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Gotham Literature Contact Us Gotham Literature is a digital publication whose mission is to make high-quality literature accessible for readers and profitable for writers. We make it easy for busy people to incorporate literature into their lives by curating short-form fiction, poetry, and comics that can be enjoyed in under 5 minutes. This allows our readers to engage with writing in the same bite-sized way they’re accustomed to consuming other forms of digital media, and provides them with a path around the barriers that prevent people from engaging with creative writing more today: the high upfront investment of time and money involved in buying a novel, and the hit-or-miss frustration of scouring user-generated content platforms to find content worth engaging with. We also aim to offer writers a sustainable way to earn income by providing them with a portion of the subscription revenue that their content generates — we anticipate launching our subscription model in the first half of 2026 after focusing on audience building in 2025. Gotham Literature was founded in 2025 by Daniel Taylor Wittenberg, who after eight years of working at The New York Times decided to bring his digital audience and subscription growth expertise to the world of literary publishing. Daniel was at The Times as the company grew from 1.2 to 10.4 million digital subscriptions. He optimized marketing tactics for the company’s various audience segments, introduced a personalized paywall model that drove millions of incremental page views and thousands of new subscriptions each month, and experimented endlessly with ways to maximize reader engagement and revenue. Daniel loves the way good writing can lift you to another place and leave you thinking about your own life differently when you land. He used to love getting lost in books, but found it hard to incorporate literature into his day-to-day life when he started working full time. After many years of viewing this as a great moral failing on his part ("why does picking a book feel so daunting? Why can't I ever finish the ones I've started?") he began to wonder if the difficulty wasn't all his fault — maybe, part of the blame lay with the literary publishing industry's failure to adapt to the way that most people now consume media (such as social, news, music) today: digitally, in bite-sized pieces. Daniel is seeking a Content & Audience Editor (3-Month Contract) to support both content development and audience engagement over an initial 3-month term. They will be responsible for helping Gotham Literature source standout short-form literature and distribute it in ways that resonate with a growing digital audience. This is a hands-on, collaborative role ideal for someone who’s editorially sharp and digitally fluent. The ideal candidate will have strong editorial judgment and experience with publishing short-form content (fiction, poetry, or comics), a demonstrated ability to source and edit content that resonates with broad audiences, and experience publishing work in digital formats (literary magazines, websites, newsletters) To learn more about this position and apply, please view the Work With Us page. Gotham Literature is also seeking individual and institutional investors to provide us with the funding that will allow us compensate writers, grow our audience, and cover administrative costs until we launch our subscription model in early 2026. We are a seed-stage, for-profit company who believe strongly that good literature is worth paying for, and that there is a significant revenue opportunity for publishers who successfully bring literary publishing into the rapidly growing world of digital subscriptions. If you would like to be a part of our journey and learn more about our business plan, please reach out at investors@GothamLiterature.nyc . All other inquiries can be sent to info@GothamLiterature.nyc . We look forward to hearing from you!

VIEW ALL CONTENT Observance Calynn Liong Harris When I tear into a tangle of laundry I always fold his clothes first. At my first realization I swept it aside. “His clothes are bigger than mine, so I finish folding faster.” But then our daughter appeared and I fold her clothes after his. Infinitesimal socks. Shirts. Pants. Lilliputian dresses, dolls’ outfits with strawberry print. Leaving my clothes to the end. Why not fold my clothes first? Why must I be last? Why this sacrifice? It is not an animal on an altar, or even a trickle of my blood taken by a knife. But it is an act of devotion, a ritual with my body. An act no one sees me doing alone in the bedroom. My hands smoothing over every wrinkle. Attempting to create order in the universe. Kneading quiet socks into spheres, pushing them away into darkness. Shoving the arms of sweaters into straight lines like the fabric of constellations joining. The grinding snap of the dresser drawers completes the rite. Calynn Liong Harris holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry from the University of Mary Washington. She is a former professional ballerina and lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and two daughters. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

Make high-quality literature part of your everyday life. Our free newsletter sends carefully curated stories and poems — all readable in 5 minutes or less — straight to your inbox. Email* Yes, subscribe me to the free Gotham Literature newsletter. Sign Up We respect your privacy and your preferences. You can unsubscribe at any time, and we will never share your email. A sample of our content:

Thank you for submitting! You should receive an email in the next few minutes confirming that your submission has been received. We will review your work and get back to you as soon as possible, but please note that it can take us up to three months to decide whether or not a piece will be published. If you have any questions or updates, please send us an email at submissions@GothamLiterature.nyc . Thanks for trusting Gotham Literature with your work. Join the Gotham Literature community Sign up for our newsletter to stay updated on the work we’re publishing. Signing up is completely optional and does not affect your submission in any way. Email* Yes, subscribe me to the free Gotham Literature newsletter. Sign Up We respect your privacy and your preferences. You can unsubscribe at any time, and we will never share your email.

