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Editor Interview: Prism Review

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

A: Quirky,concise,visceral

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: 9th Letter. Crazyhorse. Quarterly West. Santa Monica. Mid-American. Hayden's Ferry.

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: Current Fiction: Lucy Corin, Ander Monson, Peter Orner, Larry Fondation.
Current Poetry: Brenda Hillman, Mary Jo Bang, Martha Ronk, Joshua Kryah.

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

A: 1. *All* submissions are read by multiple readers. Everything is seriously considered.
2. Our strange and interesting features, eg, our interview with Jane Austen last year.
3. Our (possibly deluded) faith that we have the best taste in literature around.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: 1a. Purchase and read issues 11 and 12.
1b. Read works by those authors we just said we liked.
1c. Read the samples on the website.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.
Failing that, poems or stories that are tense, strange, and vivid. Or smart, funny, sad. Or angry, terse, declarative.
In other words, there's no single ideal submission: this is a journal of many pieces.
Urgency -- of tone, any tone -- is probably our most unifying theme.

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

A: They forget to subscribe to the journal first, which means their submissions are read almost immediately.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: Most early readings are done after ignoring the cover letter.
If the piece is strong, we keep considering it -- so the cover letter is just an item of curiosity.
If we *aren't* enthusiastic about a piece, we'll glance at the cover letter, and if the publications are strong and relevant, we might give a piece a closer look. (Usually we then think, Nope, still didn't work for us.)

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

A: All of it.
Though the speed of that reading fluctuates in relation to the strength of the sentence-level writing.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: How well it complements/balances other accepted pieces.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: This happens more on a weekly basis, a little bit of it each day:
- Glance at new submissions.
- Assign them to staff.
- Read staff remarks about previous submissions.
- Read those submissions to consider the staff responses.
- Re-assign submissions for further readings.
- Assign strong submissions to entire staff.
- Meet with staff, discuss stronger submissions.
- Contact authors whose work we've accepted.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: At least 30% important.