Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.
A: Smoke and mirrors.
Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?
A: Right now, some of our favorites include McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Cleaver, Apiary Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, The White Review, n+1, Crazyhorse, and The Kenyon Review.
Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?
A: Anne Carson, Lydia Davis, Paul Auster, Bernadette Mayer, Cormac McCarthy, Tracy K. Smith, George Saunders, Neil Gaiman, Danez Smith, Michael Cunningham, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Samuel Delany, and Said Sayrafiezadeh.
Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?
A: In addition to solely publishing works that we believe to be powerful, elegant, and thought-provoking, we work hard to ensure as smooth a submissions process as possible for our authors and artists. By balancing a fast response time with the full consideration and discussion that each piece deserves, as well as working with our contributors to polish, publish, and publicize their work, we maintain a writer-friendly policy that is extremely important to us.
Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?
A: Always read the guidelines thoroughly before submitting, and make sure every word you've written is carrying its weight. Also, try not to be discouraged by rejection. Often, we receive work that is excellent but that just doesn't fit with the content we're currently interested in publishing.
Q: Describe the ideal submission.
A: Our ideal submission would be formatted according to our guidelines and would display a cohesive, tightly-knit, and elegant use of language and imagery. Humor is also appreciated.
Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?
A: Sometimes, submitters will enclose multiple pieces within a single document, while we prefer to have each piece in a separate Word document. We also appreciate having a third-person biography to accompany each submission, in the event that it's accepted for publication.
For the most part, though, we've found our submitters to be very meticulous about this. We're grateful to have so many attentive, dedicated people interested in The Penn Review.
Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?
A: We have a blind reading policy for every submission that we receive. While we do appreciate receiving cover letters and third-person biographies, we only read them once we have reached a decision on each piece, to ensure that emerging writers are not disadvantaged by a lack of previous publication credits.
Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?
A: We read almost every piece that we receive from beginning to end. In very rare cases—twelve typos in an opening paragraph; prose submissions that span thirty pages—we will turn a piece down without reading it in its entirety, but for the most part we read submissions multiple times before coming to a final decision.
Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?
A: Accepted pieces go through two rounds of editorial review before they are presented to our full editorial board, who hold a final discussion and vote. Before accepting a piece, we'll look at its use of language, its imagery (for poetry), its characterizations (for prose), and its clarity, coherence, originality, and vividness.
Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?
A: There's a certain fresh feeling when you wake up in the morning to an inbox filled with submissions. Over the course of the day, I read pieces, discuss them through email with other members of the staff, hold a full editorial board meeting, and then send out response messages. As someone who has experience submitting my own work to literary magazines, I'm very dedicated to giving each piece a fair reading.
Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?
A: We think it's absolutely vital. In addition to using Duotrope and Submittable, we employ Facebook, email, and Google Drive to run the magazine, and this fall we published the first online issue in our history. Aside from the opportunity to reach a wider audience over the internet, we're also grateful to avoid the waste of paper by accepting electronic submissions.