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Editor Interview: Coffin Bell: a journal of dark literature

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

A: dark literature

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

A: I admire Occulum, NOON, Ecotone, Ploughshares, Hunger Mountain, and (formerly) Glimmer Train, among countless others.

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

A: Among my favorite writers are Mary Shelley, Daphne du Maurier, Jorge Luis Borges, Ramona Emerson, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Lydia Davis, Natalie Diaz, Amy Tan, Mary Robison, Anne Rice, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Kathy Fish, Brian Evenson, Shelley Jackson, Susan Henderson, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, and more I'm surely forgetting.

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

A: Coffin Bell publishes new and emerging voices alongside established writers, and is focused on being inclusive.

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

A: Make sure there is some dark aspect to the work. We often have to decline gorgeous work because there's just no way to make it fit in a dark-themed publication. Familiarize yourself with some of our past published work online, or order an anthology to get the highlights from the year, and you'll soon know if your piece is the right fit.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: The ideal submission uses dark elements to make us think in a new way, uses horror tropes to deal with current-day issues, uses the "estrangement" achievable though horror to help us see ingrained problems in our society from a different perspective. But we also want compelling story, or jarring verse, or a shocking theme. The ideal submission takes all of these aspects and presents them in a memorable literary experience.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: Most often we get submissions of art via email, when they should go through our Submittable platform. Also, we get folks who submit short stories in the flash category, or poetry in creative nonfiction. We still consider these submissions; we're just curious about how these things happen.

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

A: We like cover letters because we're nosy, and think it's polite to say hi, and perhaps even address the editor(s) by name (which shows you've done a little research), but these aren't necessary. We consider work without cover letters just the same. However, we do not take prior publications into consideration at all. Our mission is to help emerging and new writers by publishing them alongside established writers. We take a very great pride in being someone's first publication credit.

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

A: Though I get a sense of whether or not the piece is right for Coffin Bell early on, I always read to the end and hope to be surprised. All our editors read each piece in its entirety at least once before it is declined. We believe that much care is owed to the work.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: We evaluate in which issue the piece would best fit. Because we publish two themed and two unthemed issues per year, we have some wiggle room with which pieces we place where. Aside from voting and editor remarks, however, no additional evaluations exist before a piece is accepted.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: I read all genres, and as Editor-in-Chief, I read all the submissions that have at least one yes vote, and then I make the final call. I read all of my assigned pieces and accept or decline, and then populate the spreadsheets and online table of contents with the accepted pieces. Then I put all the accepted work on the site and format it.I also make all our graphics for all our social media platforms and create TikToks and Reels for calls for submissions, masthead openings, and issue launches. I also answer query emails and monitor all other email queues.

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

A: I feel it's crucial for publishers to embrace modern technologies. Electronic submissions and submissions platforms such as Submittable help to keep both submitters and publishers organized. Social networking is indispensable for getting the word out about new publications and really getting the work you publish in front of readers. And print-on-demand publishing options are revolutionary in that even the smallest presses can now afford to produce a print product. Without these advances, we would lose access to so many new and important voices.

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: We proofread all accepted submissions, and minor errors are corrected without notifying the submitter. However, anything more than a minor edit we run past the author before finalizing. We don't have a lot of time for extensive editing, so often we have to reject a piece we would have taken if it hadn't needed so much editing.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: Yes, we nominate for the Pushcart Prize, the Best Small Fictions, Best Horror of the Year (edited by Ellen Datlow), and the Best of the Net Awards.