Electric Literature recently launched a new creative nonfiction program, and received 500 submissions in just 36 hours! Now we need your help to grow our team, carefully and efficiently review submitted work, and further establish EL as a home for artful and urgent nonfiction. We’ve set a goal of raising $10,000 by the end of June. We’re almost there! Please give what you can today.
I Sing The Body Electric
An epic recounting the history of the Electric Slide that can also be sung to the tune of The Electric Slide.
I Dream’d A Dream
A stream of consciousness narrative from someone who chose the iconic Les Mis tune at karaoke and now suddenly realizes they absolutely do not have the vocal capacity to sustain the entire song, also it’s really killing the mood.
I Hear America Singing
The judges of X-Factor come together to spill their behind-the-scenes secrets and most cringey audition moments…but in the form of an acrostic.
The Untold Want
A villanelle where a woman secretly hopes her boyfriend will offer to go grocery shopping so that she can watch the Vanderpump Rules finale.
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A tense sonnet of a woman who saw a spider in her apartment but then it disappeared a moment later, so now she lives in agony every second hoping that it doesn’t crawl into her mouth while she’s sleeping.
I Saw In Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing
A soothing composition about all the different types of trees the narrator saw in Louisiana and fun facts about them. Essentially a transcript of a David Attenborough show.
The Sleepers
A ballad about a precious little angel baby whose gentle breathing is the beat of the most calming song known to man. The leitmotif is the delicate beauty of the human experience.
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
A punchy cinquain about an awful little demon baby who somehow has the lung capacity of an opera singer and is able to scream for hours on end for no apparent reason. The leitmotif is the endless pain of the human experience.
Delicate Cluster
An ode to eating one of those Nature Valley granola bars where the entire thing collapses without warning and you are left finding oats crumbles in the folds of your clothing days, or even weeks later.
O, Captain! My Captain
A juicy sestina tell-all from the cast of Dead Poets Society detailing who secretly hooked up, who had big blowout fights, and who accidentally fell off their desk once or twice during the seminal goodbye scene.
Shut Not Your Doors to Me Proud Libraries
A free verse poem where a misfit group of ragtag librarians team up to save their libraries from budget cuts and evil PTA boards trying to ban classic young adult novels. Kind of like Ocean’s 8 but there’s a big section about the dewey decimal system and an army of children armed with Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret storming a school board meeting.
Song of Myself
The lyrics to “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child.