Editor Interview: Santa Fe Literary Review

Bold, diverse writing

Crazy Horse and Crack the Spine. Independent publishers who buck the traditional.

Writers I admire at the moment are Eve Ensler, Emily Rapp Black, Roxanne Gay, Sarah Ruhl, China Mieville, Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Jeanette Winterson, Peter Shaffer, and Tom Robbins, to name a few.

Our aim to seek out diverse work and diversity among our published writers. We consciously cultivate our publication with these foci in mind.

Be bold, take a risk, but also be relevant. Make me laugh or cry until my ribs hurt. Have an authentic voice, and give us your best.

A clear literary voice that plays with convention, tells a unique story, and triggers critical thinking and reflection.

Submitting too much, or pieces that are too long. We rarely publish longer CNF, so that we can include more writers. I love when writers submit one, solid gold piece that they have poured their heart into. It shows a dedication to themselves, and it makes me want to give them the opportunity if the work holds value.

I don't really care where people have been published. It feels pretentious to me, and doesn't make me pay greater attention to the work. Tell me something about your soul, give me a glimpse of who you are behind your words. Let me know you stand for something.

I usually read the whole piece, even if I know from the beginning that it probably is not going to be something I want to include. I feel an obligation to writers to have their work be given full attention, since they took the risk to submit. And once in a blue moon I get surprised and find a piece where I realize I actually love it and want to publish, because it comes together in a way I wouldn't have suspected.

We have a tiered format, where student editors read the pieces, so it's usually read at least 3 times, then I review all the work, so our pieces are getting evaluated by different eyes and different perspectives. Finally, we choose everything as a staff, so each piece gets a through eval and opportunity.

Fun. I enjoy going through submissions and seeing what our student editors think and feel about the work presented, and I love reading pieces and seeing the different ways people have of viewing the world. It's also rigorous, in the sense that it's time consuming, but I like the challenge of working through all of it, and watching the direction and shape I can help create for our publication under the editorial umbrella I've been asked to assume.

We hardly edit at all. We may ask for some line edits, but we are seeking polished pieces that have been worked over and where the effort has been made to submit a high quality piece. The author can approve, but we retain the final say if we feel the edits are essential for publication.

We had two pieces last year that were nominated for the Pushcart prize. We are working on expanding this.