E-Panel: Literary Journal Editors August 2005

The following is the August Literary Journal Editor E-Panel, with interviews of editors of another 7 great Literary Journals.  There have now been 62 journals represented by their editors in these e-panels this year! 

Marie Hayes – StoryQuarterly
www.storyquarterly.org

Jackie Corley – Word Riot
www.wordriot.org

Michelle Richmond – Fiction Attic
www.fictionattic.com

David McGlynn – Western Humanities Review
http://www.hum.utah.edu/whr/

Elizabeth Onusko – Guernica
www.guernicamag.com

Derek Kagemann – Halcyon
www.halcyonmagazine.com

Mitch Wieland – Idaho Review
http://english.boisestate.edu/idahoreview/

Dan:

Thanks for taking some time out of what must be a busy schedule to get the word out about Literary Journals!

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

That’s always a pleasure. It’s a good message, and a complicated one, so communication within the community is what we’re all about, isn’t it?

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Thanks so much for allowing me to participate.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Thanks for having me.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

It is my pleasure.  I’m always eager to see more people interested in literary journals.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

I appreciate the opportunity.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

Thanks for making your schedule busy on my account.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

The thanks goes to you, Dan.  We all appreciate your efforts at raising the visibility of our journals.  Years ago, Martha Foley, the former editor of The Best American Short Stories, was asked by her neighbor where she found all those great stories she published every year.  Sadly, it seems literary journals are still an undiscovered treasure today.

Dan:

I know some of you took over positions and others founded their journals.  What exactly led to your taking on the position you currently hold with your Literary Journal?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

I backed into editing StoryQuarterly, truly. I stepped in to help out a friend who was coeditor at the time and had let the deadlines get away from her, and was calling S.O.S. I’d been involved with SQ, in a small capacity, years before, and I had had years of technical experience in editing trade publications for industries as diverse as music stores, funeral parlors and educational publications. So I was able to step in and contribute, although computerization in the printing industry created a learning curve for me. But it was a lesson in the value of rewriting experience, and in the benefit derived from one of many jobs that seem (and frequently are) pretty dull; after some of those jobs, I can put War & Peace in a caption: just tell me how many inches I have. Anyway, pretty soon after I came in to help at StoryQuarterly, my coeditor retired and there I was. I had to ask myself, What role did I think literary publications should fill today? I’m still exploring that question and each year the answers continue to evolve.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

I currently serve as the editor and publisher of both Word Riot (http://www.wordriot.org) and Word Riot Press (http://www.wordriotpress.com), it's publishing extension. Word Riot started out in 2002 as the literary section of an on-line music magazine, now
defunct, called Communication Breakdown. Communication Breakdown was edited
by Paula Anderson, a free spirit who was always embarking on some sordid adventure or another. When Paula left the on-line world for adventures in the physical one, the music magazine died. I decided to strike out on my own, creating Word Riot as it's own entity - a monthly on-line literary magazine. Eventually, we expanded into print publishing with Word Riot Press. Paula returned to the on-line world when I began pulling together the
logistics of forming a small press. The first book Word Riot Press published was a collection of Paula's work titled Blood Tender. Paula tragically died November of last year at age 22. Blood Tender wound up meaning a lot to Paula's family during that time. That really humbled me and continues to inspire the work I'm trying to do in the literary community.

I never anticipated the life the on-line magazine would take on, or that it would continue to grow and prosper the way it has.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

I founded Fiction Attic about three years ago as a way to showcase interesting short short stories and flash fiction by new talent and established authors online. It began as a kind of experiment, but the response was such that I decided to keep it going.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Since Western Humanities Review is housed in and funded by the English Department at the University of Utah, the Managing Editor’s position is given to an advanced graduate student in the Ph.D. program in creative writing.  I worked at two commercial magazines when I was an undergraduate and found that I really loved editing and magazine production.  When I came to Utah, I served as a reader for WHR and once my qualifying exams were complete, I applied for the position.  Thankfully, I got it.  The position carries a two-year term-limit so that one person does not hold onto it for too long.  It is a wonderful opportunity for a graduate student at Utah.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

I co-founded Guernica along with Joel Whitney, Mike Archer, and Josh Jones. The four of us converged during the months leading up to the November 2004 presidential election. We all felt something was missing from the contemporary literary magazine scene, and that it was imperative for art and politics to be addressed as what they are — areas that constantly collide and intersect — instead of being regarded as autonomous subjects.

So, full of ideas and not really grasping what we were getting ourselves into, we started planning Guernica’s launch, which happened last October 25, Picasso’s 123rd birthday. Throughout the past year, our editorships have each evolved based on our strengths and interests.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I had been spending a long time contemplating what I wanted to do with my time.  Eventually, I started to realize that I was spending too much time thinking about it, and then completely overestimated exactly how much spare time I had available.  Halcyon was the first project that I jumped into, which was the right decision, since it brought together a lot of my interests.  I’m a huge pulp fiction enthusiast.  I’m immersed in book
six or seven in the Tarzan series, and I have shelves and shelves of Burroughs, Howard, and Lovecraft.  I saw a deficiency in a lot of the more recent fiction that I’d been reading, a diminishment in optimism and wonderment.  It seemed like a lot of authors weren’t even bothering to disguise their soapbox with action or suspense.  One SciFi anthology
I’d read was nothing more than a collection of sad and miserable narrators lamenting and haranguing.  The authors were social commentators, but they’d forgotten to be entertainers. 

I’d also realized how important it was to connect with other people.  I wanted to have some outlet for putting creative people in touch with each other, and Halcyon looked ideal for that.  I’m a solitary person when I write, but in between sittings, it’s enlivening to bounce ideas back and forth with someone else.  There were several talented people who I’d been dying to work with and who I’ve wanted to see work with each other.

We received a heartening response.  We beat out the pope on the front page of our local newspaper, and we had a huge turnout at our launch party. People showed up to buy ten issues at a time.  What I enjoyed most was the variety of readers that we were receiving.  A father showed up with his son to our second signing, seventy year old men were picking up the same issue that college students were buying.  I’m a history student, so I
appreciate anything that acts as a bridge between generations.  I also trust our readers.  We aren’t hitting them over the head with profanity or sexuality to keep their attention.  We’re crafting a magazine for a wide audience, one about heroes, wonderment, and action.

Halcyon started out as a pulp science fiction magazine, but we dropped the scifi requirement after our first issue.  We realized that PULP was the driving force behind the magazine, which has – in all actuality – been an amazingly difficult term for us to nail down and define in people’s heads.   Well, it’s optimism . . . except when a tentacled monster is gobbling down someone.  It’s wonderment . . . well, not exactly when the hero is punching an ape in the face – that’s the action part.  Sure, it sort of is a recreation of a bygone style, but no, that makes it something new.  We can’t help but do something different than most of our contemporaries. It’s not about antiheroes.  We don’t want stories about science, religion, politics, or coffee screwing people over – unless there’s a hero capable of punching the cause of it in the face.

