Editor Interview: Prism Review

impactful & strange

Santa Monica Review. Iowa. Fourteen Hills. EPOCH. Michigan Quarterly Review. So many, really.

Contemporary Fiction: Lucy Corin, Manuel Munoz, Sara Majka, Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
Contemporary Poetry: Mag Gabbert, Ross Gay, John Murillo, Marianne Boruch,
Contemporary Non-Fic: Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Maggie Nelson, Roxane Gay

1. We pay writers.
2. All submissions are carefully read by multiple readers. Everything is respected.
3. Much of the work--design, interviews, editing--is done by our team of undergraduate writers.

read samples read samples read samples

Intentional work, strange work, work that is urgent and vivid, impactful and tonally strong.
Work that surprises us.

They haven't read about our tastes/preferences/samples from the website. Or confuse us with Prism International.

Prior pubs in respected journals doesn't hurt.
Pointing out specific pieces/writers that we've published that you enjoy doesn't hurt.
Saying nothing at all certainly doesn't hurt.
How many pets you have or your non-writing career history? That doesn't help.

All of it (but our early suspicions are often confirmed).

Engagement with the contemporary world (direct, indirect, whatever).

This happens more on an annual basis; daily is mostly the first one.
- Read through new submissions.
- Check email account.
- Assign 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.
- Assign interviews/edits of accepted works to authors.
- Work on layout, design.
- Work on launch party.
- Work out payments for authors.
- Solicit contest judges.
- Place ads for contests.
- Ship issues.

Poetry not at all.
Prose: lightly to a little more than lightly (we don't have the bandwidth or timeline to do deeper edits).

We nominate for Best Americans that still exist, Best of the Net, and Pushcarts.

We're pretty lean; the non-editor staff does the work for credit (it's built into the curriculum as more or less a publishing internship); teaching the course is part of teaching load; the ongoing annual reading is essentially uncompensated. For printing/paying authors, we get a little institutional support and supplement via our small fees.

Occasional FB posts and on the website (the journal is as much for the students working on the journal as it is for the authors we publish).