On-line Journal Makes Daring Enterprise
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After receiving a degree in English with a creative writing focus from the University of Arkansas, Patrick McAllistar moved back home to Fayetteville to ponder his next move. Perusing other online journals inspired him to establish the Emprise Review, a bimonthly publication featuring fiction, poetry, book reviews, and interviews with authors and other artists. The effort progressed faster than imagined and relegated his own fiction writing to the sidelines, but since its first issue in 2008 it has become a respectable outlet featuring the work of Roxane Gay, Robert Smartwood, Ethel Rohan, Steve Himmer, and others.
When you were establishing the Emprise Review, how did you carry out the call for editors?
I had the initial, fundamental pages for the website like the masthead and the About page and on that I said I was looking for editors and got listed with Duotrope’s [Digest]. Within a few days or weeks I got some responses, some good and some not so good as far as the quality. I was surprised at how many English majors and writers or editors were out there looking for work, even if it wasn’t paying work, looking for something to do, credits so to speak. So I found some people and got going from there.
What drew you to these people? Did you feel like you had a shared vision about what you wanted to publish?
I think that was certainly part of it. In the case of the [original] poetry editor [Karen Rigby], she had a website of her own, she had publication credits. I liked her writing, and went pretty far in measuring what her tastes would be. Certainly we both had an interest in supporting writing that was not too experimental. We owed a debt to canon and what’s been established. I don’t know if you’d call it classical, but established forms, not too experimental. Which is what I learned at Arkansas. They didn’t take us too far down the experimental road, unless you went into the graduate program.
The word “Emprise” means adventure or a daring enterprise, and it suits your philosophy about what you look for in a story or poem. Could it also apply to your experience of diving into the growing pool of online literary magazines?
At the time, I was looking for a word that maybe wasn’t in use, that was kind of unique. I went to the thesaurus and found it that way; it wasn’t in my vocabulary. Looking back on it now, after being in it for two years, after seeing people in the field, how many people have grant money, or MFAs, or PhDs…It’s a massive field and many people have more experience or better access, so there’s definitely some risk involved, certainly dealing with writers on a daily basis, that in itself can be an adventure, a little bit risky because they’re taking a risk in submitting their work. They’re putting themselves out there. They have expectations about what you do with their work, so it’s definitely a risk, definitely an adventure.
What sets Emprise Review apart from other journals?
One thing I have always liked is that we don’t have ads on the site. One day we’ll probably have to get into that to get some revenue going. As of now, we don’t have any money, because it’s a “we like to do it” venture. I’ve always been proud of that. I think that sets us apart. The writers do it presumably because they want to get published and because they want people reading their work.
And even though we can do better when it comes to blogging daily content, some websites push too hard as far as getting something on the website daily. They don’t need to put it up there; it’s just to get their Google visibility up, just to get daily readers. It doesn’t add anything to the discussion. I certainly understand why they’re doing it, but the quality maybe isn’t there.
What do the editors look for in a work of fiction or poetry?
It depends on who the editor is. I like to let them select. They have free reign; I’ve maybe vetoed a handful of poems or stories. Very generally [for fiction] it’s something that has a good sense of narrative flow, real people, good storytelling, and interesting voice from the author or characters.
Very broadly we're looking for verse and prose poetry that has a good sense of established poetic style and mechanics. I say that well aware there are poets operating without "rules" or as experimental poets and so maybe they just checked-out, and that's fine. There are plenty of journals out there.
That said, we've have had two different lead Poetry Editors and a handful of readers so the editorial purview has been different from that standpoint, and, issue to issue they've been great in taking it upon themselves to seek different writers and different styles. So don't read this and feel disqualified, don't read the poetry we've published and feel disqualified. The absolute best thing you can do as a submitting writer is surprise an editor. Even if we don't necessarily take the piece it might start a dialog and we take subsequent work or even broach the possibility of an interview. Take a shot. See what happens.
What are some publications that you admire?
Dark Sky Magazine, PANK, Lamination Colony, Paris Review (I know at an indie magazine that’s not popular to say but I still like what they do), The Believer—those are my top five, the ones I’ll hit most frequently.
Do you and your staff have any long-term goals or directions you are working toward, or are you content to continue with your current format?
We certainly nailed down the bimonthly publication. We’ve gotten really good at turning out the issue itself, with poetry, fiction, and some non-fiction content. One of the things we’ve been having difficulty with is filling the blanks between those publications, with some interviews, some reviews, some blog content—some quality content to fill the space to keep some visitors coming. That’s certainly our long term goal. If we get regular content, some columnists…That scenario could definitely use some work.
What other advice would you give to those who would like their work published in the Emprise Review?
The first thing, to be quite honest, is to submit clean copy. We’ll catch some errors like something even Microsoft Word would catch. It’s frustrating because you certainly hope that they wouldn’t send that piece to a bigger magazine. It’s quite frankly rude that they would send it our way. Just send your best work and don’t get caught up in what we have published before because we do try to mix it up. We don’t say “This is what we did last month so we’re going to do it again.” Just send whatever your best work is, and if it’s a quality piece then we’re going to take it. We don’t have any quick quotas or metrics; we go by each individual piece’s merits.
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Sally Bunch is a Boston-based writer whose articles on education, parenting, gardening, and other topics have been published in print and online. Her stories have appeared in DiddleDog Flash Fiction, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Frostwriting, and she is working on a novel.
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