I think I got off topic somewhere along the line . . . next topic please.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

I went to The University of Alabama for my MFA primarily because I was such a fan of The Black Warrior Review.  I was on staff for three years at BWR, including a year as fiction editor.  After graduation, I was hired to teach fiction here at Boise State.  We
were starting our own MFA program, and I thought a strong national literary journal would be a good way to raise the profile of the school, would show the serious intent of the program to come.  Besides, I found I very much missed editing a literary journal.  I missed the thrill of finding great stories and publishing them, working with new and established writers.  So I went to our Provost and got $6000 for the first issue, which included stories from Ann Beattie, Richard Bausch and Lynne Sharon Schwartz.   We had three stories from that inaugural issue make the ‘top 100’ list in The Best American Short Stories, so the Provost felt he’d gotten his money’s worth

Dan:

I don’t know if you can hear the collective laughter over the internet, but is it safe to say you do this out of love, and it wasn’t some get rich quick scheme?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

That really is funny. I’m not sure anyone on the publishing side believes they’ll make a killing publishing literary fiction, ever. I do see a bigger role for the Internet now, to do some of the mass coverage work, and there’s a cost savings in that—publishing some of our work online versus putting out everything in hard copies. I think there’s always going to be a role for both, but rather than see a certain percent of your books remaindered by distributors, doing a percent of your publishing online makes economic sense.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

If anything, my literary endeavors have cost me much needed beer money during my college days (which ended all of one year ago). Kidding aside, there really isn't money to be made in this little sphere of ours. We do it because we love the words and because we get to meet some incredibly fascinating people doing this stuff. It's an incredible privilege to watch writers develop their talents and play some small part in introducing them to the world at large.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Love and insanity. I don't make a penny. In fact, I spend many hours on Fiction Attic that a wiser person would probably spend selling insurance or hawking bakeware over ebay. I do all of the reading & site design, the whole enchilada, so it does take a significant bite
out of my time.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

No, I did not do it to get rich.  My job pays the same as a teaching assistant, which, as any TA will tell you, is not much.  I took the job to broaden my professional experience, and more importantly, to develop a sharper critical eye.  I believe the position has allowed me to do just that.  When I go back to my own writing, especially after I have let a story sit for a time, I am able to cut and compress and revise with better precision than I ever had prior to taking the job.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Laughter, yes, lots of laughter. Guernica is certainly no get rich quick… or slowly… or ever scheme. I can think of a few, and none of them include starting a literary magazine.

Guernica is produced on the thinnest of shoestring budgets, and the editors pay for virtually all expenses out of our own (none too full) pockets. Now that we have our editorial processes well established, we’re actively fundraising for the magazine. In order to continue our growth and increase the quality of our offerings, we simply have to get outside support.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I’m a huge fan of get rich schemes – though I’ve yet to find one that works.  You have to start out by imagining the huge wads of cash that everyone is going to be lobbing at you.  First you look at the fantasy scenario to get invigorated, and then you focus on reality and
start working for the love of it.  It’s like a marriage.  First, we fall in love with the ideal.  Initially, there has to be this insane optimism, but that needs to be followed by a lasting devotion, which is perhaps a little less romantic than the sort of love we like to portray in
fiction.  I’ve never seen anything last that requires boundless happiness to sustain.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

For editing and managing the journal, I get one class release a year, but in the amount of time spent on the journal I could teach several classes.  As is the case at many journals, I’m pretty much a solo act, with the staff composed of one GA and the rest volunteer MFA students.  To date, I put together the entire journal at home on my trusty imac. 

The reward, however, has been in the feedback the journal has received.  From our first seven issues, we’ve had two pieces reprinted in Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, two in The Pushcart Prize, and one each in The Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South.  We’ve also had another ten stories short-listed by these same top prize
anthologies.  That level of recognition has been very satisfying.  Indeed, one of our O. Henry stories was a first publication by a young writer named Adam Desnoyers.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Dan:

In order to run a Literary Journal, do you believe you need to have knowledge of literature, or business, or some mixture of the two?  Would it be helpful if more truly business astute people were involved in the running of such journals?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Whatever I believe, the staff needs to do both. There are people helping here, but if someone doesn’t check it all, mistakes are made. Big ones. And it’s often tedious, detail work and a sleepy intern doesn’t want to look up semi-colons in the Chicago Book of Style, or to figure out why a library subscription is on the mailed list yet the library is claiming it’s missing the last three years of publications. It’s stop and check work and people with experience in this particular industry can do it faster, but rather than a business person, I think it needs a detail person. A big concept person on a database spreadsheet can be a disaster made by Mother Nature.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

I don't claim much business sense, but I believe my frugality and attention to costs has allowed me to keep Word Riot and, moreso, Word Riot Press running. Word Riot, as an on-line website, does not incur much in terms of expenditures. I toss a couple bills at my web host each year, but that's really it. I think the lack of overhead is what allows on-line
literary magazines to thrive in a climate where print magazines tend to have a difficult time.

At the end of the day, you have to have a well-defined understanding of what type of literary product you want to present to the general public. I believe astute business people would bring much-needed changes to an increasingly aloof publishing industry. Literary folk have to stay true to the thematic elements they're trying to bring before the public in
written form. But I think more business-minded people are in dire need in the industry to help redefine ways to capture the public's attention and connect authors with potential readers.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

I suppose business acumen comes in handy if the goal is to make money.  But for those of us who are not trying to sell our journal—either because it's online or because it comes out as a freebie publication--the business knowledge is less crucial. On the other hand, I think it's crucial for litmag editors to be well-versed in literature.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

I believe that the literary knowledge is very important, especially since Western Humanities Review publishes critical essays.  Commitment to publishing the very best literature and literary essays is what makes a good journal a good journal.  Some business knowledge is useful, but the smallness of our operation and the larger umbrella provided by the university makes most business issues rather straightforward.  It is more important for the Managing Editor to be organized and meticulous.  We have a lot of pots on the stove, so the Managing Editor needs to be able to multi-task.  With regards to financial matters, anyone who has experience writing grant proposals certainly has an advantage.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

I believe that what you absolutely need to run a successful lit mag is the desire to learn, and learn quickly. You need to be able to adapt your vision, to respond to readers and reality, and to foresee which writers, artists, and topics will be exactly right and pertinent for a few moments from now.

