The app for independent voices
We’re back from the whirlwind of exciting creative energy that was writing conference AWP and full of excitement as we gear up for our third anniversary (!!) on April 3 and NYC personal storytelling summit May 2. Thank you to everyone following us and helping us grow. If you’re not a subscriber yet, we’d love you to join us, but you can also read our essays on our site if your inbox isn’t ready for around 4 essays a week.
A few notes:
We have a new call for submissions up! We’re open to essays from subscribers for full-length 1,000-2,500 word essays in all our open categories (they’re all open except Essay Writing Tips which we solicit) and our flash 500-999 word Hobbies and Object-ives sections. We will respond within 3 months if we’re interested. No submission fee. You can submit up to 1 full-length and 1 Hobbies or Object-ives essay at a time and then can submit either or both of those again once you’ve heard back or three months have passed. Here’s the full-length details and the Hobbies and Object-ives link is in it or at the end of essays in each of those categories: opensecretsmagazine.com…
If you’re planning to attend Open Secrets Live, as of yesterday, there were only 18 early bird tickets left. It’s an intimate, 169-seat theater, and we have just over 40 speakers (36 memoir authors and 6 editors from book publishers, The New York Times, and Slate), plus volunteers, so space is very limited. Once the 75 early bird tickets sell out, about a dozen will be released in early April at a higher price $50 instead of $40 (plus $5 handling fee). And tomorrow (Monday, March 9), we’re cutting off VIP tickets, which get you into the cash bar after-party from 6-8, because we need to save space for speakers. The after-party bar holds 80 people, and we’ll have free Open Secrets cookies there. For those who can’t attend, we’ll be recording audio to release with speaker approval probably in May or June 2026, posting video clips, and will likely have someone doing live social media posts.
We’re planning a late May Zoom literary agent pitch slam for authors of memoir and essay collections, which will benefit Community Aid Network MN. Stay tuned for details, which will be emailed and posted here once we have a date and all agents lined up. It will be $25 and probably capped at around 95 attendees, and we’ll likely have people email in their pitches ahead of time for the agents to look through.
We’re launching an independent podcast, Finders and Keepers, on our attachments to our belongings, later this month that will air every Wednesday! We’re putting the finishing touches on it now. Open Secrets editor-in-chief Rachel Kramer Bussel will host it and we have so many amazing guests who’ll be sharing fascinating stories about their attachments to their belongings. It’s not on the major podcast platforms yet, but the trailer will be very soon. All episodes will also go out via email to Open Secrets subscribers. If you like our Object-ives and Stuff-ed categories, you’ll probably like the podcast. You’ll be hearing a lot more about it soon!
We accept donations via Stripe and will soon be adding a tip jar to help offset costs and pay our writers. We’re committed to keeping submissions free in 2026 and hopefully beyond, and are looking into other funding sources, including writing workshops and craft talks, sponsors for Open Secrets Live and the magazine, so writing-adjacent brands, feel free to reach out. Here’s our donation link, with a suggested donation of $5. Any amount is greatly appreciated (literally, even $1, especially since we have over 16,000 followers, so if even ¼ of you donated $1, that would help us immensely): donate.stripe.com/00gaH…