Baring the Device: Ethics in Publishing

The Gravity of the Thing’s editors have compiled a brief list of articles that relate to ethical practices in literary publishing. Here are a few ways writers, editors, and publishers are critically analyzing literary craft and publishing processes.

Rent, Gold, and Chicxulub: A Core Sample of Our Deposits | A.T. Yano

"Our dense temperate rainforest convulses from Chicxulub’s impact heard around the globe then lies eerily still. An old Tyrannosaur guards her first successful nest, determined. One peeking snout. Two more. Flustered chirps: a will to live..."

All at Once | Annie Fay Meitchik

"Siobhan and Xander were nineteen years old. It was their first summer home after starting college, and they’d left last fall best friends and virgins. But both of those things had changed..."

Beetles | Emma Campbell

"Beetles litter the carpet this morning, as always. During the cold Vermont nights, the insects crawl through the windows, the cracks in the door frame, the invisible holes all over the house..."

Swirl | Martin Shapiro

"You, softbody whose secret beak / slices shells to inject venom, / jetted to the sea bottom / spurting black ink in your wake, / folded yourself into a fissure, / matched its darkness and texture..."

Notes on Being a Real Person | Emily O Liu

"don’t leave me alone. i don’t want to talk to anyone but now it’s the only thing that forces me to materialize into something solid. my brain drifts with the clouds out the window, past the frame. wisps of something hard lick at my edges like flames, and i shy away..."

Albany en Recto Verso | Ted Jean

"1. you are headed south to be with your dying sister; while 2. your idiot heart rises toward bliss to be sailing like an improbably bulky bird across this heartbreak beautiful pedestrian winter Western Oregon farmland..."

Matter of Days | Amber Burke

"A farewell of last meetings that were not recognized, at the time, as such; a cessation of plans for the completion of incomplete projects; a futility of vengeful thoughts; a surrendering of cherished hostilities..."