Editor Interview: Last Leaves Magazine

Raw poetry and art

Some of our favorite publications are Capsule Stories, Train River Publishing, Rattle, Winter Tangerine, Willard and Maple... We could go on, there are so many amazing lit mags in the world.

We publish a mix of writing and art, though tend to get more submissions for writing. Some of our favorite writers are Mary Oliver, Andrea Gibson, and Blythe Baird; however, with three editors, we also have differing tastes and welcome a wide array of styles and voices.

We're new, but we've been around the block. We're writers ourselves and understand how special the written word is to the poet--even when we try our hardest not to become emotionally attached to our work. Sometimes it happens, and we especially love it when that emotion pours cleanly on the page. Everyone in this business values the written word, but all three of us put an emphasis on amplifying voices and building each other up.

Look at our previous issue, our masthead, and our submission guidelines! There's a lot of information in those three things that will help with your submission, especially the guidelines. Our Instagram (@lastleavesmag) is also a great place to do some research prior to submission. We feature a poem we enjoy each week, and you'll be able to get a good feel for what we look for. And if you have any questions, we encourage emails! We're more than happy to help and answering any questions you have prior to submitting.

The ideal submission is one that doesn't hold back, but knows where the boundaries our. We look for a balance of show and tell--often with more show than tell--and love a piece that knows when to carry us through and when to create a scenario that gives pause.

Our names, surprisingly. Submitters often address their submissions to Cailey, but Last Leaves has three editors (myself, Cailey Thiessen, and Maina Chen) who look at the poems. We all read and review your work, and would love to have the submissions addressed to all three of us (or even just "to the Editors" would do)!

We love cover letters. We aren't as interested in your previous publications, but we like to know interesting details about you, what your day job is, if you have any pets. The cover letter lets us make a small connection with the writer before we start reading any poetry. Your cover letter won't really affect whether or not you get published; we just really enjoy learning about you.

To be honest, it all depends on the piece. If it's on the longer side, we'll read a few stanzas to get a feel for the style and voice and see if it's for us. One-page poems are more likely to be read in full, just because they're short enough that it doesn't take much time. We do our best to give everyone a fair evaluation, especially so that we can give a little note if there was one we especially liked but didn't feel fit the magazine.

So a bit of an inside process: we each read through the pieces once on our own, make an individual decision on each piece, then have meetings once a week to come together and discuss what we liked, what we didn't, and how each piece made us feel. So not only do we give it a first read, but most poems get a second read-through, too! We find that talking as a group after an individual read-through can help give us new perspectives and new thoughts.

On an individual level, a day-in-the-life of one of our editors varies. For myself, it can be anywhere from reading through poems to putting them into InDesign and laying out the book, or even working on the cover art or Instagram posts. For Cailey, it varies from reading to answering emails to recording a reading for our Instagram.

Most pieces we accept will only receive a basic proofreading, correcting for any spelling and grammar mistakes. If there are any heavier edits we think could benefit the piece prior to publication, we reach out to the author and ask if those are changes they're willing to make. We like authors to have full creative control of their piece; if it isn't something they want done, we won't do it (though that often results in a rejection, but not always).

At this point in time, no. We've talked briefly about doing that in the future, but while we're still getting our foundation set up and figuring out all the bumps in the road, it's not something we can reliably offer.