Editor Interview: X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine

Prose brighter than bones

Boulevard, Conjunctions, Electric Lit, Expat, Fence, Hobart, NOON.

Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Brian Evenson, Jean Genet, Renee Gladman, Garielle Lutz, Scott McClanahan, Kathryn Scanlan, Christine Schutt, Bud Smith, B.R. Yeager.

We’d be lying if we didn’t say Bob Schofield’s art accompanying each piece has a lot to do with it, which embodies our cohesive aesthetic: distilled to something essential; seductively intense, retinally overbearing. We want to make it hard to look away.

Read our site! Read all the other sites. Check out that list of authors we like. Scroll through our list of contributors. Stalk our readers and editors on social media. Don’t read anything. Live in the world. Live in your head. Stop thinking about living. Ask yourself if your work is something only you could make. Figure out who you’re ripping off and rip them off better. Mix your influences. Don’t worry about it too much. Send us what you’ve got.

The ideal submission is unlike anything we’ve read before, or else takes old tricks to great heights (or depths). It’s attentive to language, attuned to tone, generous with story, strange for more than its own sake, delightful and devastating. We consider work up to 7500 words, but find that 500-1200 and 4000-6000 are our sweet spots.

We're relaxed about formatting and how communication "should be," so no one's really getting anything wrong. Sometimes people will submit to more than one category at a time, which we don’t love, but we’ve yet to hold a grudge over it.

Each of our editors is different. Some read cover letters after the piece. Some read them first, mainly because our submission form asks about your dogs. Jenn has a dog whose breath is like an exploded rendering plant, and we enjoy reading canine bios that top that. Previous pub credits do not matter to us.

Every piece has multiple readers. Each reads its entirety, often more than once. Obvious knockouts can hear back fast, but most of our favorites come from split votes in early rounds. The first paragraph and page are almost always good indicators, but there are surprises in both directions: a strong start can flounder, and a slow one can gather steam. Pieces commonly see five or six sets of eyes.

Each reader votes and leaves a note, which spins into a conversation. Debate is usually a good sign! One factor we consider is editability: Would some revision strengthen the piece, and would the author be open to considering it? We don’t often do conditional acceptances. If the piece is ready enough, we’ll take it and allow for the possibility that the author considers the work finalized; if it shows promise (and these are the most exciting), we’ll invite you to try us again, which is what everyone should do whether or not we explicitly say so.

First thing each morning, I manually assign everything that came in the day prior. We have an amazing bunch of careful readers, and each piece goes to two of them. They aim to leave comments and an up/down/maybe vote within a week. Where there’s consent, things can speed along, with second and third rounds of reading (2 to 4 more people) and discussion happening in the next weeks. Shorter submissions tend to get through more quickly, since 2000+ word pieces need longer stretches of devoted time, and everyone’s slotting this into their schedules as they’re able. Jenn sweeps through a couple times a week to give a final read and send out our official responses. Acceptances get slotted into the schedule and assigned to an editor, some of whom knock ‘em out immediately, while others like to wait until closer to the publication date when everyone’s had some time to see what still resonates. This downtime creates some helpful distance, and our reading notes often prompt our memories for changes we might like to suggest if they otherwise elude us.

Authors always get the final say, for sure, and we don’t conditionally accept pieces. You can veto every last tiny tweak, and we’ll still be happy to run your piece. With that dynamic established, know that we won’t hold back if we have a great idea for you. On the light-touch end, we might dance around a few commas and challenge a word choice or two. Sometimes we might want to cut a paragraph. Other times we’ll invite you to flesh out something that has energy but isn’t peaking quite right.
Almost nobody is worse off after a caring and attentive edit, and we want to help push your piece as far as it can possibly go. If you disagree, you’ll get to practice defending your vision and asserting your aesthetics.

Yes, we do.