I don’t know of anyone who would get involved with a lit mag who didn’t have some passion for, and therefore knowledge of, literature. If you’re asking if you need to have an advanced degree in obscure Slovakian poetry, then I’d definitely say no. It’s not about your background, it’s about your ability to create a place where people who love to think and read want to hang out.

It would certainly be helpful to have an in-house attorney, accountant, and business manager, but we’re not holding our breath. We’re scrappy and find ways to manage.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I think that ineptitude is the wellspring of innovation.  Yes, a true businessman can run a profitable magazine, and their venture is probably going to appeal to the largest audience, but mentally, a pioneering editor needs to be someplace else and then pull the project and the audience along with him.  This is like giving birth to five watermelons in reverse while discovering the wheel, but it’s never as easy to invent once you’ve learned all of the rules.  That’s not to say a person doesn’t need some modicum of business savvy and common sense.  Lacking that, a lot of brilliant ventures go belly up, but regardless, a
good learning experience will often have the businessmen taking notes. 

Good business is about quantity, which is why publishers turn down so many amazing novels.  A mediocre book that will appeal to 80% of the population is going to get a hundred times more advertising money than a masterpiece that will only be appreciated by 40%.  Good business is good gambling. It’s all about hedging your bets.  I think that’s the reason why creative people often sell out and move on.  Eventually the idealism becomes institutionalized.  The 40% publication gets marketed into an 80% enterprise, and then it’s purely business and monotony.

However, the fact is, you need to know a little bit about everything.  You can start out with nothing but an idea, but you either need immaculate organization or one hell of a learning curve.  Then you fail over and over again, staring at mistakes – thinking “I can do better than this!” –  and suddenly you’re an expert.  People too often mistake outsourcing for experience.

I have to admit that Halcyon could have been better run when we first started up.  A lot of the decisions that were made going into it were entirely spur of the moment – no research, and very little planning sort of “business decisions.”  So, this is where the creative solution comes into play.  I’m putting the business side of things into the hands of businesspeople and I’m holding on to the creative side like grim death. We’re switching over to a regional franchise model – something sort of comparable to how the Associated Press operates - which is something I don’t believe any other magazine has yet to attempt. 

Overall, we have the core operation of Halcyon, which is in charge of generating content and quality control.  Then there are regional editors running individualized versions of the magazine in their area.  It works out as the best of both worlds.  Everything is custom tailored to the readership in an area, but with an editorial consistency from area to area.  This is also going to offer our authors and artists a much larger market.  I still have to handle some of the business end, and our regional editors are getting a hefty helping of creative control, but we keep it all on a grassroots scale.  Instead of funding a national venture with forty pages of glossy advertising, we put out independent variations of a
local rag touting small businesses and area authors.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

My bachelor’s degree is in Marketing, and that has certainly been helpful.  But looking at what other editors have done to promote their journals can be even more informative, such as the amazing job David Lynn does at The Kenyon Review.  There’s lots of
great models out there to copy from.  CLMP is also an excellent source of information of how to promote and distribute journals.  I use the series of monographs they’ve put out (on direct mail campaigns and other ways to increase circulation, on how to keep subscribers and get distributors, etc.) every fall in a class I teach in the MFA program on the literary journal.  In many ways, it’s basic retail techniques and common sense.

I’m not sure about the last part of your question.  I guess I’d rather have writers and literary editors at the helm of our journals any day.   If you had MBA types running the show, you’d have New York publishing and its bottom line fixation.

Dan:

Where does the funding for your journal come from?  A university?  Patrons?  Subscribers?  Fundraisers?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

The funding for StoryQuarterly comes from both private and public sources. The Illinois Arts Council has enthusiastically supported us ever since we started applying for grants there. That continues and they’ve been wonderful. This year too we got an NEA grant which was a huge boost and tremendously helpful to the bottom line. The NEA people too were most helpful and took us by the hand through the application process, which is ambitious. But we have no endowment, as many school supported publications do, nor any institutional connection that gives us money. We do like the freedom of publishing independently, but that does mean freedom from monetary support too. Individuals are our other source of funds and people have been generous and it keeps us going. Finally, we do have a large circulation, 6,000 last year, which is huge for a literary journal, and so there is income coming in, although it doesn’t cover our expenses.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

That would be from my miniscule wages culled from years as a checkout girl at Acme Supermarkets.

Actually, some comes out of my pocket but customers who purchase Word Riot Press books help me keep the magazine going. We do get donations from kind patrons every once in a while.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

No funding. I pay for the website, the T-shirts, the occasional prizes (gift certificates for Krispy Kreme & Amazon) out of my pocket.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

The University of Utah Department of English provides our major source of funding.  It pays the Managing Editor’s salary and supplements the salary for the Editor, a faculty member in the department.  It also provides an office and the requisite computer equipment.  We also receive some very, very important funding from the Publications Council at the University of Utah (the body that oversees the campus newspaper) and an essential grant from the Utah Arts Council.  We have also begun a collaboration with the Western Humanities Alliance which provides some financial support.  Our subscribers also provide an important source of income, as well as moral support.  We continue to produce the magazine year after year in large part because our subscribers have expressed WHR’s importance to them.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

From the editors, and from a friend of the magazine who once made a contribution. But because we’re online, we’ve been able to get away with not having much of a budget. It gets frustrating, though. For instance, we really want to offer at least a modest honorarium to our writers and artists, but right now, we just can't.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

It started with a few advertisers, a few subscribers, and a big donation from my loving family.  It blew me off my feet the first time I stepped into a business with nothing but a flyer in my hand, asking them to give me money for what – at the time – amounted to air and they handed me a check.  The unreality of that has yet to entirely go away.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

Most of our funding comes from the College of Arts and Sciences at Boise State.  Our Dean has been nothing but supportive all along.  We also were awarded NEA grants the last two years, and we pick up the rest of our money from single sales, mostly from local
bookstores and amazon.com.   Our subscriber base has been steadily increasing. 

As for fundraising, Boise State as a whole has lagged behind other universities over the years, but with a new energetic President, things are getting much better.

