Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, 2008

Phoebe is again sponsoring its annual Greg Grummer Poetry Award contest. The author of the winning poem will receive $1000 and publication in the Fall 2008 issue of Phoebe. Peter Gizzi will judge. We will be accepting entries until December 1, 2007. The entry fee is $15. You can find contest guidelines here.

PETER GIZZI's books include "The Outernationale" (Wesleyan, 2007), "Some Values of Landscape and Weather" (Wesleyan, 2003), "Artificial Heart" (Burning Deck, 1998), and "Periplum and Other Poems 1987-1992" (Salt Publishing, 2004). His honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets (1994), and fellowships in poetry from the Howard Foundation (1998), The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (1999), and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005). He is also the editor of "The House That Jack Built: The Collected Letters of Jack Spicer" (Wesleyan, 1998). He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Postage, Computers, Fiction Submissions, Fall Issue, and other thoughts

I can't sleep, and I don't want to wake up my wife by rattling submissions around out here in the living room, so I figured I'd add a few thoughts to this newsreel for anyone that's interested:

• It's no secret that the USPS raised their rates recently and added some confusing regulations on top of that mess, so we've stocked up on 2cent stamps. Those of you who submitted to us before this crazy rate increase, do not worry, we'll be able to respond. Though I will be honest here, a few of you who asked that we return your manuscripts (and provided us with a full-sized, stamped manilla folder), I must warn you, some of those envelopes will have quite a lot of 2cent stamps on them.
• This information is for our international authors: we're having trouble with the International Return Coupons. I don't know what it is really, some of them have been coming to us postmarked and some haven't. We can't use the ones that aren't postmarked, since, according to the postman, they haven't been paid for (in other words, we'd have to pay). And basically, everytime we get an IRC, we have to go the post office to send back our response. This isn't a huge problem, but it needs some attention. I guess what I'm saying is for international authors, 1) I want to apologize for taking so long to handle this, and 2) we might be able to save a lot of hassle if we just respond to you by email in the future. Now this isn't an official change of submission guidelines, but I'll have to talk it over with everyone else, since I'm just fiction.
• I don't know about poetry, but we're now getting into the fiction submission packets that we received in February and March. I can't promise anything concerning decisions, when they'll be made, etc, since the Spring 08 Issue print deadline is a while off yet, but I will say that we're reading those stories now. As far as our summer process goes, it's a bit more relaxed (read: slow, sorry), since we have a smaller staff. Nat's reading, I'm reading, and I think one or two of our fiction readers will stay on board to help out. Our assistant fiction editor will be out of town this summer, but I'll be in touch with her to talk about what we've been seeing. But we're taking our yearly break from reading incoming submissions so we can catch up on what we already have.
• And our Fall 07 issue just came in a few weeks ago (all 1,200 copies of it, I think) and it's cluttering up our tiny cubicle. We can't wait to get it out to everyone, especially our contributors, but we're having a little trouble with the bar code; we have to wait for stickers or something like that. But I will say, it looks great. I'll post the new cover when we get our new computers up and running.
• Yes, maybe not exciting for you, but definitely for us: we've got two new machines that Nat's setting up this week. Our old ones were about ready to conk out (we were scared of losing all our submission records, money stuff, artwork, blah blah blah), but now we'll be safe and sound.

That's it for me. Have a good weekend.

Poetry Contest Judge

I'm pleased to announce that Peter Gizzi will judge Phoebe's 2008 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest. Peter is the author of four books of poetry, including, most recently, The Outernationale. I'll post a formal bio soon. Contest guidelines and more information can be found via the Phoebe website.

1/2 of Kurtis Davidson Places 2nd in Glimmertrain Contest

Good news for Kurtis Davidson and Phoebe, since we're publishing his/their story, "The Second Coming of Afro-Christ," in our Fall 2007 issue. I'm not quite sure how to talk about this, since, well, Kurtis Davidson is actually two people writing as one (Kurt Ayau and Davis Rachels: "Because two heads is better than any other number of heads"). I won't even pretend to understand: imagine the confusion at author readings, etc. Anyhow, go to his/their website .

Here's the official news and link:

The editors of Glimmertrain honored Kurt Ayau, who placed 2nd with the story "Outsourcing" in the winter 2006/2007 Very Short Fiction Contest.

We're happy.

Weekend Conference

This Saturday I'll be heading to the Writer's Center at Bethesda to represent Phoebe at the Conversations and Connections conference along with other area journals, authors, publishers, etc. While we were at AWP, both the folks at Barrelhouse and the editors of Potomac Review invited us to come along and take part, but we sort of never did anything about it. Well, I finally got in touch with Dave at Barrelhouse, and he was able to find a spot for me on the Submissions panel along with some other great editors.

Anyhow, it's a day long conference with a few big speakers, a speed-editing session during lunch, and a series of panels through the evening. It should be a good experience to hear what other editors say about their journals and their reading/publishing process; hopefully, I'll learn some things that'll help us improve how we work around here. I've already got a few ideas.

Update on that to follow next week probably.

In other news, we just received our proofs for the fall issue of the journal and we've approved them; now it's up to the printers to do their thing. We're still reading through all the submissions we have (we stopped taking new ones April 15th), but it's sort of slowed down a little since everyone is busy with end-of-semester work. But we're doing as much as we can and we hope to respond as soon as possible to everyone who still has work with us.