Editor Interview: Oyster River Pages

Diverse lit & art

We want to be Hippocampus Magazine when we grow up. (But like most upstarts, we want to do it our own way.)

James Baldwin and Hanya Yanagihara, Maxine Hong Kingston and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mary Oliver and Osip Mandelstam, Justyna Mielnikiewicz and Ashima Narain.

We are focused on people, not pieces. We want great writing and art, but we want to know the people behind the work. We're dedicating time and resources to highlighting our contributors and connecting readers with them beyond the page.

Be honest in every aspect of your work, both its creation and its presentation.

A piece whose voice or appearance is arresting, whose style is seductive, whose view on the world is important and thoughtful.

Submitters will sometimes submit under the wrong genre (poetry under fiction, or CNF under art). It messes up our queue and runs the risk of pushing the piece to the end of the consideration process.

We don't need a list of every publication you've had, but we definitely want to know if you've never published before! (We seek new voices.) Apart from bios, the most helpful (though not essential) element of a cover letter is a brief (1-2 sentence) synopsis of the piece. More than a tease, it lets us see whether the author has a concise sense of what the piece is really about.

We strive to read every piece through to the end in the hopes that even an unlikely submission might surprise us in the end. If a piece is wildly outside our interests, we try to let the contributor know as soon as possible.

Every accepted piece is seen by at least two members of the editorial staff. If there is disagreement or confusion about a piece, we sometimes seek other opinions, sometimes putting the piece before the entire team.

Our all-volunteer staff makes time to run our journal amid all their other obligations. Once we sit down to work, we might read through three to five pieces in a sitting. Those pieces will either be pushed on to another reader or declined. If two readers come to agreement about a submission, it will be accepted as soon as possible. Sometimes acceptance will be contingent on revisions.

This varies widely. If a piece excites us in style or content, we'll go to some lengths to get it ready for publication. This can include significant structural revisions with author buy-in. Every piece is line edited and proofread, and every author gets to sign off on the final version.

Yes, we nominate for Pushcarts, Best American, and Best of the Net.