Dan:

How do you decide how many issues to publish of each issue?  Does the greater percentage get sent off to subscribers?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

The number of subscribers, plus the draw from our five distributors—Ingram being the largest—determines the print run, or number of issues printed. It’s probably one-third each: subscribers; distributors (and therefore stores they distribute to); and sales made by mail, over our Internet website, and at conferences and book fairs.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

(Doesn't apply)

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Since Fiction Attic is online, this isn't an issue for me.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

We publish what we can afford to publish, usually around a thousand issues at a time.  Of that, about 800 are shipped to subscribers and the additional 200 we either donate or keep around to relish in the years to come.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Ah, that’s the beauty of online publishing: we kill no trees (unless you print out an article or story), we don’t have to deal with subscription and distribution headaches, and we’re always available for people to read.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

Honestly, I choose the stupidest number imaginable and just go with it.  I’m a bargain shopper, so I went for the big quantity discounts, with a big grin on my face and an intention to sell a copy of Halcyon to a third of my hometown population.  This is extremely good news if you’d like to purchase a back issue.  At a dollar each, it’s a hell of a bargain!  Fortunately, I won’t be in charge of print runs much longer.  We’ll have Regional Editors making their own decisions about these.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

We do 1000 copies each print run, which is all our funding will allow. Over the years, most of our budget has gone for printing costs, leaving little left over for advertising and promotion, so our subscriber base has suffered.  Over the last two years we used our NEA money to run two large direct mail campaigns, which brought us new subscribers.

Dan:

How do you get bookstores to carry your journal?  Do you target independent stores, or big chains, or just regional stores?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

We could do more in contacting individual bookstores perhaps, but at this point the distributors do that selling job for us. We talk to them and tell them what the magazines is doing, and they look at last year’s sell-through rate, and decide where to send the books and to whom to suggest us. We advertise too, both in the writing industry press and in the in-house newsletters that distributors send around to stores they sell to; we let the stores know who we have in the upcoming issue, what awards we won the year before, what our selling ratio was last year: Just hard-core sales. We let them know why they want to have us in the store, because certain targeted customers will be looking for us.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

(Doesn't apply)

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Since Fiction Attic is online, this isn't an issue for me.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Since we do not use a subscription or publicity agency, which would get us into a larger number of stores, we typically target local bookstores and ask them to carry our journal.  Most of our issues are mailed; those that appear in bookstores are the exception, not the norm.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Well, because we don’t print Guernica, we don’t have to worry about distribution. However, we’re planning on publishing a “Best Of” book of Guernica in the next year, at which time we’ll aim for a mix of chain, independent, and regional stores.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

It’s amazing what people will do if you simply ask.  It’s equally amazing what corporations are unwilling to do until you ask the right person.  I prefer dealing with small businesses – unless the owner is a jerk, in which case, I hate it.  I like when I can walk right in, talk to the owner, and sell them a stack of issues.  That’s harder to do
with chains, because decisions aren’t made locally and the emphasis is on the tried and true.  Still, I want to push the largest volume that I can.  I honestly believe we produce a good magazine, and I want people to see all of the work that has been invested into it by our authors, illustrators, and editors.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

The staff and I have stuck to regional stores, both independents and the local branches of the big chains.  With our appearances in the prize anthologies, the local stores have been enthusiastic to carry us, state pride and all that. 

Our lowish print run, and the fact we are an annual, has not made it economically feasible to use a national distributor yet.  We hope to go twice a year in the near future, and to up our print run.  Our Dean was about to increase our budget a few years ago when the state hit hard times, and the school’s budget--and ours--has suffered since.

Dan:

Do you consider your journal to be a regional journal or not?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Not. Most decidedly. We engage in pitched battle to make our choices as diverse and as widely set as possible. This variety is also sought in content, style, structure, tone and length. We might take a novel excerpt that is pretty long, but then in composing a large, 600-page anthology, we like to vary the lengths of stories, so that a long narrative might be followed by a short-short of from one-to-five or so pages. We look hard for both, to balance each other. Putting together a large anthology is not the same as putting out 5-6 stories in a quarterly (we’re really annual, in spite of the prehensile Quarterly in our title, with which well-intentioned founders dubbed us). There is an art to balancing things, not following a tragic long narrative with something flip, or having too many coming-of-age stories strung together. But even there, the specifics offer opportunities that we can’t anticipate. In SQ36 we had a wonderful story about someone who left open his apartment window and every night someone came in and robbed the apartment, which led to an interesting relationship. We didn’t like the title and it became “Windows,” which suddenly set up the possibility of opening with that story, a good opener anyway, and ending with a brilliant short-short by Pamela Painter, titled “Doors.” We couldn’t have made that up; the material had to be in hand. In SQ34, we gave the prime last spot in the book (a finale, or lots of people read that first) to Steve Dixon’s “At the Beginning,” which gave us a nice metaphor for going forth from the book. But each book has its own idiosyncrasies. In one I’d finished putting together, someone said, Do you know you have people jumping out of windows in five stories? And I didn’t. And we did.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

What's great about being an on-line magazine is that we're able to consider submissions from across the globe. I like the freedom of being able to publish the work of writers who speak to the human condition, whether the author is from Great Britain, Pakistan or South Dakota.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Not at all. I have published a number of Bay Area writers, such as San Francisco favorites Michelle Tea and Gloria Frym, but Fiction Attic contributors come from all over the country and beyond. We've recently added a new feature, Letters From, conversational dispatches from interesting places. Our first "letter from" was written by an American traveler in Turkey, and we also have letters from slated for Latvia, the Southern U.S., Tokyo, and elsewhere.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

No, we do not consider ourselves regional, despite our name.  We are distributed internationally and we publish works by authors from all over the world.  In fact, we pride ourselves on our eclectic tastes and diverse authorship.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

No, Guernica’s definitely not a regional journal. Though we’re based in New York and occasionally have a New York perspective on things, our focus is global. We’ve published writers from well over a dozen countries, and we’re read in 54 countries.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

It’s definitely a regional journal at present, but that’s changing.  The goal is to make it, what I suppose would be called “multi-regional.”  We’re looking for Regional Editors to publish our magazine in their hometowns.  These guys select fiction and artwork from
our website and localize it into editions suited for readers in their area.  It’s an alternative to mass marketing and corporate homogeneity.  We act as a central hub for receiving content, editing, graphic design, etc., but we leave it up to the Regional Editors to give their issues a soul and make Halcyon a part of their community.  They can focus on
stories by authors in their region, do their own editorials, choose features relevant to their readership, and advertise businesses worth frequenting, but there is an assurance of consistent quality from region to region.  It’s a great way for people to get involved in publishing without having to work for someone else or shoulder all of the work that
goes into small publishing on their own.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

If you mean giving preference to western writers, then no.  We look for the best work, period.  We do, however, seek to bring attention to Idaho as a literary place, a place  where good literature is valued and loved.  Indeed, when our journal brings in contributors to read on campus, we’ve gotten up to 250 people in the audience, which isn’t bad for a town of under 200,000.  We are regional in that way, but national in our contributors and the quality of the work we publish.

