DANIEL OLIVAS: Does Pilgrimage have an
“aesthetic” or do you allow the submissions to guide the tone and personality
of the journal?
JUAN MORALES: Pilgrimage
Magazine carries the tagline of Story, Spirit, Witness, and Place in and
around the Greater Southwest, and every issue is unified by a theme. For the
first two issues I edited, I went about it backwards, combing through
submissions, ordering acceptances, and then laying out the stories, essays, and
poems on my living room floor to find the ways these pieces spoke to each other
before deciding on a theme. This allowed me to get a sense of what type of work
Pilgrimage received and helped me learn a lot about the existing
community surrounding the magazine. I am still impressed by the strong sense of
community this magazine has and how inclusive it is in welcoming so many
diverse voices. For the upcoming issues we have been getting settled and have
migrated back to setting up a theme and then sending out the call for
submissions. We remain open to quality poetry and prose from new and upcoming
writers as well as established writers. We do not want writers and readers to
see our themes as limitations; rather, we use these themes to guide the writers
into conversations with each other that can be viewed with so many different
lenses where the quality of the work rises beyond any specific sense of
aesthetic.
DO: You’ve taken
the reins as editor and publisher with Pilgrimage now being
housed out of Colorado State University-Pueblo. Do you see the
journal changing in anyway? What are your goals?
JM: When I first
started teaching at Colorado State University-Pueblo six years ago, we already
had a strong literary magazine for our students, called Tempered Steel,
and it was always my dream to bring a national literary journal here. I knew it
would be supported and welcomed by our campus. We are fortunate that it was Pilgrimage,
a magazine with a rich history, a unique voice, and a journal that has always
let the writers distinguish it further. The past editors, Maria Melendez, Peter
Anderson, David Barstow, and others, all made lasting contributions to the
magazine, and I am still learning what mine should be. We are building on the
traditions and adding subtle changes as we move forward. These could be as
small as adding a little more color to the cover art, to developing a stronger
digital presence, and to accepting submissions via Submittable and mail.
Another change is we now accept fiction without any special invitation.
Historically, Pilgrimage Magazine first published only nonfiction and
then added another emphasis to poetry. We want to open the doors to fiction now
too, and we want to keep exploring the ways the art we feature accompanies the
words.
Our
new home at CSU-Pueblo, which is a Hispanic Serving Institution, offers us an
exciting partnership and new forms of support that will help keep Pilgrimage
alive and well and in print: a physical space to work, an editorial assistant,
access to grants and fellowships, and the opportunity to connect with existing
programs at the university, such as our new partnership with the SoCo Reading
Series. It's also important to reach out to the partnerships beyond the
university. For example, we will be sharing a table at the upcoming AWP
Conference with Letras Letinas, which shows our commitment to supporting
Latina/o writers and other diverse voices. As the new editor and publisher, I
want to honor the legacy while ushering Pilgrimage into the challenging
waters of publishing that has to balance the print and digital world. I also
want to maintain a community that surprises and innovates, housed in the words
written by our writers and in pages turned by our readers. In order to do that,
we have to keep in touch with the established community and invite more people
to join it.
DO: The subtitle
of Pilgrimage is: STORY • SPIRIT • WITNESS •
PLACE. Could you talk a little about this subtitle and its purpose?
JM: Pueblo,
Colorado sits on the edge of the southwest, so I am lucky to witness the
mystery and beauty of this region every day. I was naïve to think people who
submit and subscribe would only be from the American southwest, or even the
west. It has been wonderful to see how
explorations of our themes and the strong devotion to place entices readers and
writers from across the United States and even international destinations to
subscribe and submit. Pilgrimage has always grounded its readers with
strong writing connected to place and the sacred themes, but what sets it apart
is the way it challenges its writers and readers to go beyond conventional
thinking of these four words in our subtitle. These four words are very
accessible to everyone and delves into our core needs and wants as people. The
writers we publish engage these words by finding the miraculous, the political,
and personal catharses that emerge in the every day. It asks tough questions
and invites voices to show how they overlap contrasting things, such as the
search for beauty within the tough themes of eco-poetics and social justice.
Everyone has a story to tell and they want to show how it fulfills them
spiritually.
 |
| Juan Morales |
DO: What is the
hardest part of producing a literary journal?
JM: Producing a
literary journal has been a humbling experience. There are so many aspects of
it that need to be done all at once. You're promoting the current issue,
reading submissions for the next one, corresponding with subscribers, taking
your fourth trip to the post office in a week, and then making sure the layout
you're uploading has the latest edits. Then, there are the inevitable mistakes
that keep you grounded and leave you saying to yourself, "I didn't see
that coming." Of course, this is all framed by the time and budgetary
issues.You need every step to keep the magazine alive, and you seek out ways to
let it overlap with your work as professor, administrator, curator, and writer.
Before I entered this side of the publishing world, I always heard people say
it is a labor of love, and I definitely buy into that. I can be a stubborn guy,
so delegating to the people who are willing and able to help has been one of
the hardest parts. It's getting easier, especially when you are surrounded by a
talented people, who believe in Pilgrimage as much as you do.
DO: What advice to
you have for writers who wish to submit to Pilgrimage?
JM: Like other
editors, we want to publish what we read and want to read again. Send us your
best work, even if you do not think it fully matches up with our themes and
then come back to the subtitles to see how you might be speaking to it in a
different way. Another challenge to consider would be to write to the themes
and taglines without saying those words. Imply them. Trust your instincts with
what you write and don't send us what you think we want. For example, we
receive a lot of submissions that speak on an individual or a family's battle
with a tragic illness and the spiritual journey it creates, and we also receive
a lot of work about witnessing something lasting in nature. We are open to
publishing strong instances of these examples, but we are not limited to these
either. Regardless of the subject matter, I recommend that the writers take us
beyond summarizing the situation and let us access the emotional intensity. Use
the words to show us the urgency of preserving this moment, emotion, or place.
[To
find out more about Pilgrimage,
including subscription information and submission guidelines, visit its website.]
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