Editor Interview: The Willow Run Poetry Book Award

Excellent writing

I have great respect for anyone working in the small press and literary magazine world. It would be impossible to name any one publication, since there are so
many with a variety of unique perspectives and missions. Without the dedication and vision of the small press and lit mag world, our writing community would be deeply impoverished. My one suggestion would be that everyone should explore this wonderful universe on their own. Perhaps start by looking at a site like New Pages, where so many presses are listed. I would also suggest that exploring anthologies like the Best of series or New Stories from the South is a great way to discover presses and publishers you like. When you find stories in the anthologies that you enjoy, you can find the name of the press that first published them, and begin to explore the other work they are publishing. One other thing I would like to urge your readers and writers to do: SUPPORT these presses. So many emerging writers want to be published, but they rarely purchase work from those same presses in which they want to place their work. Share your discoveries with others, to help raise awareness of writers and presses. Become an active part of the community from which you want support.

My personal favorites include classic authors like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen. I also love writing from the American South, including that of the late Barry Hannah and the late Lewis Nordan. That said, however, I want to be clear about our publishing process. All submissions to Hidden River receive multiple readings at each level of evaluation, so that no one reader's personal preferences predominate. We will, shortly, be publishing art, and the same is true with this discipline -- all art submitted to us will receive attention from many eyes.

Hidden River Arts is "dedicated to serving the unserved artist". By that, we mean that we are eager to find writers who are not coming only from the most predictable places (like MFA programs). We welcome submissions from artists who are working outside the arts community, or away from the university campus. We welcome "outsider artists" who are earning their living as emergency room nurses, or taxi drivers, bartenders, cabaret performers, farmers, construction workers. One of our beloved writers worked previously as a veterinarian, and lives in Northern Ireland. We welcome artists of all ages -- and in fact are eager to receive work from older writers who are often ignored by traditional publishing. In fact, one of our literary awards is offered to women writers, age 40 and above, specifically because older women are the demographic most often ignored by other publishers. We welcome writers in English from anywhere in the world, and are dedicated to building an international family of writers among our published authors. Another thing that sets us apart is that we also provide support for playwrights, including those who create musicals. We will soon be launching an online arts journal, and our desire is to expand still more, to include visual artists, musicians, filmmakers -- and to begin working on interdisciplinary projects that include artists from all these areas of practice.

Read the work we've already published. Familiarize yourself with our organization --- know who we are and what we do, know our mission. Be sure that you follow the guidelines completely. There is nothing that will have your work declined more quickly that being careless in your submission materials. It immediately signals that you are both unprofessional and rude. Be patient. We read all our submissions thoroughly, and they go through three rounds of evaluations. This takes a long time, but seems essential to us, in order to give the deserved respect to our writers. Because of the length of time our evaluations take, we not only allow simultaneous submissions, we encourage them -- because as writers ourselves, we know how essential it is to submit often and widely. Our only request is that, if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere while we are still in review, you notify us and withdraw your submission immediately.

There is no one ideal submission. We have a variety of literary awards - for poetry, for historical fiction, for speculative fiction, for short fiction, for theatrical scripts, for non-fiction. In each category we look for interesting subject matter, a unique voice, and high quality writing.

The most ruinous omission to our submission process is failure to include a synopsis when requested. If we request a synopsis and an outline, we want a synopsis and an outline. If a writer fails to include the requested support materials, their work is immediately disqualified, as they are told in our guidelines. Our readers take their work very seriously, and require that writers submitting their work take our process and our requests equally seriously.
Failure to follow guidelines signals something else, which is far more damaging to your prospects. It signals that you are either entitled, or cavalier, or unprofessional. Or, perhaps, all three. These are not qualities that any publisher wants to deal with in an author.

We request a bio and a resume for many of our awards. This is because the resume shows what the writer does for a living -- what is their "day job"? The bio tells us everything else: that you collect antique porcelain from Bavaria, or that you sing with a church choir, that you are an avid gardener or hiker, that you raise butteries. Both of these snapshots together help us to know whether or not we are meeting our mission of reaching the outside artists we hope to support. With some of our awards, we also ask for your age -- this is also to help us to ascertain that we are reaching writers from all age groups. Unlike many publishers, we actually enjoy receiving work from older writers. While previous publication helps to provide a full picture, we don't feel that previous publication is essential. We might be lucky enough to discover a new writer who has not had work published before. If your work is excellent and exciting, that matters much more.

There are many rounds of evaluation in our process. Each submission receives at least three reads from three separate readers at each level of evaluation.
The earliest stages of evaluation depend heavily on a well-written synopsis and outline, which helps our readers to enter the text more easily. At each level, the material is read more and more carefully -- the way the editing process moves from the most basic to the most precise forms of attention.

Evaluations are text-based. It is about quality and unique choice. Is your topic unusual and interesting? Is your voice compelling? Are you handling your subject matter well? Have you researched your material when required? Do you write well and beautifully?

There is no "typical" day since there is so much to do, every day, seven days a week. Some days are focused on reviewing new submissions and working with our readers as they do their primary reviews of the work. Some days are about making choices among finalists for the winning manuscript. Some days are about working to update our blog site or our website, to list the semi-finalists, finalists and award winners. Some days are about working with those who have won our awards in order to prepare their manuscripts for publication. Some days are working with our interns and the university supervisors of their internship programs. Some days are about book publicity and working to raise awareness of our published titles and our wonderful writers. But most days, all of these activities are juggled, the hours are long and the "to do" list never completed. But lest you imagine that this is a complaint -- it is not. There is really nothing better than being fully engaged with that which you are deeply passionate.

It depends on the piece. There are some manuscripts that are worked on extensively with our Founding Director and the author. Others might receive light editing. It is an entirely unique situation with each manuscript and writer. We also have a wonderful team that includes a highly professional book packager, where additional attention is given to the final editing process of the text. At each stage, we work as a team with our writer. Highly personalized and personal teamwork is essential to our process.

We have done so in the past, and we will probably continue to do so, yes.