We have received an outpouring of writing and generosity from submitters all around the world – over a hundred submissions in four days. While we’re busy taking time to thoughtfully review and study everything they have sent us, we thought we should share some thoughts about what kind of writing we’re interested in. This doesn’t really fit within the purview of our submission guidelines, or they’d be a few too many pages long, and after our first issue makes its appearance it will certainly be more evident what kind of aesthetic theater we’ll do our operations in. So, in the meantime, what better place for this than a blog post.

Poetry

• If you’re rhyming, please know what you’re doing, and how to do it sparingly, in a way such that it is not the driving force for your work.
• There are many fine places for strictly spiritual, religious, and sacred verse, but this is not going to be one of them.
• Light verse, also, can be found elsewhere
• Poetry about nature and nature only – paeans to it, specifically – is beautiful, but also belongs in other homes.
• Some journals we love that espouse our artistic ideals (and have content online for you to browse) are Painted Bride Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crazy Horse, Jubilat, Prick of the Spindle, Blackbird, Amethyst Arsenic and Threepenny Review. Others, with limited online content (but that we urge you to check out), are Gigantic Sequins, Black Warrior Review, Tin House. There are, of course, many, many others; these are just a few recommendations.

Fiction

• Surrealist writing is fine and dandy, but it must have a point.
• Erotic fiction and romance stories will not be for us unless they make a much broader statement.
• Please be a good writer. Please proofread your writing.. and then, proofread it again.
• This can’t be stressed enough: finish your story. What so often happens is that a good writer starts out with a fantastic idea or a nifty conceit and can only carry it to the halfway point before it fizzles. Think of all the stories you’ve loved: the endings were as strong as the beginnings. Pay particular attention to the last half of what you’re creating, and give it the same attention as the first. Make it, in fact, outshine the first half, and surprise your readers.

Essays

• What makes essays engaging is difficult to put a finger on, but it centers around making good observations and using keen powers of description. It more importantly involves the ability to issue a strong, salient point while remaining subtle and open to nuanced interpretation. In other words, if your essay is about dolphins, it must also be about fish, women, men, the tides, and marinas. It must be about a whole world of things.
• For an example of a particularly excellent essay, read George Orwell’s A Hanging. Don’t worry; few can write like Orwell. But notice how he brings quotidian particulars to the same level of importance as life’s great questions in order to answer those questions.

Thanks for sending us your writing. Keep it coming – we’re having the time of our lives reading it. Why not share what YOU think makes for a great read in the comments?