Editor Interview: JMWW

Tender and genre-defying

We have affinity with other online journals like PANK, Smokelong, dogzplot, The Summerset Review,storySouth, and Necessary Fiction. We like journals that embrace new voices and styles but consider traditional prose and poetry an old, always-welcome friend.

We love Cormac McCarthy, Mary Gaitskill, JD Salinger, Virginia Woolf, Aimee Bender, Peter Cameron, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Terese Svoboda, Sam Lipsyte, Madison Smartt Bell, and hell, even Joyce Carol Oates.
We've already published Terese Svoboda Madison Smartt Bell. We'd love to publish you as well.

We don't mind working with new authors, asking for rewrites. We like any genre, as long as it has some literary bent to it. We don't mind a good western or sci-fi, and we'll judge it using the same criteria as traditional literary prose. Our waiting times are reasonable; our staff love what they do and don't mind having conversation with you about your work.

Really knock us out in first sentence, the first paragraph. If we feel the story is taking too long to build, then the potential online reader will also, and we'll reject it. Weed out trite, overused phrases and adjectives/adverbs. They bug us. In fact, so do most adjectives and adverbs. And we never accept stories with the word "very" in them. Create characters we care about--be tender with them, but not cute. We only like cute in baby animals. Don't send us baby animals. Send us pictures of baby animals, but not embedded in computer viruses. We like stories, not ideas. Make sure your story is an organic story and not a frame of an idea.
We like when you buy our print journals and enjoy the authors whose work we found exceptional, even if your cat winds up peeing on the journal (yes, it happens). We can always send you a new one.

Starts fast. The language is striking but lean. There's lots of action, characters whose motivations aren't exactly broadcast to us but fall within the realms of common sense. Surprise at the end, but not in a bad way. Make us think about the story for hours afterward. Make us resolve to write one just like it, changing the names, the time, the setting. Make us realize the magic of the story is the sum of its parts. Make us realize we're not worthy.

Submitting too often. We realized that it's often hard to figure out any journal's likes and dislikes down to the t, but we often feel that submitters throw shit to the wall (the wall being us) and see what sticks. Read a couple of our issues. Get an idea of what's stuck to us in the past.

Not very much. We actually don't read cover letters very much. The story will sell itself, in our opinion with or without the author telling us where his or her MFA is or isn't from or where he or she's been published before.

Sometimes it's only the first paragraph. Sometimes it's the whole thing, which is passed onto the next editor with reservations. Sometimes a story will "sit" because it's too good to be rejected but not good enough to be accepted. Some of these are sent back to the author with suggested revisions. Some are simply rejected after other submissions have been accepted.

We'll make sure it hasn't appeared anywhere online (even on an author's blog).

Very hectic, but I'm sure everyone tells you that, so I will tell you I'm sitting under an umbrella in the Virgin Islands with a Corona, a plate of maguro sushi, and a laptop.