Editor Interview: Sybil

Postmodern classical lit

We aspire to read everything, and get caught up in the world of independent literary imprints. This can be from bigger names like Nightboat books, Split Lip, or HAD, to more obscure or lesser-known orgs like SPF Lit Mag, t4t project, stone of madness press, etc. The latter group have been kind enough to publish some of my work, and The Decadent Review has been a home for much of my redaction writing--which is not in manuscript form. But we don't ignore the world, and keep an eye on voices from outlets such as Ploughshares, Poetry, and Black Lawrence Press. Sybil originally only published for San Marcos locals, but has become more widely recognised in part by efforts of publications such as The Bitchin' Kitchen.

We have been lucky to have found voices which really resonate with our mission, intentionally or not.
Rosa Marin was one of the original editors, and still among the strongest poetic voices we've published to date, in prose and verse.
Fred Pollack, a self-described 'beat-classicist' helped push our efforts to interrogate our writers through interviews, and push the guiding aesthetic (pomoclassicism) further as an editorial vision.
Alice Notley is a visionary and iconoclastic poet, and it was my pleasure to bring some of her visual poetry to our readers.
Speaking beyond those we have ourselves published, we gravitate toward those writers who seem to confirm our biases and literary ideals. Anne Carson. Cormac McCarthy. Susan Howe. Emily Dickinson. William Blake. Dante. Shakespeare. Virgil. William Burroughs. Salinger (who inspired our name, if legend is to be believed). Kurt Vonnegut. Truman Capote. James Joyce. Franz Kafka. Virginia Woolf. Zbignew Herbert, and Pushkin, too. Harold Pinter, but don't forget Brecht. Don't forget Beckett, or Apollinaire. Try to remember Aphra Behn, and James Baldwin. We like Edward Taylor and Nathaniel Hawthorne. We like Melville. We like Thomas Pynchon and Jamaica Kincaid and Aldous Huxley and Fran Ross.

-We allow readers to donate directly to published writers.
-Our publication makes a point to build and develop relationships with writers, publish multiple pages of their work, and in that way contribute to the development of their individual poetic voice.
-Postmodern classicism, as a guiding principle.
-More direct submissions system, through email.
-Opportunities for mixed media work, comics, and video art.

Read through our tags! Not enough people bear this in mind. One of our goals for the year is to further streamline the tags to make accessing our, say, 'experimental,' or 'visual art' pages in particular easier. The best advice for submitting almost anywhere is to read the publication itself. We are flexible when it comes to promoting work we think is 'good' (???) even if it doesn't always fit with our organising principle, pomoclassicism. But if you read through and get a sense of the type of work we gravitate towards, it will be easier to decide if we are the right publication for your piece(s). Sometimes we have to turn away viable literary writing because it does not fit within our mission in social or literary terms.

A short, but intriguing cover letter, with the work submitted as an attachment. Doc or docx works better than pdf in most cases. Thumbnail art already considered, if not provided by the artist.

Not sure how to answer this. We haven't had too many issues with our process. Most submitters are sensitive to our dedication to this project, which we must balance with our jobs and personal lives.

I prefer to have some sense of the writer's publishing history and literary perspective. It helps us if we can link our pages with a writer's socials, so their involvement in this regard is good. Some pieces have a very personal connection, or are important to the writer (perhaps being their first attempt at a poem or story, or being written for a deceased family member/acquaintance) for reasons that make sense to explain. We want to get a sense of who the writer is, if possible. That said, we have published writers anonymously, or under a pseudonym/persona, and enjoy the possibilities of this ethos. We have also served as the first home for a number of writers just beginning the process, and this is another matter we take pride in.

We make sure to read every submitted piece all the way through at least once before making a decision. Often we reread the entire piece multiple times.

Most of our admin work is put in transferring the piece from its document form to our webhost. It takes time, and also provides the opportunity for line edits. The webpage design is the only other time the piece is evaluated, if you want to call it that.

I am a working artist with a lot on my plate. When the opportunity presents itself, me or my coeditor log into our email account, work on new pages, and spread news of Sybil's newest releases or works associated with previous contributors.

We try to edit as little as possible. Mostly for clarity. We tend to ask if the edit is not purely grammatical, although our editorial vision is sharp and we have essentially never found this process difficult to navigate.

We nominate for best of the net, and are looking into other award opportunities for our contributors.