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Editor Interview: After the Pause

This interview is provided for archival purposes. The listing is not currently active.

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Emotion. Experimentation.

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: One Throne, Jellyfish, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Potluck, Maudlin House, Monkey Bicycle, McSweeney's. Others.

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: Roberto Bolano. David Foster Wallace. Steven Hall. Mark Danielewski.

Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

A: Emphasis on experimentation and risk-taking in form, style, genre-crossing. We publish typewriter art, visual poetry, blackout poetry, etc.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: We love weird things that still have a point and connect us to the human experience. Experimentation of all kinds welcome. Push convention, break convention, disregard the word convention, or follow convention and astound us anyway.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: Something we've never read (or had our eyes exposed to) before. Also, cleanly formatted in a word doc attached to an email.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: Cover letters and publication credits are mostly meaningless. It is the work that matters. If we want to print the work, then we ask for a bio. Not the other way around.

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: Since we only print short things, I pretty much always read the entire submission. But even in flash submissions, the first paragraph is very telling as to whether or not I will accept a piece. The same goes for the first stanza of a poem.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: We are all about utilizing new technologies and wouldn't exist without them. Twitter especially seems vital for lit mags nowadays, which of course could change as technology continues to develop. But yes, I think lit mags need to keep up with the trends while not completely abandoning the thrust of tradition (at least in an ideological way).