A Submission that Beat the Odds at The Masters Review

Why I voted yes on “Year of the Bimbo” by Maureen Traverse

The odds of being published by The Masters Review are pretty slim. According to statistics shared in the 2025 reader guide, of the ~16,000 submissions the journal received from July 2023 to June 2024, only 0.3% were accepted.

This means that as a reader at The Masters Review, I have to be very selective about which stories I vote ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ on. Since rejoining the reading team in February, I’ve read 10 to 15 submissions a week for the past 19 weeks. So, I’ve voted on somewhere between 190 and 285 submissions during that time.

There are many weeks where I don’t vote ‘yes’ on any of the pieces I read; some weeks where I vote ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ on one or two pieces; and occasionally, weeks where I’m carefully considering positive votes for 2-4 pieces. So, if we estimate that I averaged 1 ‘yes’ a week over those 19 weeks, that means I’ve only voted ‘yes’ on 6% to 10% of the submissions I’ve read.

Almost all of the pieces I’ve voted ‘yes’ on made it through at least 2 to 3 more rounds of readers and/or editors, and some even further than that. However, just to put into perspective how selective a 0.3% acceptance rate is, out of all the pieces I’ve voted ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ on so far this year, only one of those pieces actually made it to an acceptance. That’s Maureen Traverse’s short fiction story, “Year of the Bimbo.” It was actually the first story that I voted ‘yes’ on.

Here is the teaser for this story from The Masters Review website:

Maureen Traverse’s “Year of the Bimbo” starts off innocently enough, with the narrator and her best friend playing Barbies and speculating on the love life of Teeny’s sister, Nicole. But in true coming-of-age fashion, the closer the narrator observes Nicole and Dom, the darker their relationship is revealed to be.

So, if you like, go give it a read, and then let’s talk about the key reasons I voted ‘yes’ on this story:

There’s a compelling narrative voice

It can be really difficult to write from a younger narrator’s perspective effectively. However, Maureen’s first-person narrator is both assured and carefully observant. We get a mix of playful language indicating the narrator’s youth - “When Nicole goes out at night, we take her eyeliner and draw dark eyebrows on our faces and name ourselves after boys in our class who, on chicken nugget day, drink down tiny cups of barbecue sauce, then sit on each other and fart” - but also deeper insights into what the narrator is thinking and feeling - “...I know why Dom stands across the street staring at the house because that is exactly what I would do if I was ever banished from this place.”

The narrator also uses details to reveal more about herself, such as when she shows us how Teeny’s home contrasts to her own - “The white carpet, the blazing sunlight, the blue upholstery might as well be a movie compared to my living room, which is beige and dim and cluttered with a television cart and magazines and VHS tapes. Here the bright clean dazzles and the curtains fall in perfect scallops from rods with big silver balls on the ends, and curled up on the steps I feel like a cherry on top a luscious mound of pastel ice cream.” At The Writers Studio where I teach, we tell students that the most important job of a first-person narrator is to reveal themselves.

There’s a source of tension throughout

Dom is the source of tension in this story, and the seed is planted right in the first paragraph - “I’ve only ever seen Dom from her window, across the street, about a thumb tall at that distance, slumped in his sweatshirt, standing like someone waiting for something for too long.” Throughout the story, we learn or see a number of unsettling things about Dom’s behavior and how it’s impacting Nicole, and this build-up foreshadows something bad is going to happen. We keep reading to find out what.

The details bring both the story and the characters to life

There is nothing vague or abstract in this story. Every line is full of details that render the scene and the characters vividly and clearly. Here is a great example that combines details from the scene with details that reveal something deeper about the narrator: “If the door is open a crack, we can see her vanity, the oval mirror with photographs slipped into the frame, and one of her long, runner’s legs sticking out from under the comforter patterned with purple brush strokes on a bed twice the size of Teeny’s bed. At the head and foot, metal curlicues make it look like a sleigh, which we’d pretend it was if Nicole ever let us into her room, but she doesn’t, and we don’t mind because this feels right to us, just what a teenager would do.” This writer is making sure every sentence is doing work for the story.

The story doesn’t shy away from conflict

In the work I do with writers, I’ve seen many of them set up a situation with a lot of potential for tension and/or conflict, but then they ultimately avoid it and let their character(s) off the hook. In this story, the writer leans into conflict - both in the scene with Dom, Nicole, and Nicole’s father at the track meet, and then later, when Dom appears in the house and Teeny goes charging after him with the fire poker. Both of these scenes raise the stakes of what is happening in the story and give it more urgency.

Each time we vote ‘yes’ on a submission at The Masters Review, we’re supposed to include notes about why we’re voting that way. Here is what I wrote for this story:

“This is an effective younger narrator who makes careful observations of the world and people around her while trying to make sense of what it all means, including her own conflicting feelings.”

The readers and editors who voted on this submission after me commented on the strong, consistent narrative voice; the effective use of a younger narrator; the sharp writing; and how the Barbies’ imaginary plot lines and the girls’ changing understanding of the word “bimbo” all come together in the end.

What do you think of the story?

👋 Hi there, and thanks for reading! I’m Janelle Drumwright, a writer, teacher at The Writers Studio, instructor at Chill Subs, and reader at The Masters Review. I help writers strengthen their work and teach them how to submit to literary journals. Find me at janellewrites.com.