photo by Baby Blue AKA Augusta Sagnelli

Substack is a revolutionary space that has undeniably changed my writing life for the better, and like all spaces that generate vast amounts of digital popularity power, it has also given rise to a new kind of gatekeeper that is just as potentially nefarious as traditional publishers or MFAs.

When writers are deluded into thinking the point is to make it go viral, like a disease, they often end up focusing on those anemic little red hearts that have come to dictate so much of our cultural discourse about worthiness, otherwise behaving like cult leaders with the sole purpose of appealing to faceless, bewildered hordes of digitized followers.

A few months ago over at the fantastic , there was a slew of op-ed pieces about literary gatekeepers: good or bad? and I spent a solid couple of days thinking about my own thoughts on the matter; but alas, by the time I was happy with thoughts on literary gatekeepers, the topic was no longer trending, and I foolishly refrained from sharing the piece, believing that I should wait until the right moment for a chance at meaningless digital popularity.

Those gatekeepers will get ya. So lest I allow my thoughts to languish any longer, here’s to remembering to share words that feel meaningful when we feel them, contemporary digital literary zeitgeist be damned!

In literary circles, the term “gatekeeper” generally refers to:

MFA programs (if you don’t think they’re useful, thinks you might be insane, but ’ MFA experience was undeniably nightmarish)

The traditional publishing industry (according to , it has no fucking clue about what counts as good literature, but and believe it serves an essential role in cultivating the kind of literature that somebody’s great-great-great grandchild will still read).

As a working novelist (i.e. I work multiple jobs to pay the bills; I write novels; it works for me) with an MFA, two published novels (one was published more traditionally, one published independently) and once represented by a music label (that’s a different story), I’ve come to view gatekeepers the same way I view VIP lounges: they might make you feel important,

but you can never escape the quiet desperation of the roped-off section.

But lest I succumb to our binary culture’s endless insistence on picking a side— good? bad? why not both?—I choose to inhabit the in-between, in hopes that someone out there (including my future self) will be reminded of the fundamental truth that whether in literature, academia, or even right here on Substack, gatekeepers are only as powerful as the power we cede to them.

1. MFAsThey might be bullshit, but fertilizer is useful

Growing up in the USA, I was told that accruing student debt was a necessary evil what it takes to win, baby! which is why even after my disillusionment with an MA in social theory in 2013, in 2018, at thirty years old, I enrolled in an MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA).

At the time, the former director of the NYU writing program had come to VCFA to spruce it up, but alas, ten months later, the director left for vague reasons related to what I assume involved some more bureaucratic forms of gatekeeping.

Another reason I chose VCFA: Vermont is my favorite state in the USA (I did my undergrad at UVM), and VCFA’s low-residency model is one of the oldest in the country, allowing working professionals like me (i.e. people who can’t actually afford MFAs) to keep their jobs whilst studying long-distance and attending a few 10-day residencies a year (fun depressing fact: as of last year, the program’s Vermont campus no longer exists; residencies now take place at California Institute of the Arts; which I learned while teaching creative writing at the oh-so-esteemed Sorbonne … ah, academia, how doth thy disappoint).

Was it worth it? Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. Can you repeat the question? (sing along if you remember; the song's chorus is the key to our salvation1). Like most things in life, working towards an MFA is what you make of it, which I did thanks to the academic rigour (self-disciplined, admittedly) inspired by fantastic professors (special shout out to Adam McComber, Hasanthika Sirisena, and Brian Leung), cultivating friendships with colleagues who will remain friends for life, and paying-to-play holding myself accountable to the kind of literary routine, discipline, and curiosity I required to embark upon a professional writing life.

MFA Pros:

Multiple professors legitimately changed my relationship to writing and reading.

The rigorous, self-disciplined nature of the program instilled an invaluable work-ethic in my literary bones.

Being a paying student-loan holder of a largely useless degree granted me the intellectual freedom to nerd out on historiographic metafiction and postmodernism (here’s the intro to my dissertation), providing invaluable insight into developing as a serious novelist, specifically in relation to researching structural and narrative techniques that culminated in my most recent novel, The Requisitions.

The degree led to six-years teaching disillusioned creative writing students at the Sorbonne (they were just like me!). I quit it in 2024 because academic gatekeepers might be the actual worst (despite what the hallowed Sorbonne name suggests, you can’t afford rent when you’re paid $850 for a semester of teaching).

MFA Cons:

Serious student debt that my book sales—surprise!—haven’t paid off yet

Coming to terms with the fact that a creative writing degree can hypothetically get you a more prestigious/higher paying job, but that doesn’t mean institutions will actually want pay for your expertise

The literary workshop model (woof), i.e. sitting in a circle of part-time writers, all smiling creepily at each other in that distinctly American way whilst we dissect Karen’s Ronald’s prose and suggest, politely, with gritted teeth, that while the characters lack depth and the dialogue needs work and while I’m not exactly sure where this scene is supposed to be going, the first draft of the first chapter of your first unfinished novel does have a lot of potential, Ronald Karen, great job!

Being surrounded by both the vocal fry of privileged youth and the existential desperation of empty nesters who aren’t paying for their MFAs and who’ve “always loved to write but never had the time” and “can’t imagine how hard it would be to write a whole book!” and don’t actually care about literature at all, but really, really want to know what it takes to be reviewed in the NY Times.

