Editor Interview: Umbrella Factory Magazine

Urban, urbane, lurid

Red Fez, Flash Fiction Press, Collateral

Willa Cather, Haruki Maurakami Juliana Spallholz

Our Writer's Coop which is available to our contributors and editors. The Writer's Coop at Umbrella Factory Magazine aims to develop, nurture and publish the manuscripts of our writers. All members of a coop group play varying roles in each other's manuscripts from conception through publication.

Read the writers and poets we have already featured. It goes without saying you should read the submission guidelines and follow them. Sadly few who submit actually follow the guidelines. Be patient, we are all busy people, we'll get back to you.

Fiction includes these elements: a beginning, a middle and an end. It must also have natural dialog. Fiction submission should not include a retelling of your creative writing workshop, or anything involving a troubled writer. Poetry can be anything from the mundane to the meaningful. We don't care about form, but weird formatting is a turn off. It's sunny where we live, 320 plus days a year, so gloomy poetry like urban decay and rainy beaches tickle our toes. A nonfiction submission that teaches us something is especially rare.

Following guidelines. Fiction submitters often forget to tell us of their favorite novel or greatest life revelation. We sort of care about the revelation mostly because we'll know if a submitter of fiction has read the guidelines. Poetry submitters will often forget a cover letter. When a poet's cover letter states something like "I'm a butterfly" we won't even open the submission.These seemingly silly points are only in place to see if someone has bothered to read the guidelines.

Very brief cover letter. Where you found Umbrella Factory Magazine and a small hook for your piece is sufficient. For writers of fiction we want to know what your favorite novel is. We also like a 50 third person bio. We can get to know you in about 100-150 words.

Until the third error: grammar, punctuation or typo. Thr3e errors can sometimes, happens in the first sentence.

We evaluate the formatting. If there are tons of italics, for instance, or footnotes we may pass on a piece. Poetry which has strange margins will get a rejection no matter how brilliant we may think it is.

We love diligent writers who need little to no editing. We try to keep with basic copy editing that prevents either the writer or the magazine any embarrassment. Sometimes, and I mean seldom, will we work with a writer to make a piece ready for publication.

We nominate one prose writer and one poet for Pushcart every November.