One Black Perch Publishing

19/06/2025

05/06/2025

I’ve received a good number of submissions over the past few weeks, but unfortunately submitting doesn’t mean automatically accepted and its hurt the acceptance goal for the issue. I expected to accept a higher percentage of submissions. I don't think im that critical. But maybe.

I’m planning to release the journal for digital download July 31st, and working on a print run at the end of the year with a Black-owned family-run print company I’m hoping to build a partnership with. *fingers crossed*

The best writers are observant. They shape their work around what they believe people may need, sometimes beginning with themselves, and offer their work as a response, or for a return to comfort or escape. And when your work resonates with readers, it makes them feel seen, validates the observations you made from afar about unacknowledged human needs.

So flood my inbox: Personal essays. Poetry. Short fiction, open to genre. Creative nonfiction. Memoir.

I’m reading it all, pretty much. Even if you have critical reviews of books, shows or movies that reach beyond surface responses, send those, too.

If you’re not exactly sure what to send, send what you needed at the moment that you conceived and wrote it. Above any intention for any journal is that it's a time capsule for the human archive.

Don’t discount the impact of something you wrote for catharsis, or survival, just because you’re not in that place anymore. When you free your work, you may free someone else. And as writers, we really can’t do any better than that. That’s our highest ideal.

Submissions requirements in the first comment. Hope to read you later.

03/06/2025

In a world divided by borders and ideologies, the call for unity has never been more urgent. As philosopher Slavoj Žižek emphasized in Monthly Review:

“We should put forward a positive, universal project which is shared by all participants, and fight for it.”

If writing is how you answer your urgent call, reflect on your own universal project—the core question or emotion that drives your creativity.

30/05/2025

This is for your writer-friend whose notebooks, docs, notes app, etc., that are overflowing with half-told stories, waiting for a throughline to pull them to the finish.

Sometimes, the reminders we need aren't about upskilling. Sometimes, it's about grounding.

29/05/2025

Submitting to magazines and journals isn’t just about chasing bylines; it’s about finding a community that sees your voice, sharpening your craft through editor feedback, and expanding your readership beyond what you ever imagined.

Take a deep breath, pick your favorite piece, start hitting, send, and stop sitting on work.

16/05/2025

Sometimes, I have to remind myself to read things other than submissions, publishing industry news, or other literary arts related news. Work is easy to get lost in, especially if you’re passionate about it. Id just finished Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition by Rima Vesely-Vlad, for probably the third time now. It's affirming to be reminded of the spiritual spectrum and experiences of Black people. When people say we are not a monolith, that's not just a political statement. It's spiritual, too.

I recently got my copy of Dr. Obari Adeye’s new book Black Spirituality: Ancient Wisdom to Heal Generational Trauma. Been meaning to dig into it. I’ve read on Buddhism more than any other spiritual systems over recent years, and if you spoke to me now about some hardship and were seeking or open to a word, I’m more likely to refer you to Alan Watts or Shantideva than Jesus. But the first time I meditated, none of them were involved.

It was after being inspired by reading the Metu Neter by Ra Un Nefer Amen, a book in a volume of Kemetic religious texts, and the first I’d come across with a African messiah’s tale predating Christianity. Bought it at a Carribean Festival in Hyde Park more than two decades ago. I spent my childhood on 53rd and Maryland, and just across the parking lot in the back of the townhouse was Cottage Grove, workers, summer after summer, set up and break down gates, stages, displays, tables, ads, cooking stations, freezers, bookcases, games. Some of my childhood friends would work the festivals during some years. His book touches on the Kemetic/Ausarian tradition along with others during a time when archiving our cultural memory is paramount. Cultural memory sustains us when we lack and reminds us of the joy and comfort of spiritual lineages.

I’m going to recommend this book to you after I’m done reading it. Know that now.

I can’t wait to read it the rest. I’m not even a third of the way through. Like I said, less time to read for pleasure, of late. No complaints. All gratitude.

13/05/2025

Another trailblazer in publishing, Charles R. Johnson, saw publishing as part of a broader cultural mission. The National Book Award–winner edited anthologies and journals that amplified African American art and ideas. He guest-edited the Chicago Quarterly Review’s “Anthology of Black American Literature,” a “cornucopia of creativity” featuring 27 Black poets, storytellers, and artists.

Johnson showed that writers can be versatile, as editors, curators, and bridge-builders — roles that turn the politics of gatekeeping on their head.

Much like Morrison, he proved that Black authors needn’t ever wait for permission; we can create our own platforms.

12/05/2025

We don’t need their gate.
We build new doors.
We keep our ears to the ground, hear what we keep,
and we draft new blueprints.

Whether indie or self-publishing, unleash your work.

11/05/2025

Oh, you wanna talk about Mommas?! Here you go:

1. Lucille Clifton – Generations: A Memoir
2. Maya Angelou – Mom & Me & Mom
3. Nikki Giovanni – Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement
4. Camille Dungy – Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
5. Ashley C. Ford – Somebody’s Daughter



And submit to our journal if you're writing stories about Mommas, too!
[email protected]

10/01/2025

a website is still a digital home that you can own and control in comparison to the unreliability of social media companies.

there are ideas (content) that might appear in your books (life) that they find harmful (to their interests) and worthy of suppression. room for the dissident is airtight.

they’re united and motivated behind making a term like “virality” profitable, and desirable. and here you are, just trying to reach your reader, who’s constantly being dragged away by a river of reels.

no, you don’t have a team, yet, or the kind of training you think you need. but a website is like a branch you extend into the river. from there you continue to strengthen its base, care for its roots, its principles. social media companies will label and displace them, making your central mode of reaching new readers one of your least trustworthy.

12/12/2024

HarperCollins and Microsoft are partnering, pioneering the charge for AI use in the publishing industry, starting with licensing deals. Authors' books will be used to train AI in exchange for a flat fee btw $2,500 and $5,000, and royalties.

This early in AI's development, would you, as an author, permit your work to be used to train AI?

Our technological innovations often have human costs attached.

Our phones: different.
Cloud storage: no different.
AI: no different.

Global south resource extraction + unlivable wages for labor...

06/12/2024

Corporations and private investors are pouring all their chips into AI. If it's going to be as ubiquitous as the internet, social media, and live streaming became, will you be adopting AI into your creative process to stay ahead?