2. Traditional Publishing Reading at McNally Jackson’s in NYC in 2015, back when I’d “made it”Off with their greedy, oversized heads

I sold 1500 copies of my debut novel (Slim and The Beast, Inkshares, 2015) via a publisher more akin to traditional publishing before buying back my rights in 2022.

In 2025, I’ll finally be doing something with those rights, because it’s about time I made 100% of the profits. Later this autumn, I’ll be republishing a definitive version of Slim and The Beast: 10th Anniversary Edition (it’s much cleaner, shorter, and prettier than the 1st edition).

Inspired by 1920s indie publishers in Paris like Black Sun Press, Contact Publishing, and Sylvia Beach, who published Ulysses without waiting outside any fences, my wife partner and I founded an independent anglophone press in Paris, Kingdom Anywhere, with the goal of retaining the rights to our own work whilst printing high-quality, limited edition books of fiction, poetry, and photography.

New annual subscribers will receive a 10th Anniversary Edition of Slim and The Beast.

Our mission has been to work with freelance artists professionals (editors, illustrators, designers) who are also disillusioned by gatekeepers in various ways, and I’m damn proud to say Kingdom Anywhere has already had two successful publishing debuts: in a few months in 2024, we sold out of the limited-edition (300 copies) of my second novel, The Requisitions, before making it available globally (it’s sold over 300 more copies since). In March 2025, we published Kingdom Anywhere’s first poetry collection, Spill, written by Mehta (the limited-edition print-run of 250 copies is all-but-sold-out; if you’re lucky you might be able to snag one of the finale copies).

Going from more traditional publishing relinquishing all of my rights in hopes of being venerated by the gatekeepers-du-jour to independent publishing has been worth it for multiple reasons both philosophical and financial (you can read ’s historic piece, “No One Buys Books,” if you don’t believe publishing independently can make you far more money), but I didn’t choose to write novels for the money and whether it was financially worth it or not for me can be summarized in a footnote.2

It’s an important word, worth,

because what we decide to value in this day and age says a lot about which gatekeepers we resent respect and which gatekeepers we really, really should stop venerating. And since the neverending discussion of “white male authors” in the literary zeitgeist is forever overhead, yes, I am a fan of some of David Foster Wallace’s writing despite his dickishness to women, (self)-destructive, and outsized brain, but no, I don’t believe the “vanishing white male writer” is a problem. This idea that “white males” aren’t being paid attention to is certainly proof of how fragile "the white male” caricature truly is, but regardless, the USA’s constant obsession with skin color, gender, and sexual behavior as comprehensive criteria of a human being’s worth is a primary reason why that puritanical nation is currently being governed by a pathetic tyrant.3

In the final analysis of the value or problem with gatekeeping, as with most things in life, the answer resides not in identitarian categorization binary reductionism of good or bad but rather within the pendulum swing of infinite subjectivities. If there’s one thing I still feel deep down in my human bones, it’s that the world needs more diligent, patient, not-for-profit, Honest-to-Muse storysellers storytellers4 who are in it for the right reasons, and those are the only writers I really care to engage with—folks who believe in independence, and its value, and who reject the commodified virtue of forever seeking more power viral limelight.

In conclusion, what matters is discerning which lines are worth waiting in— because many of them lead to more tight-assed bouncers standing oh-so-smugly at the door. When it comes to my personal experience with literary gatekeepers, the grass wasn’t always greener on the other side, but I did learn much about how to cultivate my own literary garden.

In the year 2025, it’s clear that the manicured Miracle-Grow-Lawns of trad publishing and MFAs are wilted and too expensive to keep up. Wildflowers are sprouting everywhere thanks to platforms like Substack, but in honor of the pendulum swing—yes, I shall repeat it—revolutions eventually return us to whence we came.

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1

They Might Be Giants, “Boss of Me” (2001): yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, can you repeat the question? You’re not the boss of me now … and you’re not so big … life is unfair.

2

Brass Tax for the Business Folk out there: I sold 1,500 copies of Slim and The Beast. After buying back my rights, the remaining income ($1500) was enough to pay for three months of student loans, which I’d taken out for two master’s degrees that the academic gatekeepers at the Sorbonne still don’t believe are worthy enough for a liveable wage (in 2025, even PhDs can’t find sustainable work in academia). On the contrary, now that I own 100% of the rights to The Requisitions, which sold 300 copies priced at $30 (+ hundreds more to date), well, you do the math. Even after considering print cost and editorial and design and shipping, I made orders of magnitude more money publishing independently than I did with my first publisher (and they were extremely generous giving me 50% of profits, compared to the industry standard 5-15%).

3

Just because the publishing industry isn’t talking about publishing “white male novelists” as much as it used to doesn’t mean they cease to exist. To phrase it differently (since we can’t seem to get past sweeping generalizations about human beings based on skin pigmentation), there are plenty of sunburnt novelists out there doing the work, like the Paris-based novelist Will Mountain Cox, who is alive and well, and Substack’s own , who got a publishing deal thanks to Substack-serialization. If you really care to delve deeper into this extremely dumb “debate,” does a good job of summarizing it, but I can’t give the supposed plight of “white male novelists” any more attention than this footnote.

4

The Philosopher Byung Chul-Han makes the clever distinction between storytelling and storyselling in The Crisis of Narration, in which he argues that authentic narratives are in decline because storytelling (as opposed to narrative) is based on the transactional exchange of information: “The cause of the narrative crisis in modernity is the deluge of information. The spirit of narration is suffocated by the flood.”