Editor Real Talk: How Has the Covid Pandemic Affected Your Literary Magazine?
A behind-the-scenes look at lit mags in uncertain times
Most lit-mag editors wear multiple hats. Editors are professors, writers and mentors. Editors may be graduate students, workers of multiple jobs, part-time teachers and/or full-time parents.
Amidst the pandemic pandemonium, how have operations changed at your lit mag? Have you brought in more readers to help with submissions? Have you had to delay publication dates? Have you created new theme issues in response to the crisis? Has your journal’s host university made changes to the magazine operations? Have you found a way to keep your lit mag thriving in uncertain times?
Please share your story.
At Belletrist magazine (published at Bellevue College in WA state), the pandemic coincided with the sudden defunding of the literary magazine (along with many other arts and extracurricular initiatives that had received funding from Student Programs). It's a long story about the campus politics and confusion about funding policies that had already been brewing on campus, but the way we decided to respond to the double catastrophe was to produce the 2020 issue in a special-edition, McSweeney's-esque "scroll." This would be an issue that could be unfurled to be read, a la a toilet-paper roll (in a nod to pandemic culture). There will be five or six prose pieces in it, none longer than about 500 words, each published as a single long line; the separate pieces will be stacked on top of each other.
As for the funding of this, a third 2020 disaster for me personally was the sudden loss of both my parents. The deaths in the family meant I inherited a surprisingly large sum of money. So, I offered to bankroll the production of the special issue, pending us figuring out (we hope) more sustainable sources of funding from our college in future.
In a related point, I actually did a project last spring where I gathered a list of names of similarly placed lit mags to us (i.e., journals published at two-year colleges or comparable institutions) and sent them a message offering a free ad or link on our site and/or a free issue, in return for their answering questions about how they had gone about establishing sustainable funding. Unfortunately, I got no responses to this. However, maybe just my posting about this here could help--or maybe Lit Mag News could help in some other way, perhaps by hosting a roundtable, like those of old, to talk about funding strategies, especially now when many states and schools might face austerity budgets.
Thanks for this forum!
Over at The Ilanot Review, we felt partly responsible for bringing on the pandemic, because our last two themes (selected a year in advance) were "Home/work" (for March) and "toxic" for Sept. To compensate, and make the world right again, we are now reading for our "Delight" themed issue (open through January). In the spring we'll read for our "ephemera" themed issue. http://www.ilanotreview.com/submissions-page/#:~:text=Delight!,submission