Editor Interview: Appalachian Journal

Appalachian content

There are many publications doing great work in the region: Appalachian Review (formerly Appalachian Heritage), Northern Appalachian Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Untelling, AvantAppal(achia), REckon Review, Red Branch Review, Appalachian Lit, Cutleaf, Journal of Appalachian Studies, Appalachian Places, Cold Mountain Review, and so many more. And there are so many amazing presses too! Not only the university presses, like Ohio University Press, University of Georgia Press, West Virginia University Press, University Press of Kentucky, University of Tennessee Press, and the like, but a lot of smaller presses, such as Madville, EastOver, Sheila-Na-Gig, Dos Madres, Redhawk, Regal House, Blair Mountain...I could go on and on...

Most publications either only publish scholarship or creative work, and Appalachian Journal has always done both. Each issue, whether print or online, will generally include a healthy mix of poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, scholarship, and book reviews amid other features.

Read a few issues either in print or online to see if your work resonates with what we already publish. Make sure your work (or you) are somehow connected to the region.

For book reviews, we require page numbers for quoted materials, and a lot of reviewers leave those out. We've also transitioned to reading periods for poetry, in January and July.

Cover letters are best when they are short and to the point. Previous publication credits really have no bearing on our decision-making process. We are proud to publish emerging as well as established authors.

For poetry, I read all of it. For creative nonfiction, I generally try to make it to the end, though occasionally I can tell halfway through that perhaps it's not a good fit. For scholarship, we ask for abstracts up front, which saves a lot of time.

One thing I really enjoy about this position is how different each day can be. You never know what's going to arrive in your inbox or mailbox. A lot of my job is emailing people--potential contributors, possible book reviewers, peer reviewers, etc. While this might sound boring, I see it as a way to build community, which I'm really passionate about!

The answer to this question really depends on the genre. For scholarship, there's much more editing involved. For poetry, not much. For creative nonfiction, there's some. The only things we don't really edit are photo essays, unless we're having to reformat the images or add captions.

Not currently, but we're considering doing so in the future.