Editor Interview: The Summerset Review

The thoughtful and airy

Alaska Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Bakeless Prize collections, Graywolf Press

Aimee Bender, John Cheever, Elizabeth Crane, Lisa Glatt, Tod Goldberg, Steven Millhauser, Katherin Nolte, Shellie Zacharia

We do not solicit and treat submissions objectively, regardless of who wrote them; we have no slush pile.

Read at least two issues to get a flavor of what we publish.

Unpretentious, thoughtful, not overly obscure, not too dark, good use of an extended metaphor, beautifully crafted language that works both as a whole and on the individual sentence/line-level.

Logistically, the only problem has been exceeding the word count (8000 words for prose). Content-wise, we see many submissions carrying death or serious illness as a main theme when we rarely publish such material. The same holds true for pieces containing much harsh language, anger, and/or argumentative dialogue. One other element which will quickly turn us off is with regard to the narration: repeated and careless use of the same word.

Basically nothing. The only situation that might influence us to give extra attention to a submission, is when the writer clearly demonstrates he or she has read what we have published, and is sending work our way because of this. We have found that when submitters cite details and provide comments on material we have published, the work they are submitting, on average, is substantially more compatible.

It has ranged from simply the first two sentences to fully reading the piece four or five times over the course of two months. For prose, about one in ten submissions are read to completion at least one time.

Most pieces need to stand the test of time over a month or two. Subsequent reads of a piece need to impress as much as the first read.

The beginnings of about 10-20 pieces are read online in one sitting. Pieces that seem to have some potential are then skimmed through to the end, online. Of these 10-20, perhaps 5 will stand out. These are printed and saved for a time (usually within the week) where a more critical read can be done, using colored markers. Of the 5, 1 or 2 are usually read to completion and kept in a Maybe folder, to be read again weeks later. We always have suggested changes and markups to prose submissions, some minor, some major. In the eight years of our magazine's existence, only two submitters have retracted their work due to our comments, while some well-published authors over the years have been very thankful and appreciative of our careful editing. The biggest joy we have is when we read that shining submission that wows us to death, because of the realization that the author thought highly enough of us to send in such work.