Issue 0 - Editor’s Note
Excision exists because there is a growing body of work that doesn’t quite fit where it’s told to go.
Stories that are speculative without being ornamental.
Stories that engage with systems—technological, institutional, social—without mistaking them for abstractions.
Stories that understand that tools shape outcomes, but intent still matters.
This magazine is interested in that space.
Issue 0 is not a debut issue in the traditional sense. It does not represent the scope, size, or format of future publications. It exists to establish editorial direction—to make clear what kind of work excites us, what questions we keep returning to, and what we believe a contemporary literary magazine can be without becoming performative or reactionary.
Excision publishes fiction that takes risk seriously. Not risk as provocation for its own sake, but risk as a willingness to be precise where vagueness would be easier; to commit to an idea long enough to test it; to follow a premise to its uncomfortable conclusions. We are drawn to stories that reward rereading, that leave residue, that don’t rely on cleverness to excuse thinness.
We are also explicit about something many publications prefer to gesture around: tools matter. Writers use them. They always have.
Excision is open to AI-assisted work under a transparent policy not because novelty excites us, but because avoidance does not prevent change. We are less interested in how a piece was produced than in whether it demonstrates intention, authorship, and craft. The presence of a tool does not absolve a writer of responsibility, nor does it diminish the work if that responsibility is clearly borne.
This is not an argument for replacement. It is an argument for clarity.
What we are looking for cannot be reduced to genre labels. The work we’re drawn to appears across forms and traditions. We are interested in fiction that understands consequence, that treats setting as an active pressure rather than a backdrop, and that resists the urge to explain itself before it has earned the reader’s trust.
We are less interested in:
Stories that announce their cleverness
Work that confuses opacity for depth
Pieces that lean on aesthetic gestures without emotional or conceptual follow-through
We are more interested in:
Narratives shaped by constraint
Characters navigating systems larger than themselves
Fiction that allows discomfort to remain unresolved
Excision is a paying market. We believe compensation is part of respect, not a bonus. We aim to be transparent about timelines, rights, and expectations—not because it is fashionable, but because it is functional. Writers should know where they stand.
Issue 0 exists as a marker. A line drawn early, before volume and process complicate things. It says: this is the direction we’re walking. You don’t need to follow, but you won’t be misled about where we’re headed.
Future issues will expand the scope of what appears here. They will include multiple voices, forms, and approaches. This note is not meant to constrain them—it is meant to anchor them.
Excision is now live. The rest will arrive in its own time.
