Editor Interview: Rejected Lit Magazine

Visceral, raw poetry

We are immense fans of American Poetry Review, Thrush Journal, Brooklyn Rail, Rising Phoenix Review, Greensboro Review, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and The New Yorker, just to name a few.

We at Rejected Lit are huge fans of Ocean Vuong, Ilya Kaminsky, Natalie Diaz, Angel Garcia, Tracy K. Smith, Etel Adnan, Nick Lowe, John Murillo, Martin Espada, Ernesto Cardenal, Muriel Rukeyser, Bianca Stone, Dorothea Lasky, Eileen Myles, DA Powell, Richard Siken, and Eduardo Corral- just to name a few!

We are a magazine fiercely dedicated to both aesthetic and content. We trust that our readers and our submitters understand that we publish visceral, gorgeous, and oftentimes upsetting material. We are a journal who understands how rejection factors into the lifeblood of poetry submissions, but we embrace that rejection. We accept under 1 percent of the poems that we receive, but we believe in the poets who write to us. And we believe that rejection is a necessary and wonderful part of poetry.

Please read our back issues and get a feel for the kind of work we are publishing. Although we don't have explicit themes for our issues, the poems we publish do resemble one another in a multitude of ways. In terms of submission etiquette, please write a cover letter and submit your poems in a cohesive word document, rather than just pasting them into the body of an email.

3-5 poems, written by a poet familiar and intimate with the work of the poets who we have previously described as being a monumental influence on our journal. Also, poems that make us hurt. Make us weep. Make us a bit sick to our stomachs. Poems that are raw and real and confident.

Sending less than 3 poems or more than five poems and, again, pasting them into the body of an email. Our editors are not paid for their work in reviewing submissions, so please be respectful with the submission process. You can do so by writing a brief cover letter, letting us know a bit about the work you're submitting, and placing these poems together into one document.

Yes, we do care about cover letters. No, listing previous publications have no effect on our reading process but it is nice to have a little description of what goes into the work being submitted and why you are choosing Rejected Lit as a place to submit to.

There are some pieces that we can both tell aren't right and are right within a few lines of reading- but that's rare. Generally we read all of our pieces through multiple times before making a final decision.

There are no additional evaluations on our end besides reading through the pieces we receive and making final decisions based on how well we feel they fit with our journal.

The reading process is carried out primarily by myself and my Secondary Editor, Emily Clark. Occasionally, our creative team members Matthew Powell-Palm and Tanner Houselog will also sometimes assist with the reading process. All final editing decisions are made by me, Ian. Reading submissions is a three round process- each submission is given an initial read through. We then decide what submissions have made it to the second round of readings and eventually to the third round, and thus publication. The whole process takes a few straight days of diligent reading to carry out.

We do not edit at all, usually, unless we notice glaring errors that are likely typos on the submitting poet's part. These kinds of errors are extremely rare, however and we reach out to the poet always to see if they would like their work changed.

Yes! We nominate for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize at the moment. We will likely begin nominating for additional prizes this year, which we will detail on our instagram and website!