Letters From Libby James

There is a venue in Minnesota called State Theater. Over my life, I have seen some really amazing shows there (For those curious, the best show being The Swell Season. It was 2009, I was brokenhearted (what else is new, am I right?) It was a beautiful December night, I was writing some of my most unique poetry of my life and Glen Hansard may be the best live performer I will ever see). This building is amazing and old and I always thought how wonderful it would be to fill such a room as this....

If you have been receiving these letters for a while, I think it is pretty clear I am pro lit journal. I have worked on a few and I’ve been doing the 100 rejections challenge for years getting rejected predominately by lit mags. I am a fan. I know not everyone sees the value. I know writers who have never read a literary journal in their life (sad!). So, I am going to do a little preaching, with no agenda other than I want you to like what I like. Journals and magazines provide a direct...

This is your monthly reminder to put yourself out there! If you write eco-poetry, climate fiction, memoir or creative nonfiction or your writing is otherwise deeply rooted in coastal regions or New England (romance authors included), consider sending your manuscript to Sea Crow Press, this small press might be your perfect match. No agent needed. Denver Quarterly is looking for conversations (thoughtful and complex interviews), critiques & reviews, translations, and visual art. Free to...

I don’t love Las Vegas like I used to. I am not the same girl who used to come here yearly, and Vegas isn’t the same either; it too has changed in the last couple of years. As soon as I landed for the Author Nation conference and arrived on The Strip, I regretted coming. I had won a ticket to the conference, and my awesome friend J.L. Birchwood had offered to let me stay with her, which made attending possible to begin with. It felt like the universe was pushing me to go…but after I arrived,...

I believe that there should be income transparency across all fields, including the arts. We need to talk openly and honestly about where the main part of our income is coming from, so that writers, especially those new to this business can know what to expect and what to fight for for themselves. Traditional publishers continue to concentrate advances around a small number of headline authors, leaving midlist advances thinner and less frequent than they were a decade ago. According to the...

There’s always a little reaction from me when I see a literary journal charge a submission fee. It’s annoyance. Or disappointment. Sometimes it's enough to stop me from submitting altogether, depending on the month and my budget. And I know that my reaction can sometimes be warranted, and other times I have to acknowledge that it’s just the price of doing business—and that lit journals largely don’t bring in much money to cover their own expenses. Here’s what’s actually going on behind the...

Most journals will tell you exactly what they want when it comes to formatting your lit journal submission. But after this summer of reading for a lit journal, I saw so many writers still doing it wrong. The information will usually be on a Submittable page, a submission guidelines tab, or buried halfway down a general FAQ. Find it. Read it all the way through. Follow it exactly. If they say to include your name on the first page, do that. If they say to remove identifying info, do that. If...