By Pauline Paranikas and Yong-Yu Huang Polyphony commentary is almost like a clay mug. There are many different styles and ways to make them, but they all co...

So… Life is weird right now. If you’re like us, school has been cancelled and you’re sitting at home working through whatever online learning looks like for ...

By Daniel Boyko and Zoha Arif It is a universal consensus that writing dialogue is a trial—a detestation on its own—and one of those elements of writing that...

By Jessica Kim [In conjunction with “Editing a Piece That Frustrates You”.] Grammarly is indeed a lifesaver. It corrects “response for” to “response to” and...

By Daniel Boyko, Jennifer Wang, and Jessica Sidrak As much as editors seem to be attracted to using large vocabulary words—often words that aren’t used in ev...

By Sarah Nachimson, Nayu Shimo, and Yong-Yu Huang Grammarly would make my life so much easier. Maybe I should just plug this piece in for a quick edit. This ...

By Hannah Ramsey, Daniel Boyko, and Sarah Nachimson Hannah Ramsey: Figurative Language I appreciate when writers use metaphors, symbolism, allusions, and oth...

By Lara Katz For some editors, opening submission manager and seeing the genre listed as “fiction” strikes fear deep into their hearts. Maybe it’s because fi...

By Giancarlo Riccobon, Vivien Song, Zoha Arif, Jessica Sidrak, and Maya Nalawade While it would be nice to think of us editors as fearless knights of literat...

By Daniel Boyko and Pauline Paranikas One of the biggest parts of being a Genre Editor is providing feedback to previous editors. Writing that feedback almos...

By Lara Katz If we’re being honest about it, there are three types of Polyphony submissions: submissions that are so terrible it’s hard to find something goo...

For some editors, opening Submission Manager and seeing the genre listed as “fiction” strikes fear deep into their hearts. Maybe it’s because fiction pieces ...

Your commentary is written. Your feedback to previous readers is done. All you need to do is forward the submission. You click “recommend reject,” certain of...

What if you disagree with what previous editors have written in the internal notes? You read their elaborate explanations of why a piece should be accepted o...

By Pauline Paranikas As an executive editor, I spend most of my time on any given submission editing previous editors’ comments and writing feedback to those...

By Cia Gladden and Jennifer Wang I’m a writer. It’s easy to think it while I watch my classmates suffer through draft after draft of their own paragraphs. In...

By Alex Jones and Adil Alvi Advice on avoiding condescension, getting in the reader’s head, and helping young thinkers produce their best-quality writing. Wh...

Ahh, the classics. Every genre has its own issues, its own tropes and cliches. Romance novels have meet-cutes, fantasy novels have doorways to the new world,...

Prior to the thrill of receiving their Submission Manager account and their very first submission, all Polyphony Lit editors undergo a brief application proc...

As editors and readers for Polyphony Lit, we know our primary duty is to help our own rising generation of literary artists feel supported and heard. We know...