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Editor Interview: quip literary review

This interview is provided for archival purposes. The listing is not currently active.

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

A: off-kilter millennial

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

A: Our favorite magazines publish beautiful, heart-wrenching stories, but very frequently we don't see ourselves within them. To us, writing through a millennial lens requires stories to be fresh, culturally relevant, inclusive, honest, and off-beat. This doesn't mean stories must be by or about millennials; however, we are primarily interested in showcasing the modern experiences of twenty-to-thirty somethings and in exploring what it means to be of this generation.
Additionally, much of the feedback we’ve had from authors is how collaborative we are compared to other mags. We want to make sure the stories reflect their intent and are as great as they can be. We’re also one of the few online magazines with print capability. We have our stories formatted in two different ways—on web pages and in a downloadable PDF. This PDF allows the issue to be read on other devices, with or without internet access, and it can be printed in a more traditional and easy-to-read format should someone choose to. It prevents lots of extra printing on our end, but can still give readers the tactile experience if wanted.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: Our ideal submission is so captivating that we read the whole thing through without checking our phones, taking sips of our coffees, Venmoing our friend for said coffee, zoning out and daydreaming about dinner, or petting our dogs. We want to be so invested in a piece that our technology-addicted brains forget we have a ten-second attention span or that we could be re-watching Fleabag for the third time because we've completely lost ourselves in the story. In short, we want tension, humor, dimensional characters, and plot; for the love of all that is good give us plot. We want to care about your characters from the first line to the last, and we want them to DO things.

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

A: We may be millennials but we're pretty traditional in our formatting requirements. If we see a story that doesn't adhere to these requirements, we're immediately turned off. As per our website: "Manuscripts should be double-spaced and paginated, with a readable (serif) font and 1-inch margins. Include a word count at the top of the page. Don’t include wonky fonts." You'd be surprised at how many submissions we get that don't satisfy these.

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

A: Our goal is to make it to the final line of every story. There's something in every piece to be admired and enjoyed, but a full read-through is always ideal. On the flip side, if it hasn't snagged our attention on the first page, it's probably missing a little something something necessary for acceptance. And if your story is a prose poem in disguise, we're definitely not reading the whole thing. #sorrynotsorry

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

A: Much of what spurred the start of quip was our mutual love of editing. As such, we're pretty heavy editors--line editing, proofreading, substantive editing, you name it. Of course, we work alongside our writers throughout the entire process, going through several rounds of edits until we've reached the story's best, mutually agreed-upon version. Our goal is to make the story as successful as possible, but our top priority is always to work in pursuit of the author's vision. The writer always has final say.

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

A: Yes! We recently nominated a story for a Pushcart Prize. We're big admirers of our writers, and we hope to advocate for them as much as possible.