Editor Interview: Rabble Review

Working class leftist art

RABBLE REVIEW was founded out of Riverside City College's literary journal, MUSE. Angel Neri, our editor in chief, and I both worked on separate issues of their magazine. And we remain huge fans of that publication and the work they're doing in the space and in the surrounding community. We're also fans of Fruitslice and the work they're doing, The Ear (another literary journal based out of a community college), Blood and Honey, and I've recently discovered Beestung Magazine, they're doing some great stuff as well.

We are lucky to publish both art and writing. Some of my favorite writing has come from a wonderful poet, Michaela Godding. Her work consistently blows me away. Diane Lefer was featured in our seventh issue, of hers we published are among my favorites. One of my favorite poems we have published is called, "Collecting," by Reinfred Dziedzorm Addo, that is in our sixth issue. Another poet, Edward Canavan, is featured in many of our past issues, and his short poems are effective gut punches, in a good way. For fiction we had DC Diamondopolous in two issues, her issue 7 submission remains a favorite of mine. In issue 9 we had some amazing artwork from an artist named, Matina Vossou. And two of our covers (Issue 7 and 9) have artwork from a great photographer, Omar Lopez. And lastly, Chaim Jones, and, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, are two artists who have blown us away with submissions in both visual art and poetry. There are so many other artists that I'd love to list, but needless to say we are very proud of the quality of work we have been fortunate to publish.

I won't pretend as though I am super familiar with other genres operating in the same space. But I will say that we have a focus on aesthetics and presentation that I think has helped give us a distinct identity since we started RABBLE REVIEW. Angel Neri who pulls double duty with EIC duties, also works as our designer, and from the start his attention to detail has made RABBLE REVIEW an impressive visual treat. I love that our magazine is pretty because we are publishing some amazing work. We don't want you to swipe through to the end. In addition to that we also treat the launch of our issues as an event. We're constantly cognizant of the amazing work we are being sent, so we want to make sure we are celebrating our featured artists as much as we can. Why shouldn't our issue launches come with an announcement trailer? Art is cool! Our contributors are amazing! We love finding an excuse to celebrate that in the flashiest way possible.

Please don't overthink our mission statement. A lot of people see that we are a leftist, working class, literary journal, and they think we just want to publish work about how fascism is bad (it is). But the work that we consistently find effective is the work that finds an approach that isn't as direct. In our tenth issue we will be publishing a piece about a community very specific to the writer. And the work speaks about things like, climate change, gentrification, the price of rent, but isn't presented as commentary, it's just presented as reality. And by the end you have a very clear look at a community that is either completely alien to you, or uncomfortably familiar. We loved the piece, obviously, but we want the work in any given issue to touch on many different aspects of our shared struggle. There is almost certainly a viewpoint that is specific to your life that we haven't seen before. We would rather see that than the 500th, "orange man bad," piece. Your piece about raising a child, taking care of a sick relative, a bad date, trash on the side of the highway, a shitty day at your job, is political, and far more interesting.

The ideal submission is within the word limit! Okay, jokes aside, the ideal submission is going to take from my answer about submission advice. Trust your own experiences. The ideal submission will speak to an aspect of our shared struggle, using a personal lens. The ideal submission should be your own voice undiluted. Don't try to guess what our politics are, or try to preach to the choir. Our readers are mostly on the political left. Your work should inspire, or be reflective, or tragic, but it should stir that audience, regardless. Sorry if that sounded vague. But my favorite submissions are all over the place. Some are about the environment, some are about your hometown, some are pointing at a current frustration in my own life, and I get to go, "Aha!" I think the easiest way to achieve that is to create work that is specific to your own perspective.

A lot of submitters think leftist is a synonym for, liberal. No one on our editorial team has a vision for a neoliberal world order. So, sometimes, we get work that is lamenting a time in the past where we loved each other, and a time where there was no violent political divisions, and we're just like, "what world were you existing in?" And that is not the response you want to your political analysis. That isn't to say work from liberals is unwelcome, but your approach to politics shouldn't make us scratch our heads. We have plenty of shared struggles you can speak to, and plenty of liberals do successfully point to that, and we're happy to publish our favorites.. But we're not going to publish work that praises past US presidents for instance. Like, yes, we get that the current guy is uniquely evil, but that doesn't mean that we want to hear how amazing you think, say, Ronald Reagan, was. Hint, he was bad too!

Our submission form has places where our submitters can tell us about themselves. We don't do a full background check, but we like knowing how far our submission calls go to ensure that we are getting a diverse submission pool. A cover letter isn't necessary, but some submitters include them and we are happy to read them. But again, totally not necessary. Some submitters use a pen name for anonymity, we get it, and are cool with how much or how little you want to share with us. Just please make sure your listed email is correct and current.

If a piece is within our word limit we typically read to the end. On rare occasions if a work is long, and it isn't working for me on any level, I may stop reading early. Work over our word limit gets rejected immediately though. Sorry!

Our team has a spreadsheet with all the submitters and their submissions. Each week we will read a set amount and then log our votes for those works. We discuss every work, whether it was a unanimous yes, or, no, vote. Works that are unanimously approved move on, and split votes get additional discussion. Works that survive round one go to the layout stage where we see if it fits with the work we are looking to take, and we decide further from there. At that point our list is finalized and we notify contributors soon after.

During the reading process I will do my assigned reading when I get home from work. By day I work at a preschool. So in the evening and weekends, after dinner, I'll open up the submission folder and read the weeks works on my iPad. I usually have my iPad pencil on hand to make notes directly on the work as necessary. Twice a week we get on a call for about two hours to discuss that weeks works. Usually we have 12-16 submitters for that meeting, and we will read and discuss between 24-34 works for the week.

It depends on the piece. Some works acceptances are contingent on some minor edits. But for the most part we just edit for basic grammar and punctuation. Every now and then we will reach out to an artist to clarify a typo or word choice. Our page size is also skinny, so we will sometimes need to talk to an artist if their accepted work has unconventional line breaks.

Yes, in 2025 we began nominating work for the, Best of the Net, and we plan to continue doing so. We're on the lookout for other awards to participate in as well. We will be nominating work for the Pushcart Prize next.

At this time we are reader supported. Readers can donate money to us directly or pay for a downloadable issue of RABBLE REVIEW. Our issue is free to read in browser, but downloads cost $8. But every single cent that has gone into RABBLE REVIEW has come from readers, or our own pockets.

We promote RABBLE REVIEW and our contributors across our social media accounts. We also have a newsletter that goes out twice a month. Recently we started to do launch livestreams for issue launches, and those stream on YouTube and Twitch, with the archives of those streams going up on our YouTube channel. Contributors are asked to send in recordings of themselves reading their published work. Our website has pages with full artist credits as well. Once a contributor is featured in an issue of RABBLE REVIEW, they are welcome to promote their other projects on our website. We have a "Contributor Corner" where we feature other projects our contributors are working on.