Editor Interview: Apogee Journal

Status quo disrupting art

Publications dedicated to highlighting underrepresented voices; those with diverse editorial staff; those who commit to publishing work that engages with social justice and identity politics. Some favorites: The Offing, Winter Tangerine, Spook Mag, The James Franco Review, Mosaic, Nat. Brut., Nepantla, BOMB, Callalloo, and many others.

Toni Morrison, Junot Díaz, Octavia Butler, Ralph Ellison, Jamaica Kincaid, José Saramago, Gabriel García Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Roberto Bolaño, Alejandra Pizarnik.

I'm really thankful for all the other publications that seek out voices that are underrepresented in the literary world. I think Apogee has some features that make it stand out: including the quality of visual art. In the past few years, we've featured Mickalene Thomas, Richard Hart, Xaviera Simmons, and other excellent artists, curated by Legacy Russell, a force in the writing and art world herself. I also think Apogee is unique in its commitment to publishing mostly emerging writers. In every issue, we've had a significant number of contributors for whom it's their first time publishing. We also have a women and minority led editorial staff.

I think the writers who we publish generally have a strong awareness of identity and the ways in which it interacts with social trends, and their writing reflects this awareness and sensitivity. A lot of journals will say, read our work to get a stronger sense of what we publish. This is of course true for Apogee, but I don't think that a writer can decide to make a piece fit into Apogee's aesthetic--in a way, their worldview already has to demonstrate a similar vision--a complicated way of looking at identity, and a way of presenting marginalized identities that doesn't further alienate them.

There is no ideal piece for Apogee. We appreciate experimentation with form, but we also publish traditional narratives and essays.

We get a lot of pieces that are speaking from positions of privilege in attempts to reckon with that privilege through the speaker's interaction with underprivileged positions. While we certainly appreciate attempts to interrogate privilege, these pieces often come off as seeming condescending or self-indulgent.

We do not do blind submissions, because we believe in the importance of identity to an author's work. However, we do not value published writers over unpublished writers. In fact, we seek strong work by emerging and under published writers.