Well it's been a little slow around here: I just got back from the Tin House Workshop, and Nat just left for a week of vacation, so we're sort of getting in and out of the office less nowadays. Nat tells me he went ahead and mailed out this fall's issue to our subscribers (institutions, other journals, and individuals), but he's having trouble with the mail merge system and the list of those who entered our contests. Turns out we're also having trouble with previous subscriptions not being recognized by our system (we use file maker?), so we're trying to deal with that as well.

I know Wade's been reading quite a lot, and Nat has some packets for me when he gets back into town this Thursday. We're still not accepting submissions until September 1st, and I apologize if you're one of those authors who has recently received a slip asking that you resubmit in the fall (I know that costs money).

If I have time, I might write up a brief review of Tin House, but I don't know.

Eventually, Wade suggested that we try to post some particulars (hints&tips) as to what we're looking for in submissions, from the cover letter to the stories/poems themselves. So that's in the works.

And a side note: I was going through some back issues because someone sent us a check and a request for one in particular, and I found an issue from 1995 (Volume 24, Number 1) that made me happy. Apparently, the staff was in the habit of naming issues: this one was called displacement, and in it then-fiction editors Scott Berg and Patricia Fuentes had printed a story by Gordon Lish called "Konkluding Labor of Herkules: A Fiction," which you can find in his collection Self-Imitation of Myself. I liked that collection, and so I was glad to see that we'd published one of those stories.

The Headmaster Ritual and New Stories From The South 2007

Taylor Antrim, a past winner of our Winter Fiction Contest, just released his first novel, The Headmaster Ritual, in June. I meant to point this out earlier, but frankly, I got busy with other things. Anyhow, I haven't been able to find any reviews of the book yet, but I did find a sort of glowing profile/review thingy in The New York Observer by Sara Vilkomerson.

The profile begins with groups of words that say things like "Even for someone as painfully—ridiculously—attractive as author Taylor Antrim, the process of picture-taking can still be painful" and "He may have felt uncomfortable, but Mr. Antrim looked downright Gatsby-like" and "Patrician-boned Mr. Antrim." Anyhow, I thought that was funny.

And then, as the article goes on, Sara sort of relaxes the language a bit and lets Taylor do a lot more talking on his own. We hear about the book, about his prep school background, about his jobs, etc, and I think that's when the article gets more interesting.

Forbes has excerpted the novel here.

In related news, Joshua Ferris' story "Ghost Town Choir" from Prairie Schooner was selected by Edward P. Jones for inclusion in the upcoming volume of New Stories from the South. This may be old news, since Dan Wickett posted the information in February, but I figured I'd highlight it again.

Another Phoebe?

It came to Wade's attention a few weeks ago that there's another journal out there called Phoebe. Apparently a few poets thanked him for accepting their poems, when in fact he hadn't. After a bit of research, Wade figured it out. Apparently, the Women's and Gender Studies department at SUNY-Oneonta publishes a semiannual journal, "which fosters intellectual exchanges between scholars of women's and gender studies & gender & sexuality studies within SUNY, across the country and abroad."

Two more withdrawals to note on the fiction side of things:

• David Hammel recently withdrew a story titled "Tables" from consideration; the editors of The Distillery have picked it up for their next issue. The Distillery is a literary and creative arts journal out of Motlow State Community College in Lynchburg, TN.
  
• And according to email Bulletin #6 from the editors of Glimmertrain, Ron Savage's story "Baby Mine" will appear in a future issue. He withdrew the story from us back in May, if I remember correctly.

So congratulations to those two authors on their forthcoming publications.

NewPages Review

Last week, NewPages posted a batch of reviews of literary journals here.

Scroll down to read what Danielle LaVaque-Manty thought about our Spring 07 effort.

(Hint: the reviews are in alphabetical order)

Poetry Update

A quick follow-up to Ryan's recent post-
We got a bit backlogged during the Spring and are still reading poetry submissions from March and April. I hope to have all of those done before the start of the Fall semester, if not sooner, and will send notifications as we get stuff read. Anything we read now will be considered for our next issue (Spring 2008). We have received several withdrawal notices, which have been taken into consideration. If you've sent a submission query in recent weeks, expect a reply soon. As Ryan pointed out, we do not read over the summer (and our office is "officially" closed) but we are taking some time to catch up with reading - just expect a longer response time if you do send a query or other email.

Also, any poems received this summer (before Sept 1) will be returned unread. Please consider resubmitting in the fall.

Thanks for your patience and support.

Summer Reading, Submissions, Mailing

On the fiction side of things, we've just about gotten through our submissions (though Regan has a few packets of as-of-yet unread stories that she took with her on vacation to read through). We're at the stage now where Nat and I are passing around a lot of the stories that made it through the initial stages of review. These are stories that have caught our eye for one reason or another, and so we're reading them again and again to see what we think.

I saw that Wade is starting to get into the poems from March and April. So he's working hard to get those read as well.

So far, we've accepted one story that we're really happy with and we're about to accept another probably later today. These are stories that we absolutely had to have, that we were really moved by, and we can't wait to print them.

A quick note: we're not currently reading new stories. In other words, stories that come into us over the summer, we'll have to return unread (if they have enough postage) or we'll have to send a note asking the author to resubmit when our reading period reopens in the Fall. I know some journals take in submissions year round, but I think this little breathing period is important for us; we have a small staff, and we do a lot of catching up over the summer.

Nat's currently working to get the mailing taken care of (the Fall issue we just printed), and we're looking at possibly getting the issue into some local bookstores, so we'll see how that goes.