Dan:

With so much technology available these days, do you believe a staff member needs to live in the area the journal is published from?  Or is it possible to be productive and live elsewhere, maybe visiting once or twice per issue?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Boy you came to the right place to ask that question. We began online submissions four years ago, and last year began taking only online submissions except for authors who didn’t have Internet access. A huge success! Huge. For us, it’s easier and better organized; for authors, it’s easier, cheaper, and much much faster. We promise answers in four months and our average this year (computer generated) was two months. It’s easier to make a comment too, whether the answer is yea or nay.

On top of the ease of submissions, the stories are all online so that fiction editors can log on from all over the country. “We have overseas editors. One thing we do differently is having a reading staff of all published and experienced writers judge the work—some academics, some not. We can read, write comments, grade the story, read other people’s comments and grades, argue or agree, all online. Our staff can live anywhere, and does. The Internet is changing a lot of things and this freedom of workplace is absolutely one of the most beneficial.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Word Riot staff members live all over the country. We're all able to be quite productive electronically, with everybody chipping in as their schedule allows. We don't have set hours, but when Word Riot staffers volunteer their time, they're focused at the task at hand, be it submissions, web design, what have you. What's great about having a
volunteer staff from across the country is that everyone brings their own perspective to the table and each of us is involved because we're truly dedicated to literature.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

(This does not apply as Fiction Attic is a one person staff)

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Well, having everyone “in house” is helpful for us, but we could just as easily produce the issue from afar, so long as everyone involved had the right computer equipment and software.  In my opinion, however, copy-editing requires a pencil and a clean tabletop.  But other people can work just as easily electronically.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

It’s certainly possible to live elsewhere and still be on Guernica’s staff, but it’s much harder. We have weekly editor meetings and biweekly staff meetings. By seeing each other face to face, we get more accomplished than any amount of emails and phone calls ever could.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

As Chief Editor, I find that I have a harder time bludgeoning people into action the further they are from my desk.  It’s difficult, because people working for love rather than money (a.k.a. without compensation) need regular contact to stay focused and motivated, and I can apply that just as much to myself.  It’s very easy to get sidetracked outside of the traditional work environment.  My staff communicates mostly online, which is convenient but leads to its own unique set of problems and solutions.  Still, I am wholly reliant on the Internet.  I couldn’t pursue a lot of my ideas without it, and I love how it opens up opportunities for people to stay closer to home and their families and still pursue lines of work that actually interest them.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

I’ve certainly heard of staff members and editors living in an area other than where
the journal’s office is located, but I personally don’t have any experience with that type of set-up.

Dan:

Does the journal solicit stories/essays?  If so, have you ever had to kick back a story or an essay for editorial reasons?  If so, how difficult is that to do?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Yes, and yes. And kicking back isn’t fun and isn’t always appreciated either. It’s awkward and an editor quickly learns to ask only if he or she is pretty sure she’ll like that author’s work. But it’s sticking out your neck. Suggested rewrites can result in this awkwardness too—even bitterness, if the author assumes you’ll take the story if he or she does everything you suggested. The story still may not work and then you’ve got arguments and hard feelings. We try not to put ourselves in this fix.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

I have solicited stories from authors I've whose work I've enjoyed. I have never had to out-right reject a story for editorial reasons, though I have worked with authors to edit stories I believed needed some changes. The submissions process can be quite gut-wrenching when you first start out as an editor. But rejections aren't usually a complete
dismissal of a submitted work. Sometimes a piece isn't bad, it just doesn't fit with
the editorial direction of the magazine. And authors experienced in the submissions process generally understand this and are quite professional and open to suggestions throughout.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

I do on occasion solicit a story from someone whose work I admire. Only once have I found myself in the position of turning something down that I've solicited. It was very difficult, but it was clear that the writer had sort of quickly dashed something off, and it wasn't in keeping with the quality of that writer's work or of the magazine.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Yes, if there is a writer we admire, we will often ask him or her to submit.  We have had to kindly refuse a solicited story because it did not fit our needs.  Sometimes a writer will give us something that it not quite finished, or, as is more often the case, a solicited piece just does not fit into the issue we are putting together.  A sense of cohesion is important for each issue.  It is painfully difficult to return solicited material, so make sure to be careful with our solicitations.  And, we usually ask the author to send us more in the hopes of finding a better fit.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

We do solicit articles, stories, and poems. However, we tell authors that we’re interested in reading their work, but can make no guarantees. They handle this professionally and there have been no problems.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

For me, there is an irony in that I am both an editor and an author.  I’m often simultaneously receiving letters of rejection for my own work while I’m penning rejections for Halcyon submissions, so I’ve developed a strong empathy for both sides of the business.

Probably the most out of the blue submission that I ever had to reject had to be this poem that we received.  First off, we don’t publish poetry, which made it pretty cut and dry.  Still, even if we did, this had to be the most spectacularly – actually, I’m not sure if there’s a word for it – explosively and surrealistically dogmatic piece of work that I’ve ever read – and I used to work at a place that published stories typically written by insane people.  It had me guessing whether or not the author was a Raelian or a true believer in the Masters of the Universe.  It really read like something halfway between an acid trip and the basis for some New Age religion.

Then there is one experience that I still feel a little guilty over.  Around the time that we first started publishing and were purely about pulp science fiction, I began to receive submissions from this guy.  They weren’t particularly bad, and they weren’t particularly great, but they didn’t fit in at all with the sort of fiction that we published.  They were relatively predictable and somber mysterious encounter stories being sent in to a pulp magazine running stories about zombies fighting in space and bombers piloted by rat brains.  So, I gave him a critique and advised him to look over our guidelines.  We need action!  We need people punching other people!  Think Robert E. Howard!  Think Edgar Rice Burroughs!  Then he’d send me another story the next week about the same sort of thing – slow-paced dialogues, dark atmosphere, etc.  I think that he was farming them out to every magazine on the Internet.  Each one had a list of online publication credits attached to it, which was honestly a little disheartening.  I like to pretend that the world is full of amazing authors being published by top notch journals, but the reality is that a lot of editors are taking whatever they can get – and not near enough people are reading any of it.

By the third story, I’d gotten fed up.  The guy just wasn’t listening to a thing that I was telling him about our content preferences, and I could have sworn that every plot was a rewrite of something that I’d already read.  I sent back this mammoth critique of the work.  It was historic fiction, so my comments were more like a dissertation on the mechanics of Victorian society and 19th century medical science.  On one hand, it was all true.  The guy hadn’t done his research and the story wasn’t compelling enough to suspend any of my disbelief.  I’m halfway to being a historian, so I can’t help but be a little particular when it comes to that sort of fiction.  On the other hand, it was way too harsh of a critique, as I’m never out to hurt an author’s feelings or blast their work out of the water.  I earnestly appreciated the time he was putting into submitting to us, but I was frustrated that he wouldn’t work with us to provide something that we could use.  I sent out an apology the next day.

