Dear Mx. Writer,
Thank you for sharing with us your powerful short story “Transsexuals Who Are Devoured by a Primordial Beast that Came from the Ocean.” While we are unfortunately going to pass this time, we want to thank you for your bravery and vulnerability in sharing such a clearly personal piece with us.
Transgender people face so many obstacles in America, from unequal access to health care to anti-trans bathroom bills to having their entrails ripped out and ravaged by the sickening maw of a creature that crawled from the bowels of history.
Your short story sparked a necessary conversation at our magazine. We were shamefully ignorant to the fact that transphobic hate crimes committed by those who have inexplicably eluded the natural cycles of evolution and extinction to feast on the soft flesh of humanity were so prevalent in this country, and we want to thank you for educating us and helping us grow as allies to the transgender community.
“Transsexuals Who Are Devoured by a Primordial Beast that Came from the Ocean” gives a squeaky little “4 months on HRT” voice to the squeaky little “4 months on HRT” voiceless. Your work is a deeply important political tool in the ongoing resistance against fascism, J.K. Rowling, and the gargantuan beings who know neither man nor God in their relentless search for blood.
Again, we just want to reiterate that our editorial team seeks to uplift and support the work of writers of transgendered experience. We are not rejecting your story because we are transphobic, but because it honestly kind of sucked. Why did you write such a long, detailed description of the beast’s feet? It was uncomfortable.
Please keep writing. The future of humanity depends on writers like you. Just don’t submit your weird fetish shit to us again.
Best wishes,
Literary Magazine
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Felix Lecocq is a writer, copyeditor, and transsexual living in Chicago. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, HAD, and Peach Mag. You can find him on Twitter at @felixthepoet.
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image: Andrea Damic lives in Sydney, Australia. She has been published in 50-Word Stories, Friday Flash Fiction, Microfiction Monday Magazine and Paragraph Planet with her photographs occasionally featuring in Rejection Letters. Recently one of her photographs got included in the Fusion Art’s 4th Annual Lines, Shapes and Objects Exhibition (July 2022). You can find her on Twitter @DamicAndrea or Facebook. One day she hopes to finish and publish her novel.
Rejection Letters 