Editor Interview: The North Meridian Review

Humane art in cruel times

There are many. University of Kentucky Press is excellent. Belt Publishing. There are a number of smaller presses, too, who are either out of places like Palestine and Appalachia, that exist more as collectives to get work out to readers fast, and those are ones I often admire quite a bit.

Marie Howe, Charles Simic, Clint Smith, Imani Perry, Willie Carver Jr., Jessica Cory, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle.

I think we are different in that we really try to take regionalism and the margins seriously. We don't publish exclusively work from a place, but are place bound. We want to put writers, artists, activists, and thinkers in conversation with each other. My dream would be to see something the press does leading to a bigger project of people we brought together, and that project to have nothing to do with us. That to me is a mark of success. You have helped create something that outlasts you.

Please follow the instructions on the submission page. :)

Something that is both about a contemporary issue, but won't be stale or tired after a week.

I don't know if that is a fair question. We are a non-paying market, so I try to be generous with submissions.

Yes. A bio and short resume is very helpful. That way we can get an idea of who we will be working with. Most of our contributors go on to do multiple projects with us. So it is nice to get to know the contributor early on (their background, training, etc.).

Every piece is different. We read everything all the way through, but that said I can usually tell after the first poem or first few paragraphs if it will be a good fit. There are just sometimes a piece needs more work, or is a better fit for a commercial and genre-based publication, which I don't think we can always help as much.

Our pieces are peer reviewed. If it is a piece of scholarship, that is a double blind peer review. Our poetry section is curated and read through by our poetry editor, and we often weigh in as different editors to make calls. For fiction and prose, we have in-house readers we use. So, anywhere from 1-4 readers will look at a piece.

When a submission comes in it is assigned a reader. This is either a specific editor, or one of our in-house readers. We are pretty quick with turn around, but that is because we get a limited number of submissions. Poetry is harder because we get so much. Scholarship takes the longest, which I always feel bad about but it takes a lot more time to identify a content expert, give them ample time to read, and then get reader reports back to authors. That process can take months, if not longer.

Depends. We have moved away from heavy edits. We prefer a piece to be largely ready to go. That said, we will work with developmental edits, but we are a smaller team and often cannot dedicate the time to fully developing a piece with an author.

Yes. Pushcart, Sundress, Pen, etc.

It is very much a collective model. We are open access, and so I fund much of the journal personally (website, etc.). I consider it part of my academic service to the broader reading public.

Local bookstores, Instagram, and sponsored events.