"I've Always Wanted to Run a Little Magazine." A Chat with Seb Reilly, Editor of Seaside Gothic

“I want to be grabbed by the throat.”

Ahoy, mates! I come with a new editor interview, freshly in the books!

Today I spoke with Seb Reilly, Founding Editor of Seaside Gothic. Today’s conversation was particularly delightful for me as it combined three of my favorite things: the ocean, dark psychological landscapes in literature, and lovely British accents.

Seaside Gothic is based in Kent, England. The magazine “publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction of high quality that meet the criteria of seaside gothic literature.”

What is the criteria for “seaside gothic literature”? According to the site:

It is led by emotion, not reason, exploring the human experience mentally and spiritually as well as physically, and is unashamed to embrace the violence of the sea and the wind along with the beauty of the land and the sky and the ever-changing tide.

It addresses duality—land and sea, love and hate, the beautiful and the grotesque—to reflect the structures that line the coast, which are both those solidly braced against the fiercest elements and those built from what surrounds in a state of shanty transience.

It connects to the edge, living on the seaside either literally or figuratively, and has one foot in the water and the other on solid ground, presenting the juxtaposition of a physical border with open space and a wilderness of water that provides life yet is inconsumable.

You can imagine I had a lot of questions about each of these items. What does it mean for work to be “led by emotion”? How can an editor tell when a work is written this way? What does it mean for writing to “address duality”? In answering all of these questions, Seb took us through his own editorial process along with some lively detours through The Talented Mr. Ripley, Rebecca, and other novels along the way.

Work submitted to the magazine need not necessarily be set by the sea. The idea is that the work explores edges and duality. For instance, while The Talented Mr. Ripley is a book about obsession, mental pathology and murder, Seb pointed out it is also a story about tenderness and love. This is the sort of tension he seeks in submissions.

Seb is the sole editor of the magazine. As such, all submissions go directly to him. Cover letters are unimportant. Once the submission window opens, he immediately begins reading and coming up with his long list. Works that do well are the ones he can’t stop thinking about and which surprise in interesting ways. “I want to be seduced,” Seb said. And also, “I want to be grabbed by the throat.”

Common stories he sees a lot of entail people walking off into the sea, someone disappearing from a cliff, mermaids and selkies. Yes, selkies. If you don’t know what that is (as I didn’t), you can learn more about selkies here. (But if you choose to write about them, make sure you’re doing so in a way that is fresh and surprising.)

As for what the magazine actively seeks more of, Seb said nonfiction is under-represented in submissions. He wants more first-person personal essays. These can be investigative and/or stream-of-consciousness, so long as it’s clear why the piece matters to the writer, and how it fits the magazine’s criteria.

As sole editor, Seb is actively involved in all phases of the magazine, from start to finish. He often works with writers on revision and has often worked through multiple rounds of edits for a piece in which he saw true potential. He considers it an honor to read people’s work and takes pride in presenting the work in its published form.

What final suggestions does Seb have for writers just before they hit Send on their manuscripts? What terrific insights about effective dialogue did Seb share here? And what sort of literary community has Seb forged out in his own seaside edge?

For all that and more, dear ones, you will have to tune in!

Seaside Gothic is open for one week only, four times per year. Prose submissions should be under one-thousand words. All contributors are paid. You can find the schedule for open submissions here.

To everyone who came out today, thank you for participating! Your faces are the shimmery rainbows inside the puddles of my rainy winter day!

And, of course, thank you to Seb for taking us behind the scenes of another lovely little magazine.

Happy viewing!

Views expressed by any editor during an interview do not necessarily reflect my own.

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