Editor Interview: Slippery Elm Literary Journal

Prose, Poetry, Multimedia

Slice has a gorgeous look and puts out consistently amazing fiction. Compelling nonfiction in Orion. We like the accessible, relatable poetry published by Main Street Rag.

Well, let's look at some of the writers we have repeatedly published. Kelsey Kerr and Kerry Trautman and Stephanie L. Harper have appeared in several issues of Slippery Elm; Benjamin Busch has had a poem in every single issue we've done! Richard Ferguson's videopoems have been prominently featured in our online content.
We love it when writers trust us with their work again and again, and we try to publish and promote our authors in a way that will keep them coming back.

Certainly, there are many beautifully printed journals, and all kinds of well-curated web content out there. While print issues are great to hold in your hand, though, they're hard to share, and often effectively are published once and then disappear; on the other hand, online publication often lacks the prestige and style of real material hard copy. We offer the best of both worlds, producing and distributing 400-500 copies of every print issue, and then archiving back issue content online to be accessible indefinitely. Writers get publication in a slick print issue, and a link they can track back to forever. The Multimedia Gallery in our website also offers a rare venue for born-digital content that we could never do in print.

Obviously, check out some of our back issues first! We don't do particular theme issues, and our aesthetic is pretty consistent. Also, although general submissions have no reading fee, consider entering a contest, if you're sending. We know, contests are controversial, but all paid entrants get a copy of the issue, which we hope is worth the $15. Many of our recent winners have been new writers, and it's even been a first publication for some. At the same time, many of our favorite works from each issue come in as general submissions and could easily be contest finalists, if entered. We're always glad to look at your free submissions, but if you have a potential contest contender, why not take a shot and help keep a lit mag afloat?

We got many, many technically competent submissions--perfectly fine stories and poems with nothing wrong with them except that, among hundreds of other submissions, they're forgettable. We have no shortage of work we like--send us work we'll love!

We take submissions exclusively through our online interface--sorry, no hard copy or USPS. We just can't manage those with our review process. Also, while our Multimedia submissions are open year-round, we're looking work we explicitly can't do in print. We love linear static-text text-only fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, but please save those for our print issue submission period, every winter until Feb. 1!

We don't worry much about cover letter. If the submitted work doesn't singularly captivate us, there's nothing more a cover letter can do to impress; and if we love the work, we'll get to know you after acceptance, in the publication process.

If a story doesn't get good until page 5, or a poem until the third stanza, our readers aren't going to stick around and wait for it to happen. At the same time, we're very selective with our pagecount, and what earns space in an issue. Send us your work when it's going to captivate us (and our readers) from the first words!

We rarely get into content edits, but all accepted work goes through an in-depth copy-editing and proofreading process, with PDF galleys sent to authors for approval before publication.

Absolutely! We nominate Pushcarts every year, and often submit pieces to the Best American genre anthologies. We also heavily publicize our Finalist lists from our contests.