Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.
A: Brief truth.
Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?
A: Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Kenyon Review, The Normal School, TriQuarterly, Alimentum,
Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?
A: Phillip Lopate, Lee Gutkind, Eula Biss, Ander Monson, Lee Martin, Brian Doyle, Sue William Silverman, Pico Iyer, Brenda Miller, and on and on.
Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?
A: We were the first to define "flash nonfiction" and have published some of the finest in the genre.
Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?
A: Read every sentence of your piece to make sure nothing is flimsy, flabby, or unnecessary. In a piece this brief, every word, every description, every line of dialogue, does double or triple duty. Make your language crisp.
Q: Describe the ideal submission.
A: The writer's voice is apparent in the first sentence, and consistent throughout. The words are sharp. The reader is allowed to participate in the making of meaning, rather than being hit over the head with a "moral" to the story.
Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?
A: The work is not tight; instead, there is an unnecessary introductory sentence, an unnecessary conclusion, some of the details within are redundant or presented flatly. There is no surprise and little energy.
Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?
A: Just a sense of where they are: well-published, in school, just starting out. We love to publish first-time writers, so having no previous publications to brag about is not a problem. If you have an interesting life story -- you were Miss Louisiana Crawfish in 1998 -- tell us, but that's not necessary either.
Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?
A: At least half of it. If you don't have our interest in the first 300 words, it isn't going to happen.
Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?
A: None.
Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?
A: We are always behind, because we are a volunteer organization. We read submissions constantly, and then about one month before a new issue appears we begin working on details like artwork, bio notes, HTML layout, and the like. All of us have other jobs of course, so we do what we can do in small chunks of time, or we wait and binge on the weekends.
Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?
A: We went online in 1997 and never looked back. It has been a great ride.