That’s the funny thing though.  There are authors who shrink from criticism and there are people who treat that kind of editorial attention like gold.  The latter are, of course, an editors dream come true.  You say, “I like your story, but . . .” and then they send it back
completely patched up, pleased with both the compliments and the criticisms.  I love the authors who can maintain a constructive dialogue with me, because I see our relationship as cooperative rather than adversarial.  I get an opportunity to work with them, and maybe Halcyon gets a great story out of it or maybe I help them fine tune something that didn’t quite meet our needs but is perfect for another market that I can direct them towards. The enthusiasm of someone working on a story invigorates me, which enlivens the magazine.  We are always looking for stories from new authors, and I still get excited over every submission that I receive.  It is difficult to reject something – sometimes because you know that, no matter what you say, that other person is going to interpret it as a rejection of them as a person.  Also, in part, because writing isn’t quite like plumbing or insurance sales - it’s an art form into which people invest a very real part of themselves.  Unfortunately, the people who don’t realize the technical side of the craft are typically the ones who are the most emotionally exposed to criticism.  In reality, I want to
be talking to authors.  I want them in our forums as part of a discussion on technique.  The focus of our magazine is to help authors succeed.

I’ll tell you straight off how to avoid a rejection when writing to us. First off, the obvious: avoid bad spelling, lack of grammar, ALL CAPS LOCK TYPING, and/or barely coherent narratives of cardboard characters living in a bowl of oatmeal.  These are the pieces in which bumbling stereotypes teleport from one scene to the next amidst a dizzying cloud of grammatical errors and broken logic.  More often than not with rejections, it’s apparent that the author hasn’t even bothered to browse our guidelines or read the publication’s subtitle, “PULP FICTION MAGAZINE”.  Usually those are the one trick pony submissions that just get sent over and over to every single journal on the web.  I’m sure some of our most inappropriate submissions were simultaneously sent off to Serious True Tales of Truth and Gardener’s Weekly.  I know that everyone says, “Read a copy of our magazine,” which in most cases is a way of asking for $5 from someone who’s going to go straight to the bottom of a slush pile.  In our case, we
have free online stories to look at and our print issues are a dollar, so there’s really not a reason not to become familiar with us.  We want authors willing to absorb our style so that they can help us define it, and once someone understands that, they have a home with us.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

Yes, we solicit every issue.   Over the years, we’ve had to turn down material we have solicited, but it hasn’t caused a problem.  Writers understand an editor need not like every story or poem or essay that the writer has written.  In a few cases, we’ve passed on one story or poem, but liked the next one and published it.  We’ve also published solicited writers, but then returned their next submission because we were not fully won over. 

As far as the difficulty of rejection goes, I’ve had to turn back material by former teachers and former classmates, good friends, spouses of colleagues, etc.  It just comes with the job.

Dan:

Does the journal actively search the slush pile to look for new writers?  Does the journal consider it a priority to discover newcomers to the world of being published?  What sort of percentage of stories, essays and/or poems published come from previously unpublished writers?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

I think most literary journals feel a sense of mission about finding new or first published work. Sometimes it may need editing too, even rewriting, but if the heart of the story is true and important, it’s worth the editing time with the author. I don’t think we’ve ever put out an issue without a first published author in it, but then we always get lit community stars for an anthology so we look hard to find a balance.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

I'd say 95% of the work we publish is unsolicited. Word Riot exists to bring new voices to the forefront, to encourage up-and-coming writers and work with them. If an on-line venue can't call attention to the most real and raw writing out there and help nurture new, talented writers, what can? Most of our writers have had work published in an on-line or
print venue, but about 10% of the work we publish comes from writers who have never had a piece accepted for publication before.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Absolutely. I love to discover a new writer and have the honor of publishing the writer for the first time. Roughly 10% of the work on Fiction Attic comes from previously unpublished writers.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Yes, we always try to look for new and unpublished writers.  In fact, we published Ann Beattie’s first story back in 1972, as well as Ursula Le Guin’s first, and an early story by Raymond Carver.  The slush pile can be difficult to work through, but we involve a fair number of readers, many of whom are not well published themselves, and try to give each piece a thorough and fair reading.  We do not often publish never-before-published writers, but we do publish many emerging writers, who have published only a few pieces.  Half of each issue contains writers who have not previously published a book.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

As emerging writers ourselves, we lovingly wade through our slush pile and have found many pieces that way. I don’t have exact numbers, but I do know that they go up with every issue. It’s gratifying to publish work by an author who is skilled and deserving of publication, and is trying hard to find the right place in which to do so.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

Halcyon is focused entirely on new authors and getting them published.  So far, a majority of our authors have been previously unpublished.  An exciting part of my job has been working with talented people who have “always meant to start writing.”  They do their first story with us, then a second, and next thing they know, they are accumulating a body of work and talking about sending on stories to other editors.  The stories that we focus on are high-energy, and are typically just as exciting to write as they are to read, so it’s a great writing experience for just about anyone.  We’re also lucky to have some talented artists on staff doing illustrations for all of these stories.

I can’t say that we really have a slush pile.  Every story goes into the same pile on a first come, first served basis.  It doesn’t take me too long to determine if we can work with a story.  If it looks promising, I send it off to one of our staff editors to get their opinion on it. Honestly, I prefer the authors who don’t try to tout their credentials.  I know that’s what a lot of editors want, but I like to let the story speak for itself.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

We actively seek to publish the best work we can find, and we recognize that the ‘slush pile’ is where we can find good work.  I wouldn’t say we are actively looking to publish someone for the first time, but that we are hoping not to miss a great story or poem that has been sent our way by a newcomer.  That said, we were thrilled to find the story by unpublished writer Adam Desnoyers in our slush pile (the one that went on to the O. Henry Awards).  We also published the second or third story by a writer named Jennifer Haigh, who has gone on to publish two novels from major New York houses.  One of my students was in a Barnes and Noble and saw Jennifer’s first book on the shelf.  He had been one of the readers for the story we published of hers, and had to call me right away.  It is quite rewarding to have published a writer who goes on to success.   

As for percentages of unpublished writers per issue, we might average one or so.

