Editor Interview: The Cincinnati Review

Stories, poems, essays

In addition to publishing talented emerging and established writers, The Cincinnati Review is unique in that we also publish a full-color art portfolio and a short play or play excerpt in each issue. We have a weekly online flash feature (miCRo) and other special web features, and we pay contributors but have no submission fees.

Get feedback on what you write before you submit it, and make sure to accept or reject any track changes. Every week we have a piece that includes track changes!

Our ideal submission varies widely; it's best for writers to read what our genre editors have said on our website about what they're looking for: https://www.cincinnatireview.com/what-were-looking-for/

Sometimes people email submissions to us instead of using our online submission manager, and sometimes they mislabel the genre as they submit their piece online.

We don't need to know too much about the person submitting. A short cover letter including a list of the work submitted and a *brief* bio is welcome, but not required. We read everything that comes across the transom; we don't screen based on previous publication credits.

We always read each piece to the end, though stories/essays/poems that start off poorly most often end without an improvement in skill. Still, we read the pieces as we'd like our own to be read: through to the end.

The process most often is this: a volunteer reader gives the piece an evaluation and forwards it to our assistant/associate editors. Those editors do additional screening, and if they like something, it gets forwarded to the genre editor, who consults with a genre "team" that includes at least one of the student editors to make acquisitions. Often when a piece is accepted, at least four people have read it.

Each day, I (and the other editors) have a variety of tasks to do; sure, we're reading submissions, our main priority, but we're also communicating with contributors and submitters; copyediting and/or proofreading the issue; communicating with our typesetter/designer; writing blog posts or working with social media; training graduate students at the University of Cincinnati on publication work; sending out single issues or new subscriptions (we don't have a fulfillment service); or otherwise doing the tasks necessary to keep any office going in the business world. We have three permanent employees, and three graduate student editors during the academic year, as well as our team of 8-12 volunteer readers. We do a lot with a small number of people.

We do edit all pieces for correctness, clarity, conciseness, consistency, and conformity to the Chicago Manual of Style and our house dictionary, all while retaining the author's voice and style. This editing always includes a mechanical edit and will sometimes include substantive editing as well. We send our authors the copyedited piece with track changes and queries before we send it to our typesetter (recommending they read it in Simple Markup in Word when possible). After typesetting, the issue is proofread by the entire staff and the authors, and they can fix any mistakes or typos then.

Yes; that's important to us. We want our writers' work to live on beyond our pages. We nominate/send issues to the Best American series, O. Henry Awards, Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets, etc. etc.