to schedule four or five readers during each hour. Please be flexible and indicate more than one choice, if you can!
- We're partial to writers from Queens, but you do not need to be a Queens resident to participate. We'll take writers from anywhere!
Remember, you must be able to commit to traveling to Forest Hills on Thursday, April 28. This only works if you're available that night.
As for content, we won't feature out-and-out pornography, but strong language and adult situations are absolutely fine (and, in fact, encouraged).
As an added bonus, everyone who reads for Line Break at the lit crawl will also be invited to read at one of our regularly scheduled shows at Q.E.D. in Astoria. And similarly, everyone who submits to us will be considered for our Q.E.D. show, whether or not we're able to fit you on the program in Forest Hills.
The Queens Literary Crawl will be an exciting, fast-moving event. We're delighted to be a part of it, but it won't work without you. Send us your submissions now! We literally cannot wait to read them.
Really. Truly. Please.
Even if you don't want to read for us, you can still enjoy the Queens Literary Crawl as an audience member. Buy your tickets here.