Dan:

Does it help an author at all to have an agent when it comes to publishing in your journal?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

As a general rule, I don’t really think agents are all that helpful in publishing in literary journals and sometimes get in the way. An agent is essential to selling a book to a publisher, and negotiating a good contract. Doing that solo can be naïve (although I can think of a couple excellent exceptions to that rule too). But for the journals, agents can refuse to let you change a word, etc., which might tip the scale against a story. But some agents are hands off and send us great stuff we wouldn’t otherwise see in the slush. For us, it’s nice to have all sources working; it makes a better mix.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Having an agent neither helps nor hurts an author submitting work to the magazine. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters are the words the author has on the page.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Not at all. Many years before I founded Fiction Attic, I was writing stories and sending them out. Until about a year ago, all of my own stories went out unagented, and I was grateful to the editors who took the time to read the unsolicited submissions and publish my work. I feel that I owe it to the writers who submit to Fiction Attic to extend them the same courtesy.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

No, it does not help.  We prefer the author to contact us him or herself.  The relationships we foster with authors are very important to us.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

No.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I don’t know what I’d think if someone tried to approach me through an agent.  I used to work for a Print on Demand Publisher, so I’m jaded about credentials.  If someone’s agent contacts me trying to score the dollar that we pay for fiction for an author with three “published” books under their belt then that author needs a new agent.  No, the
benefit of small publishing is personal interaction.  The author talks directly with me, and we have a chance to work with each other.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

Not in my experience.  To date, I’ve dealt with all the writers directly.  One famous writer’s agent called me after we had accepted the writer’s story, wanting money, but we had none to give.  The writer had sent the story to The New Yorker first, then revised it and sent it to us.  It was short-listed by Best American that year.  I was glad we had dealt
with the writer first, or we certainly would not have ever seen the story.

Dan:

How does your journal pay those who are published?  In copies?  In cash?  By page?  Or simply with the privilege of being published?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

The former. We pay an author with ten copies of the book with his/her story, plus a life subscription (a $250 value), totaling about $350 in kind. Alas, we can’t pay authors in cash, except for rare occasions. We do offer the Robie Macauley Award each year, to one story from those we’ve already chosen for the magazine. That collection is judged then by independent judges, not our editors. We would very much like to pay, certainly do think authors should be paid (we’re all authors ourselves and in the same boat), and we are working on funding to enable us to do it, but at this time it’s not possible.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

One of the drawbacks of being an on-line publication is that we can't provide financial payment to our authors. However, my special jumping-out-of-the-birthday-cake dance is available to authors upon request.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Since I'm running this entirely out of my own pocket and it's a free journal, there's no money to pay contributors. I do occasionally reward contributors with a snazzy purple Fiction Attic T-shirt, though, which surely makes them the envy of all their friends.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

We pay $5 per page ($10 minimum) and provide two free contributors’ copies.  We’re working on getting the funds to pay more.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Because we have a tiny budget, we can’t afford to pay our writers. However, we’ve received over 155,000 hits this summer alone, so their work gets read by a lot of smart readers all over the world.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

This is actually something that we’re working to change.  We used to pay a dollar, plus contributor copies, and probably will for a while longer as we transition.  However, soon an author will give us a story, which we make available to our Regional Editors (each printing their own area-specific issue), and then the author receives a percentage each time that their story is included in one of these issues.  Submitting to us will eventually be like submitting simultaneously to multiple regional journals.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

For the first three years we only paid in contributor copies.  When our sales picked up, we started paying about $100 per story, plus contributor copies.  In years when grant money has been available, we’ve been able to pay as much as $200 per story, depending on the length.  In short, I have tried to pay as much as possible to the writer as I can afford each issue.

Dan:

Does your journal accept electronic submissions?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Yes, happily, and very successfully. We think everyone will go this way, electronically, eventually. It’s faster, easier, cheaper, and really allows for better back and forth comments to authors.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Absolutely. Our submission guidelines are available here: http://wordriot.org/submissions/

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

We accept electronic submissions exclusively.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

No, unfortunately, we do not have the resources to handle electronic submissions.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Almost entirely, yes.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I prefer them.  At first, I’d wanted paper just because it seemed more formal and there is always an underlying fear of receiving some barrage of viruses through email, but realistically email works out better for everyone involved.  It saves us a huge amount of time on formatting, and saves the author plenty of time and expense.  It’s just not fair for an author to be shelling out several dollars on printing and shipping expenses if there isn’t some guarantee of compensation.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

No, we’re not that technologically gifted yet.  Besides, I’d rather hold the manuscript in my hand and turn the pages.  In the years to come, however, as our submissions increase, we may consider such a thing.

Dan:

How about simultaneous submissions?  Do you feel it’s fair for an author to have a story out there for up to six months with a journal without submitting it to others at the same time?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

No. We’re all writers ourselves, the staff at StoryQuarterly, and we accept simultaneous submissions with full understanding of the need for authors to spread their chances. There’s plenty of empathy here. It is important, though, that an author let a publication know if a story is no longer available. Each story takes an hour or so, per editor, to study and consider, so it’s not fair to make people spend time on stories already accepted elsewhere.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

We generally ask that work submitted to us not be a simultaneous submission. However, I don't particularly take a hard-line stance on this issue. I'm an author too, and I understand the frustration with having a short story sit in an In-Box for months on end. If a submission is accepted elsewhere, the author should just withdraw it from other venues as soon as possible.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

I encourage simultaneous submissions. Again, this goes back to years of submitting my own work. I don't think writers should be expected to grant a journal exclusivity on a work unless the journal can promise to respond very quickly. Many writers will submit a story to ten or twelve or more journals before it's finally published. If they're sending the story to one journal at a time, they may wait several years to have it accepted.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Simultaneous submissions are fine with us; we know how hard it is to get a piece published.  We won’t feel bad if you have to withdraw a story or poem.  We’ve all had to do it.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

We welcome simultaneous submissions, so long as the author explicitly tells us theirs is one. We all understand how tough it is to wait for months on one journal, only to get a negative response.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I hope that we never get to the point where it takes us six months to reply about a submission.  I think that the longest we’ve ever taken to decide on a story has been two or three weeks.  Sometimes I’ll be able to reply to an author an hour or two after I receive the file.  I’d start to feel guilty if we sat on anything for more than a month.

I wouldn’t say that I’m against simultaneous submissions, but the stories that best reflect our style are typically written with Halcyon’s guidelines in mind.  Since we aren’t publishing generic fiction, it’s a little more difficult to follow this market approach.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

When I was on the staff at The Black Warrior Review, we accepted simultaneous submissions, and I got used to the idea there.  We understood the story was elsewhere, and if we lost it by being too slow, then we couldn’t complain.  At The Idaho Review, I accept simultaneous submission as well.  As a writer, I have often had my own stories held eight months to a year, so I know how frustrating long response times can be.  With that in mind, however, it’s important to respect the wishes of the journal.  If they don’t accept simultaneous submissions, and you still want to send out multiple copies, then choose a journal that fits your needs.

