Editor Interview: TIMBER Journal

Innovative poetry & prose

Journals and magazines that value innovation and experimental writing, including but not limited to:
DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Bennington Review, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Booth, Storm Cellar, Cream City Review, The Adroit Journal, Puerto del Sol, Bat City Review, and Fourteen Hills.

Our favorite writers and styles shift with the turnaround of our editorial staff, but we consistently enjoy work from a variety of voices and writers with diverse backgrounds. To commit ourselves to a certain archetype would invalidate our goal of promoting this new definition of experimentalism.

We look for poetry, prose, hybrid pieces, and text-art that re-defines what it means to experiment with form and language while maintaining a high standard of quality. We only publish work that surprises us, creeps inside our minds and lives there long after we've left the page.

Read through our previous issues to get a feel for the kind of work we like to publish. However, keep in mind that our preferred styles and tastes change with new additions to the editorial staff every year. So, rather than conform to the work you already see online, send us something that we haven't seen before. Take risks, as we're far more likely to publish that than something that is safe and traditional.

As mentioned, our staff shifts annually, and we don't want writers to feel limited to certain forms, so there us no "one" type of ideal submission. Of course, we want submissions that adhere to our guidelines. After that, we look for innovative language, fractured form, and sentences/lines that make us stop in our tracks.

That we conform to the traditional idea of "experimentation." We want to completely annihilate the white, western canon of literary experimentalism and usher in a new, diverse age of innovation.

We're not really interested in prestigious MFA programs and long lists of previous publications. Feel free to include all that, but we base our decisions entirely on the quality of the submission. Otherwise, all you need is a standard, professional cover letter.

Depends on the length of the piece. For poetry and flash fiction stories, we usually read the whole piece. For longer stories and hybrid works, if we're not hooked within the first few pages, our readers and editors usually vote "no."

We may consider if a submission is very similar in form/language/concept to a piece we recently published, but quality of work is always most important when evaluating submissions. Our reading process is fairly streamlined, and we don't usually mess with it.

We have two or three readers on each submission from the slush pile. During the submissions/reading period, our Genre Editors meet monthly with their readers to discuss their favorite pieces, after which they make decisions on those that are ultimately accepted for publication.

We may make some minor, line-level edits after proofreading, but very rarely will we ask for major revisions. If we accept a piece, it's usually because we love it as is. We always send writers a proof to review before their work is published online.

We recently started nominating work for Pushcart Prizes, and we are excited to continue doing so.