In a November 2020 editorial, I announced our plans to hold a Spanish language submission window at Clarkesworld sometime in 2021. What I didn’t see coming was seven months of kidney stones and related hospital stays. It became very difficult to keep up with my normal obligations and fell behind on more than a few. This inevitably led to the project being delayed.

For much of 2022, work on this project has been in the background. I spent months working on revisions to our submissions system. I would go as far to say that these changes are the most significant updates I’ve made to the software since I began working on it in 2008. More recently, a small group of volunteers translated all the author-side text, prompts, and emails into Spanish so they could be added to the system. I hope to move this update into production during the next month or two.

This month, I will start training our Spanish language team on English language submissions. We have a few people on-board, but it would be nice to have a few more. Here is what it entails:

  • reading 1000-8000 word science fiction stories submitted in Spanish and providing notes (in English)
  • if you will not be recommending a story for translation, it does not need to be read through to the end,  but you will need provide a short summary of what you read, and your reasons for rejecting it (these will be kept confidential)
  • if you will be recommending a story for translation, you will need to provide a thorough summary and your reasons for recommending it (also confidential)
  • you may occasionally be called upon to give a second opinion of a story recommended by another reader
  • response time is important to us, so we’d like readers to commit to reading three-five stories each day
  • the submission window for this trial project is one month, but may be extended to two if we don’t receive a satisfactory number of submissions from a variety of Spanish speaking regions of the world in the first month
  • training will take place on live English language submissions so we can better assess and provide feedback on your summaries and comments (during training, we read every story you read)
  • the dates for our submission window is directly related to how well training goes and the team’s availability (we hope late 2022, at worst early 2023)
  • we take confidentiality very seriously–you are not permitted to talk about stories, cover letters, authors, or any other data found in submissions or our submission system with anyone outside of our fiction team

When it comes to slush readers, we normally look for people are (or want to be) authors or editors. (We see this as an educational opportunity and it serves those groups best.) We also expect a certain level of familiarity with what we’ve published in recent years and an ability to clearly state your likes and dislikes, even if you know I won’t agree. (Tell me what you think. Not what you think I want to hear.) Obviously, you should be fluent in Spanish and English.

During the time you are working with us on this project, you will not be permitted to submit your own fiction in either language. A small stipend will be provided.

If you are interested, please fill out this form and we’ll be in touch.

We’ve received far more applications than expected and are currently reviewing them.