Editor Interview: Southeast Review

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The Pinch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Gulf Coast, Lunch Ticket, The Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, Black Warrior, Salt Hill

Our editors change fairly regularly, and their tastes can vary, but some recent authors we have published or worked with include Leila Chatti, Emily Skaja, Marcus Wicker, Kenton K. Yee, Sarah Minor, Beth Ward, Anita Lo, Tayler Raven Hanxi Bunge, Lydia Mathis, etc...

We try to solicit a handful of well-known writers to include alongside writers at various stages of their careers. We hope this brings a variety of readers to our pages.

Read our guidelines and check out our recent publications (everything is free to read online).

It follows our guidelines and once we start reading, we are drawn in and forget we are reading for the magazine. It's just good writing and we want to share it.

Lately, I have noticed more people sending us entire manuscripts, and we don't have a press. We have word count limits in our guidelines.

I advise editors not to read the cover letter until they have already read and liked the work. So long as you are not rude in your cover letter, it is fine. Tell us anything you want us to know, but don't worry too much about it.

This varies by editor and experience level. For myself, sometimes I know quickly that a piece isn't ready or isn't our style, but often I have to read the whole piece and then sit with it a while.

Every submitted poem, story, or essay is read by a minimum of two readers. If readers and genre editors rate a piece highly, it is discussed at a table read, and if the piece is still outstanding then it will be submitted for further evaluation by the managing editor and editor in chief.

Sadly, there isn't much editing involved in my position. I spend a lot of time emailing editors to remind them of deadlines and check on progress. If we are about to go to print, I will be copy editing. Right now, I am preparing for our spring reading, doing interviews to fill staff positions, filing our taxes, ordering swag for AWP, and soliciting material for our Writer's Regimen program for summer.

This will vary by editor. Some of our editors don't accept a piece unless it is ready for publication. Then there will be copy edits and nothing more. Some of our prose editors like to be more hands on.

We nominate for Pushcarts and for Best of the Net. We always send in copies of the magazine to the Best American series for Nonfiction and Fiction. If we have work that fits the theme, we will send to various places for spiritual writing, nature writing, science fiction, etc...

We charge for submissions and host an annual contest to make paying our contributors possible. Recently, we have received grants here and there as well. Sometimes we recieve funding from a graduate student organization on campus here at FSU.

We use social media heavily and attend AWP and the Word of South festival each year.