Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

DOES BREVITY ONLY PUBLISH 'PUBLISHED' WRITERS?

BREVITY received an interesting e-mail recently, and it got me to thinking about our purpose and our history. We’re about to launch Issue 25: the Silver Anniversary, so that’s as good a time as any to take stock.

Here’s an excerpt from the e-mail:

“I have enjoyed reading your journal (but) ... honesty would go as far in your submission guidelines as it does in the essays themselves. Be honest upfront and say that every essay accepted is written by a published writer ... Not everyone who reads your journal is a published writer. And not everyone who submits an essay is a published writer. But only those that are get published. Honesty is the best policy in all things … -- Karen”

Though we are blessed – and we mean that – blessed – to have distinguished writers like Rebecca McClanahan, Bret Lott, Lia Purpura, Brenda Miller, and Sue William Silverman send work our way, the three most recent issues also include work by graduate students, recently graduated students, and those still very much at the beginning of their publishing careers. We have featured at least one undergraduate in our pages (though we didn’t know she was an undergraduate student until well after we accepted her stunning essay), and we read always with an open mind.

It seems everyone in our more recent issues lists at least one prior publication in the bio note, but to be honest, these are sometimes very small magazines: student-run journals, or new, not-yet-established online zines. This is not to diminish those venues; just to say that most all of us start in smaller outlets, and then we publish someplace else, and then someplace else, and with luck – and inordinate determination – we end up well-published.

Should we be “honest upfront and say that every essay accepted is written by a published writer”? Well, I suppose that depends on what Karen means by “published writer.” We aren’t, and never want to be, home to the usual suspects found in every University literary magazine (though frankly, many of these folks become the usual suspects because they write so damn well.) And we pride ourselves, given our low-cost, online format, on being one of the rungs along the first half of the ladder that student writers and other newcomers can still grab hold of.

Is it likely that writers – even very beginning writers – who attract our notice have been noticed by other small magazines and thus have a few additional publications under their belt? Yes. Does that mean we only read work by well-published writers? Not at all. Writing well, clearly, briefly, with freshness and energy, is not an easy task, but anyone who does so, has our full attention.

Why does it seem that so many "published" writers end up getting published? Because hard work, fearless self-criticism, and tireless revision on one essay tends to translate into hard work, fearless self-criticism, and tireless revision on all of a writer's essays, and suddenly that writer is appearing in multiple places, pulled from the slush pile by multiple editors.

So there you have it. Thanks for writing.

--Dinty W. Moore, Editor
September 2007

PS -- Responses welcome. Send them to the submission address and we'll post them on the blog