Editor Interview: Collaborature

Collaborative works

I admire anyone who puts their heart into their work and dedicates the time to do a great job.

Some of my favorite writers are Charles Bukowski, Emily Dickinson, Dorianne Laux, Sylvia Plath.

Collaborature is different from other publications in that we only publish collaborative poetry and fiction. In other words, anything submitted must be collaborative between two or more writers. We allow collaboration in the form of ekphrasis, epigraph, call and response, and many others, to allow for a wider range of what is submittable.

Reach out to and connect with other writers. Isn’t that what we seek? To be in communion with others? Get out of your comfort zone and connect. Beautiful work is waiting on the other side.

One that follows the submission guidelines. We receive many submissions from people who have clearly not read the submission guidelines. Submissions by one writer. I kindly refer to the submission guidelines.
Submissions that are creative, that cause readers to take pause and ponder. Submissions that are written jointly by two authors.

As in my previous answer, the thing that submitters most often get wrong is not reading the submission guidelines to understand that Collaborature is a publication for submissions of collaborative poetry and fiction.
Another thing I’d like to see more of is perseverance in our monthly contest. People enter amazing work. We have a different guest judge each month. Everyone has a different bent. Sometimes people enter for a couple months, and they give up when their poem or fiction writing isn’t selected. Writers may submit once per month, until you win. Then you must wait one calendar year to submit to the contest again.

We do not care about cover letters. A short bio that includes the submitter’s name and whatever information they’d like included with their work is fine. We don’t care for bios that include thousands of places you’ve been published, or that are books themselves. Let your work speak for itself.

We only publish poetry and short fiction. We read every piece to the end before deciding whether to accept or reject a submission.

Each piece is evaluated for content. We prefer not to publish material that is overly sexually explicit. We do not publish work that is discriminatory or hateful. Work is evaluated for errors, if there is a significant amount of editing required, a piece will likely be sent back for revision or rejected.

Busy! With Collaborature, it is my goal to connect writers with other writers. I run an interview every other Friday about someone in the writing community. These interviews are geared towards how the individual works collaboratively in their writing and community. Sometimes the person featured may not have written collaboratively much, and that is okay. I want to support writers and give them a venue to get their work out there. I seek out people whom I might not be familiar with to interview. I conduct interviews via written Q&A or via Zoom, if requested. If you would like to be featured, email: [email protected]
I try to keep ahead with scheduling posts, but with all my commitments, I often schedule posts a week beforehand. As a single mother, a host for dVerse Poets Pub, a judge for Writer’s Digest’s Self-Published Book Awards, my schedule is not short of tasks to be completed.

The majority of the work I receive does not need editing. I make minor edits for spelling and grammar. I do not send submissions back for final approval if edits are necessary.

I nominate for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize.

The monthly Collaborature contest is funded through donations and contributions from friends and writers. If you would like to donate, please visit our Submissions page.

I promote Collaborature on my blog and through the WordPress community. Other writers and publishers promote it as well. Feed the Holy; Prolific Pulse Press; Pure Haiku; Sunflower Tanka; and many others help to promote the journal. I appreciate them all!