Editor Interview: ANTAE

Literary works

We are great fans of very established print avenues (such as the British publication Stand Magazine), relatively recent online ones (such as 'Wild Court', hosted by King's College London), and avenues that seek out voices beyond the margins (such as 'Tint Journal').

A very hard question to answer! How about a completely arbitrary sample from the last few centuries?
16th century: William Shakespeare
17th century: Aphra Behn
18th century: Daniel Defoe
19th century: Oscar Wilde
20th century: Philip Roth
Contemporary: Zadie Smith

Being affiliated with a university, and with an editorial team comprised solely of people who have studied literature and literary criticism at an M.A. level and beyond, we believe we can properly discern between quality and cliche, between potential and actual. Moreover, we have an excellent and world-renowned advisory editorial board with whom we can discuss editorial decisions that prevent us from becoming too insular in our decision processes.

The avant-garde is old! It's been around for more than a 100 years in its diverse forms. How can your work take age-established literary principles and bring them into the 21st century without completely discarding tradition? We'd love to see that!

The ideal submission is non-simultaneous and not previously published. The cover letter should be succinct but provide the necessary details. The attachment should be in Word Doc form, and with no silly fonts.

Submitters often send work that is simultaneously considered elsewhere. Because we are a small voluntary team, we do not have the time to review work only to discover that our hard work was for naught.

The list of previous publications is great for author bios... but no, we don't really care whether you've been published in 500 journals or have never published before. We look at the work for what it is, not in light of who's written it.

We can usually tell by the first page or first few lines. However, writing very often proves surprising! To that end, we make sure to read each piece entirely (and at least three-times over, that is, by a minimum of three editors).

Whenever a submission comes in, we always manually acknowledge its receipt. We also check whether it's been previously published or whether it's under consideration elsewhere (unless the writer has been kind enough to clarify this in their cover letter). Three editors are assigned to each piece, who record their thoughts and final decision. As general editor, I also read every piece and offer my thoughts. In 99% of cases, consensus wins, and that determines whether a piece is published or not.
In short, we spend half our time ensuring proper and transparent work-flow, and half our time reading submitted work. It's easy to tell which half is our favourite!

We copy edit and proofread all accepted work, and give authors time to review any changes before publication. If a piece requires substantial editing and proofreading, then it's clearly not ready for publication, and it's not accepted.

Not yet, but we're looking into it!