Dan:

How important do you consider your internet presence?  Does your website allow for the reading of select stories from the current issue?  How about past issues?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Frankly, our website has been languishing and we’re going to address that this year. We publish stories from past issues now, and since we have 30-50 stories an issue from which to choose, we have a huge archive. This year we plan on putting more stories online, to publish quarterly issues online, if you will. The Internet will finally make honest engines of us, if we publish online quarterly. StoryQuarterly really has come out annually for 28 of our 30 years, so StoryQuarterly Online issues will improve on that performance.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Our internet presence is everything. I try to promote Word Riot through various readings and mailers, but the internet is our home and it's where most of our promotion takes place. All stories are archived, save those included in our print anthology.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

In the case of Fiction Attic, Internet presence is, of course, key.  All the work that has been published on Fiction Attic is available online. I think one major advantage of an online journal is that it gives a story a permanent presence, with a link to the author's web page or other work. My recent redesign of Fiction Attic utilizes blogging software, so I hope to soon make it possible for readers to comment on 10 Questions (author interviews), Attic Armchair (excerpts from forthcoming novels), and other features.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

We try to keep an updated web-archive of selected works from past issues.  We typically post five pieces from each issue.  Our website is the best place to find the most current information regarding submissions, subscription rates, and the issue.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

It’s everything to Guernica!

In fact, we just added discussion boards to foster more of a community. GuernicaMag.com is an active, 24-hour a day hub.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

Nowadays, it’s foolish not to operate without a strong Internet presence.  We tend to focus on what people want from the Internet in the first place: value and a sense of community.  We supplement our print issues with free online content.  Considering that our print issues cost a dollar, this ends up being a huge amount of bang for the buck.  The
attention span is different online though, so we focus more on short fiction and sketch-style artwork.  The idea is to put readers more in touch with the mind of the authors and illustrators – plus it’s meant to be more fun for everyone involved.

The community aspect is going to be increasingly important as our readership moves into new areas.  It’s important to me that readers of regional issues of Halcyon be able to go online for content that is nationally consistent and have an opportunity to connect with readers in other areas.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

I do think having a good web site is important these days.  We have a modest one, with past issues and all the contributors, plus some excerpts.  We hope to upgrade our site this fall.  Since I also direct the MFA program here and teach in the graduate program, the time needed to do all that needs to be done is hard to find.  I have to prioritize.

Dan:

What is the purpose of Literary Journals having annual editor’s awards?  Simply for recognition for the authors, or is there something else?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Our award isn’t chosen by our editors, but by an independent judge. I would personally feel disloyal if I chose one over others, since I finally accept or reject everything. But I think there’s additional recognition and attention to the author, so it’s good for him or her. And we have superstar judges do the choosing, so readers are interested in where that judge’s taste is running. It’s all pretty exciting by the end. We’re kept in suspense ourselves, until the very end, as we can’t send stories to the judge until everything is in.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

(Doesn’t apply)

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

We don't have an annual editor award yet, but we do have an annual flash fiction contest, Flash in the Attic. For me, it's great fun to read these submissions, even more fun to reward the winner with doughnuts and other goodies.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Editors work hard to select the best work they can.  They should be able to select a favorite, especially if cash is involved.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Recognition for the writer is, in my opinion, always the most important factor. If a journal charges an entry fee, that’s used to cover the costs of running the contest (paying the judge and, as most contests do, offering the winner a cash award). Of course, what is left gets put toward a magazine’s budget. We’re going to offer a contest in the next year or so, and we’re well aware of how expensive it can be!

When authors enter contests but don’t subscribe to lit mags, they shouldn’t be too surprised by the necessity for modest fees to be charged. Plus, they could always send in a regular submission.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

I’m going to pass on this one if that’s alright, since we have yet to hand out any awards.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

We’ve used our award to put the spotlight on the winner and thus put a small spotlight on our journal as well.  Our first winner, Ben Percy, was still an MFA student at Carbondale when he won our award.  He told one of the staff a while back the award helped him land a teaching job.

Dan:

If you could get one simple message out to potential readers of your journal, what would it be?

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

If I had one message, oddly I think it would be to point out that there’s way too much work/literature out there, more than any of us can possibly read. So ask yourself, What is the story you really think needs to be told and hasn’t been? What really matters to you, what’s important? What story makes you feel it needs to be passed on, to be revealed? Then trust your content to do its own work. It convinced you, didn’t it?

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Storytelling is the original form of entertainment. Whether you need a break from work or you just need to slip out of your head for awhile, fiction allows you the means for that brief escape.

Michelle Richmond - Fiction Attic:

Come to Fiction Attic for fresh, exciting fiction from writers you've heard of (like Steve Almond, Michelle Tea, Stephen Elliott), some you haven't, interesting translations, author interviews (we recently interviewed the winner of the Orange Prize for New Writers), and
other cool features, like the annual Flash in the Attic Contest.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Western Humanities Review has outlasted war, famine, drought, invasion, displacement, death, and exile.  Along the way, we’ve published work by Wallace Stegner, Robert Oppenheimer, as well as Beattie, Carver, and Carlson before they were famous.  Read us now, hold on to us for fifty years, then sell us on E-Bay.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

GuernicaMag.com offers eclectic content from all over the world, and from an array of political and intellectual positions, for free. Whether we’re talking with acclaimed historian Howard Zinn, or the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, or the attorney of alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla, we promise that you’ll be enlightened and entertained. If you value independent publishing, or are simply curious, please check us out.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

Start reading in the bathroom.  It can be the most private and relaxing part of your day.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

To buy a sample copy and read us.   We work hard to not only publish amazing work, but we strive to make our journals handsome books, with attractive covers and good paper stock.  We hope to look more like a nice trade paperback, something you’ll want to
keep on your shelf in the years to come.

Dan:

Thanks again for your participation in this.  I hope it brings some more readers your way!

M. Marie Hayes - StoryQuarterly:

Hope so. You do a good service here though, for writers out there wondering how these decisions are made. Thank you for including StoryQuarterly.

Jackie Corley - Word Riot:

Thanks so much for having me, Dan.

David McGlynn - Western Humanities Review:

Thanks! If anyone reading this would like to subscribe to Western Humanities Review, I will give them a 25% discount off our annual rate.  Just mention this forum.

Elizabeth Onusko - Guernica:

Thank you, Dan, for your support.

Derek Kagemann - Halcyon:

Thank you.

Mitch Wieland - Idaho Review:

Thank you, Dan.

Comments

[The Happy Booker]

Great interview. I will try to link to it tomorrow and help spread the word. Keep up the great blog work! Wendi

[Steve]

This was illuminating to me, as I am new to the world of literary journals. I've just ordered Story Quarterly 40 and bookmarked Fiction Attic, Guernica, Halycon, and Word Riot for future reading. Thanks!