VIEW ALL CONTENT We Should Have Picked the Gallery with the Cash Bar Ann Youmans It’s the opening night reception and the place is packed. Most of the visitors face each other, not the paintings, little groups of glittering guests in their Friday-night finery, wine in plastic cups. The din is ecstatic—we need more fiber art. Three people are scrutinizing the paintings, elbowing their way past gossiping friends uninterrupted in their close examination of the canvases—the overall, from-a-distance effect will have to be assessed later. Two of these are painters themselves, one teaches at the college. The third works at the bank. Maybe he is a buyer? Are any of the guests buyers? I don’t want to ask how anyone makes a living at this and I don’t want to finish this wine. Ann Marie Gamble is an editor and writer who enjoys telling stories, experimenting with language, and discovering connections between family, places, and ideas. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and you can find her work in Nixes Mate Review, star 82, and the Heartland Review. In her free time, she organizes volunteers for the Unbound Book Festival and checks out as many audiobooks as the library allows. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT Animation by Jose Leonardo The Cat Has A Smoking Problem Joshua Jones Lofflin It’s been obvious for weeks now, the butts piling up beneath the ficus’s leaves or underneath the bed. When I start finding them in the corners of the kitchen, I finally say something to Lauren. She sighs, says she’ll have a word with him. Asks me not to make a big deal over it. Says he only has one or two when he’s stressed. “He’s a cat,” I say. “What can he possibly be stressed about?” Lauren used to smoke Virginia Slims, well into her thirties, then gave them up for good when we started trying in earnest. Lately, she says she has dreams about them—not smoking them, just holding and gesturing with them like some silver screen starlet—but she doesn’t miss them. Says she can’t stand the taste anymore. “We don’t know what he’s going through,” she says. “These are stressful times.” “He’s supposed to leave them in his litter box. He promised he’d cut back,” I say. “I said I’ll have a word with him. Just…go easy on him.” I finish my drink and let the matter drop. I don’t mention my suspicions that she secretly encourages his habit, that he didn’t simply happen to find her old lighter in her sock drawer, that she only pretends to take my side when I yell at him to stop ashing on the carpet. But maybe I should go easy on him and be more like Lauren. She’s calmer now. She’s taken up baking. Her libido’s the highest it’s ever been, even higher than when we were last trying, until the fourth miscarriage made us think about other outlets. Golf maybe. Or canoeing. But Lauren says country clubs are too stuffy, and I get seasick on even the smallest boat. So we got a cat. Not this cat. He came later, and we almost didn’t get him at all, not after I backed across the first cat thinking I’d run over the neighbor kid’s slightly lumpy—and very squeaky—ball. Not after the second one, just a kitten, died from attempting the #TidePod Challenge he saw on TikTok. The third lasted the longest—seven months—before finally chewing through the cord of my Peloton, completely voiding its warranty. If this one dies of lung cancer, at least it will take a while. “I still don’t understand where he gets them,” I say the next day after scooping turds and a half dozen Marlboro Reds from his litter box. “You know how cats are,” Lauren says from the kitchen. I nod, but in truth I don’t. I’d asked him if he got them from the neighbor’s dog—a deranged chihuahua mix with a wheezy two-pack-a-day bark—but he gave me a baleful look and I dropped the subject. Lauren comes out with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “What’s this for?” “It’s been a long week,” she says and fills a glass for me then turns off the television, an episode of Law & Order I’d seen but couldn’t remember. “I was watching that,” I say. “I thought we could cuddle. Maybe try that thing we talked about.” She sits close and rests her head against my shoulder. The stench of tobacco floods my nose. Her hair reeks of it. “You’ve been smoking! With him!” I stand and jostle her glass. Wine sloshes all over her pants; she had to be wearing white. “Christ!” She hurries to the bathroom and starts running water. I trail behind, muttering sorry over and over. She peels off her pants. She’s not wearing underwear and stands naked from the waist down with her pants soaking in the sink. When she sees me watching in the mirror, she closes the door. I drain my glass. The cat’s sitting on top of the bookshelf, watching me, a Marlboro hanging from his lips. Asshole , I mouth and turn the television back on. I finish the bottle by myself then switch to whiskey. Lauren’s upstairs, on her phone or maybe asleep. The cat is on the couch with me, threatening to knock my glass off the coffee table until I distract him with the Marlboro Gear catalog. He only needs a thousand more points before he earns a sleeping bag. “What do you want a sleeping bag for,” I say, but wonder if it’s Lauren who would want it, how she’s always saying we don’t get outdoors enough, even though I remind her about my bad back that’s going to be worse now, after sleeping on the couch, and there’s no way I’ll be up for that sex move she wants to try, the one I’d watched with fascination, trying and failing to understand the physics of it. —————————— I wake late and hungover. Lauren’s already in her office, headset on, smoothing things over with a client. I should shave, at least shower. Instead, I change my shirt and brush the stale taste of whiskey from my gums, swish and swallow some Listerine. When she’s off her call, I tell her I’m making a Wawa run and ask if she wants coffee or donuts, but she still has her headset on. I can’t tell if she’s ignoring me or can’t hear me. I don’t bother asking again. It’s not until I’m already backed out of the garage that I notice the cat in the passenger seat. He's licking his ass. He doesn’t stop until I pull into the Wawa. “Wait here,” I tell him after I finish pumping gas. “And don’t light up.” He leans his head out the window and ignores me, his eyes on the passing traffic. I get two iced lattes and a half-dozen donuts. I consider getting something for the cat, but he’s doing Atkins, and besides, he’d only want another pack of Marlboros. On the way to check out, I grab a case of Coors even though Lauren wants me to cut back. But they’re on sale, and I can keep them in the garage so she won’t notice, maybe hide them behind the folding camp chairs we’d gotten back when we thought we’d use them. Maybe if we had a tent. I try to remember how many Marlboro points those cost and ask the clerk how much for a carton. I almost drop my purchases when the explosion goes off, a giant fireball that engulfs the pump and sets my car on fire. Clerks run out of the store to watch. Someone yells to call the fire department. “I told him to not light up,” I say to no one and slump to the sidewalk. Black smoke billows from beneath my car’s hood. I can’t remember if the insurance has lapsed or not. I crack open a beer. It seems the thing to do. A fire engine’s already pulling up, unspooling its hoses. It’s then that I see the cat, half his fur singed and his whiskers missing. He limps up to me, and I offer him a swig of beer. He shakes his head. I pull out a cigarette for him. Light it. Then light one for myself. It doesn’t taste too bad. It doesn’t taste like anything really. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

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