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Editor Interview: Kitchen Table Quarterly

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

A: Honest history.

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

A: There are so many brilliant magazines out there doing interesting, varied, weird and worthy work that it's impossible to name them all, let alone read them all! But off the top of my head, the journals that regularly print work I see and wish we'd had the chance to publish are: swamp pink, Birdcoat Quartlery, The Maine Review, Quarterly West, ecotone, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bat City Review, Tinderbox, Birdfeast, Bitter Southerner, and obviously Ploughshares and AGNI. I'm also a baseball fan, so I appreciate The Twin Bill, and I'm a momma, so I have to shout out Literary Mama and Mom Egg Review.

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

A: My two favorite writers ever are Joan Didion and Masha Gessen.
As for (for lack of a better term) canonical poets, I’d point to e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gwendolyn Brooks as the poets who helped me fall in love with poetry.
Contemporary poets whose names I am always thrilled to see pop up and whose work I look forward to would include Maggie Smith, Franny Choi, Clint Smith, Hannah Perrin King, Robert Wood Lynn, and Sean Cho A.
Brent, our art editor, cites Yoshitaka Amano, Dave McKean, Bill Sienkiewicz, Salvador Dali, and Juanjo Guarnido as his favorite artists.
As for me, I'd say Kara Walker, Jackson Pollock, Marc Chagall, and Reneesha McCoy.

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

A: Honestly, I'm not sure how many publications there are that are exploring the areas we are exploring. Kitchen Table Quarterly states in its mission that we want an education, and we really mean it. Our thesis is that, rather than being something static and distant, history is a living thing, constantly recalibrating depending on the light that is shined on it. At KTQ, we want to shine all kinds of lights on history, to view it through a plethora of lenses. We want to tell stories of the past and how it connects to the present. There is no now without then, and we are all a patchwork of pasts. Our aim is to find the humanity in history.

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

A: Not to sound like a broken record, but please, please, please read the guidelines! We will never dock someone for a minor error or honest mistake, but if guidelines are completely ignored, it becomes painfully obvious that the submitter doesn't care about the magazine that they're submitting to.
Other general advice is to read past issues (of course) and make sure you can trace how your work fits into the mission of the magazine.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: Truthful, thought-provoking, a bit unexpected, and crafted with care. And set in a standard 12-point font.

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

A: I can't tell you how often people skip over the little things. We read blind, so we ask that people not put their names in the title of their submission or in the file name for the attached document, but that still happens all the time.
Also, we encourage simultaneous submissions. We are writers ourselves, and understand how disruptive it can be for publications not to take simultaneous submissions. With that said, we have had many instances of poets NOT informing us and withdrawing pieces that are accepted elsewhere. This is incredibly disruptive to our process. It shows a lack of consideration or respect that irks us. We put a lot of effort into each and every issue, and we hope that writers can show us some kindness by withdrawing work that is accepted elsewhere.

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

A: Of course it's interesting to learn about the people who choose to submit to us, but our focus is always on the work itself. We like hearing about the experiences and histories that influenced the work, but ultimately think that any art/writing should speak for itself. With that in mind, previous publication credits do not matter to us. We are happy to be the home of someone's first published piece! If someone does chose to tell us their previous credits, we ask that they keep the list to between three and five.

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

A: Every piece that is submitted to us is read by between four and six people before it gets to the editors. We have a dedicated, brilliant, and cherished team of readers that rates, reviews, and gives thoughts on each and every submission. As editors, we read through the thorough work that our readers have done and bring that in with us as we look through pieces. Honestly, I can generally tell if something isn't going to work for us fairly quickly, but I still feel it is my job as an editor to at least read the majority of something and to have my instincts corroborated by readers before choosing to decline a piece.

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

A: Our process has four parts. First, there is the initial reading, then some pieces are chosen for a second reading. After that, pieces are reviewed by editors and chosen for the short list. The short lists are sent to our wonderful readers, who vote on what they would like to see in the magazine. Around fifty percent of what appears in each of our issues is based on the preferences of our readers. The editors then choose what else to include based on what we think fits with our mission and compliments the pieces that we are certain will be included.

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: We do very little in terms of editing. Of course we proofread, and may do some light copy editing. Sometimes, if we come across a piece that we truly love but think needs a bit of work, we will do more serious editing, but only ever in collaboration with the author. We never print anything without the writer's approval. We always send our planned pages to contributors for final approval before making anything publicly viewable.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: Yes! We nominate for Best of the Net and Pushcart, as well as anything else we see that we think something we've featured is a good fit for.