From Robert Laughlin comes an in-depth analysis of this year's Million Writers Award notable stories.
Of the 190 Notable Stories, 74 came off the editors' list, 30 came off the readers' list and 5 were on both lists. That leaves 81 stories that weren't nominated by either editors or readers and were picked solely by the preliminary judges.
Robert also worked up a list of journals with more than one notable story not submitted for competition by either readers or editors. Here are the "cult favorites" of the judges (titles followed by an asterisk had no nominations submitted by either readers or editors).
- 5 stories--Subterranean*
- 4 stories--Strange Horizons, Thuglit*
- 3 stories--Prick of the Spindle*, Toasted Cheese*, Word Riot*
- 2 stories--Apex, Blackbird, Carve*, ChiZine*, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Flurb*, Hot Metal Bridge*, Identity Theory*, kill author, The King's English*, Literal Latte*, Mississippi Review Online*, Stirring: A Literary Collection*, Storyglossia, Web Conjunctions* (Note: I tired of cutting and pasting links, so see the notable stories page for links to these magazines.)
It's also worth noting wunderkind Roxane Gay had only one notable story chosen from outside the editor and reader nominations. Four of her stories were nominated by editors, and one was nominated by an editor and a reader.
Finally, Eclectica Magazine still has not lost its lead as the all-time notable stories champion. Here is a breakdown of the online magazines with the most notable stories since the Million Writers Award began in 2004:
- Eclectica with 37 nominations
- Pindeldyboz with 31
- Strange Horizons with 27
- Narrative with 24
- Agni Online with 23
- Word Riot with 22
Many thanks to Robert for pulling together all this information.