Because I’m work-from-home online adjunct, mom of four (soon to be five) kids whose husband works in the food industry.
Because your contest fee means a night of not ordering pizza out even though morning sickness has me on the floor OR telling my kid she has to wait a while for her new shoes OR missing out on the field trip because even though its five dollars a kid, we have a lot of kids.
Because I don’t believe that literary magazines and contests should “narrow the pool” financially, keeping those who don’t have professional development funds or wealthy spouses or deep pockets from being able to enter.
Because if this is how the literary world always revolved, you would be pre-rejecting Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde, Gwendolyn Brooks, if the patriarchy didn’t get to it first.
It isn’t about “not believing in my work” or “not supporting the arts”–it is about $20 not being much to you, but being too much of a risk for me.
Because I know you work hard, and for little, but so do I. And my work is not worthless, and it is not worth so little that I must pay an editor to even look at it.
Renee Emerson 
thoughts?