riverSedge is a literary
journal of culture and literature with an understanding of its place in the
nation. The “river’s edge” means many things: the edge of the America’s,
divided by the Rio Grande, as well as the cutting edge of creativity in
language and genre. Since 1977, riverSedge has published the very best
art and literature from the South Texas region and beyond. Past artists and
authors have included Barry Deutsch, Larry McMurtry, Rolando Hinojosa, and
Sandra Cisneros.
I
posed a question to the riverSedge
editorial staff: What makes a successful submission and what doesn’t? Here is
how they responded (along with a little bit about who they are):
Jean
Braithwaite (Graphic Literature Editor): I’m part of the creative writing
program, the literary-nonfiction person, but I’m interested in a wide range of
other academic and artistic areas too. One of my particular passions is graphic
literature, aka comics. We’re living in the great age of comics right now, not
just single-panel or single-strip jokes, but journalism, memoir, fiction,
essays, even poetry in comics form.
As
riverSedge graphic-literature editor, I’m currently not getting the
volume of submissions I’d like to see. Send me more! I’m looking for
originality of voice/vision. Of course it helps to be an excellent draftsman,
but even more important than that is deploying your compositional elements
effectively: character and plot (for narrative pieces), setting, theme,
imagery, tone, point-of-view, etc.
Britt
Haraway (Fiction Editor): I am an Assistant Professor at the University of
Texas Rio Grande Valley. My stories have appeared in the South Dakota Review,
Natural Bridge, New Madrid, Great Weather for Media, Moon
City Review, and BorderSenses. My poetry has also appeared in BorderSenses.
My manuscript of stories Early Men has been provisionally accepted by
Lamar University Literary Press.
The
terms for a successful submission in fiction will be generated by each story—what
are its apparent goals and questions and to what degree and with what quality does
the story pursue those goals. Hard and fast rules will not cover the wonderful
variety within the genre, and its hybrids. Me and our readers will follow
anywhere for resonance and emotional contact and meaning. Thoughtful engagement
with human experience and knowledge is vital, and this usually occurs in a
story on the sentence level, where carefully imagined scenes (visceral and
emotional) take their form in imagery, in which some small moment or picture
has some correspondence with that which endures beyond moments.
These
are the kind of readings you would find at most literary magazines; though with
riverSedge, one perhaps gets extra credit for writing about something
with a lot of urgency, rather than trying to observe a smaller slice of
existence.
It
seems natural to us that since our staff is pulled from the campuses where both
Gloria Anzaldúa and Américo Paredes once studied, we should have an openness
with regards to language. We have editors like Shoney Flores and José Antonio
Rodríguez who have a lot of experience with translating work between English
and Spanish, and we take pride in being able to carefully consider and edit
work in English and Spanish and everything in between.
Katherine
Hoerth (Interview Editor): I’m a poet, teacher, reviewer, and editor living in
Deep South Texas. My interests include revisionist myth, gender and feminism,
formalism, and the borderlands.
A
successful interview unfolds like a conversation, natural, intriguing,
insightful. I like interviews that dig beyond the expected, reveal something
about the author and their work, and provide context and narrative. As a
reader, I want to feel like I have a seat a the table, sipping coffee with the
author and interviewer.
Marianita
Escamilla (Non-Fiction Editor): I’m a former forensic DNA analyst who
now spends her time writing and teaching First Year Writing Courses and Creative
Writing courses at UTRGV. I also love being connected to the writing community
outside of the university.
I
don’t believe in checklists or individual elements. I like looking at a piece
of writing as a whole and if it creates an open door to the writer’s view of
the world he’s describing.
José
Rodriguez (Poetry Editor): I am part of the MFA-Creative Writing faculty at
UTRGV and poetry and scriptwriting editor of riverSedge.
Well,
for both genres, start with a clean and professional submission with a brief
bio. For scriptwriting, I look primarily at sharp dialogue and an engaging
plot. For poetry, I look for evocative imagery and movement from start to
finish, by which I mean that the speaker or subject of the poem has undergone a
change, even if small, by the last line.
[riverSedge
is now accepting submissions for its next issue. There are $900 in prizes to
winning entries in poetry, prose, and art. Deadline is March 1, 2016. For full
details, visit http://riversedge.submittable.com.
Also, follow riverSedge on Twitter (@riversedgergv) and Facebook (http://facebook.com/riverSedgeliteraryjournal).]
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