something new

Years ago, some friends and I ran a small online publication for poetry. It was scrappy and informal and didn't last long, but I loved doing it; the reading, the selecting, the feeling of putting something out into the world that other people had trusted you with. I never quite stopped thinking about it.

I've been thinking for a long time about starting a literary magazine. Not because the world needs another one, but because I kept looking for a certain kind of home for fiction and couldn't quite find it. Somewhere without genre restrictions, without content restrictions, without pretension, where the only thing that mattered was whether the writing was good.

So, I built one.

It's called nachtljocht, which is Frisian for 'night light'. You know, the small one you leave on, the one you read by when you can't sleep.

Nachtljocht will publish fiction up to 10,000 words. Any genre, any subject, any level of explicitness. The strange, the serious, the funny, the filthy, the quiet. The only requirement is that it knows what it's doing, and it's good.

Each issue will be published free online and as a limited hardcover edition of 50 copies, ochre and black, in the style of those slim Victorian literary magazines I've always loved.

Issue 1 is planned for October 2026. Submissions are open now.

If you write fiction, or know someone who does, go check it out: nachtljocht.com