Editor Interview: FRiGG

Honest fiction and poetry

We admire many publications, including, but not limited to, and in no particular order: The New Yorker, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Quick Fiction, Rose Metal Press, Dzanc Books, Juked, elimae, Eclectica, Storyglossia, jmww, decomP, PANK, Word Riot, Rattle, Monkeybicycle, Night Train, Barrelhouse, Hobart, Keyhole, Dogzplot--each has a long, steadfast track record for showcasing top-notch writing.

We love every single writer who has ever appeared, or will appear, in FRiGG. Also, we love (in no particular order): Franz Kafka, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, Flannery O'Connor, Marilynne Robinson, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, J.D. Salinger, Jane Austen, Cormac McCarthy, Larry Brown, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Don DeLillo.

We are no better, or no worse, than other publication that publishes similar material.

Be very honest in what you write. Maybe use words that you particularly like. Maybe do a funny bit. It's OK to swear.

The ideal submission is honest, true, a pack of lies, idiosyncratic, smart, funny, sad, ugly, and beautiful.

No submitter ever gets anything wrong. Oh, yeah, actually, once a guy did. We accepted his poems and we were about to publish them and then we found the same poems already published elsewhere on the Web! We were mad, but not for too long. If that same guy sent us some more poems that we liked, and they weren't already available elsewhere on the Web, we would take them.

Cover letters can be interesting, but they are not essential. Previous credits can also be interesting, but are not essential. Tell us whatever you want to about yourself, or don't. You can be anybody. If we like your work, we will take it.

Often we can read the first line and know whether or not the rest of the work might interest us. The only pieces that more than one editor reads all the way to the end are the ones that are being very heavily considered.

We have only three people who read submissions. One of these people makes the final decision about fiction; one has the final say about poetry. Our process is streamlined. You'd think that we would be faster about it, but no.

The three editors at FRiGG read submissions year round, but not necessarily every day. Sometimes we read a whole bunch at once. Sometimes days go by and we don't read any submissions. (Laggards.) If you don't hear from us for a while, it probably means we haven't read your submission yet. We encourage submitters to simultaneously submit so they won't be twiddling their thumbs waiting for an answer from us. If three months have passed since you submitted to us, e-mail us and say, What the heck? (Also, sometimes submissions don't make it to us. They disappear in cyberspace. If you suspect this might have happened, e-mail us to see if we got your submission.)