Editor Interview: samfiftyfour

Poetry, prose, and essays

We have a few returning contributors whose work is always a joy to read. A few that come to mind are Mack Cillmahon, Cosima Pellis, Adriana Rocks, Cassie Premo Steele, Maria Tori, and Tim Wilson. And then there are a few standouts that we’re really lucky to have been the first to share one or two of their poems including Seneca Basoalto, Laura Jean Henebry, and Ann Pedone.

The global reach is what sets samfiftyfour apart. We have published work from over 50 countries and you can find physical copies all over the world. We are also more willing to publish new writers with little or no previous publications.

Just do it. You really have nothing to lose. Its one of the best ways to improve on your abilities.
Never hesitate to reach out and ask to have the submission fee waived.

There is no ideal submission. Its impossible to know what is going to resonate or stand out. Sometimes we get submissions from established writers with successful books and hundreds of publishing credits that are just boring. On the other hand sometimes we get a submission from someone who has never even submitted their work anywhere before and it blows us away. There’s no way to know.

We’re not too picky about the format of the submissions. As long as you get your work to us in a way that we can read it we will evaluate it all the same. It can be a little bit annoying when people decide not to put their social media handles. Social media is a great way to contact people and its a great way to help grow the community, but everyone has their reasons I’m sure.

A little introduction and background info on the writer is nice. We always ask where a piece was written so that’s already a good bit of information. Previous publications aren’t the most important thing, but mentioning one or two journals you’ve been published in can help give us a better picture. If you’ve got a lot of previous publications though don’t list all the hundred journals, just pick three or four that you’re proud of.

It is often easy to tell within the first few stanzas or paragraphs, but we never accept or reject a submission without reading it in its entirety.

When a submission comes in it goes into a folder labeled “Issue ___ submissions.” From there it can be moved into one of three other folders; “Issue __ Yes,” “Issue __ Probably,” or “Issue __ No.” some days I’ll go through every submission in order that we received them and make a decision on which folder to sort them into (although until official acceptances/rejections go out they can move around a lot). Other days I’ll scroll through looking only for poetry or only for names I recognize or I’ll open random ones and see if it’s something i want to read that day.

When a piece is accepted, the author signs a contract that says we will not make any major changes aside from basic proofreading without email consent of the author. If there are major changes we would like to see we try to open up a conversation with the author and tell them our reasons why we think the piece would improve with the edits. Sometimes they agree right away, other times it takes a couple back and forths until we reach something we’re both happy with. We have had one or two people withdraw their submissions rather than make any changes. At the end of the day it is the author’s work.