Editor Interview: Write City Ezine

creativity

Ann Patchett, Chris Bohjalian, Jane Harper, Lily King, Diane Chamberlain, Celeste Ng

We publish every two weeks a stand-alone piece; we pay our writers; we compile selected pieces into a printed journal/anthology which we publish annually

Make sure your story begins in the middle of the action, you have introduced a protagonist who has a goal and someone or something is preventing them from achieving that goal (in other words, conflict). Have an inciting incident that forces your protagonist to act. Develop a unique tone/voice/writing style in the piece, bring in the setting which slowing the pace of the story, and make your dialogue realistic. Also proofread and copy edit your work before submitting.
For essays: make sure your piece introduces a premise, then supports that premise through examples.
For poetry, move us.

A self-contained short story of less than 1500 words which elicits emotions in our editors.

They flood us with poetry that is a bunch of words but does not elicit emotion.

We do print a short bio with the pieces we publish but don't make editorial decisions based on that and don't pay attention to previous credits. We like pieces that represent voices we haven't heard before and solicit pieces from throughout the world, not just Chicago.

The pieces we publish are short (less than 1500 words) so we read them in their entirety.

Initially I send all pieces to my 3 associates editors for a quick yes or no, or "needs editing." I make the final judgment based on their evaluations and my own. We sometimes will work with a writer to edit their piece and then accept it.

I'm a writer of fiction and short essays as well as editing this magazine. My days are different but generally include 2-3 hours of working on my current manuscript, 1 hour of social media postings, and perhaps 2 hours of reading other people's works. I spend most of my time on social media posting about fellow writers in support of their publications.

Most of the pieces we either accept or reject. I would say about 15% we might request that the author revise and resubmit based on our editorial suggestions. About half of them do. We would never publish anything that had not been approved by the author. We tend not to edit poetry.

no. But the work we publish is eligible for additional exposure in The Write City Review, an anthology of both poetry, short pieces, and artwork that we publish in printed form on an annual basis.