Six Questions for Admir Siljak and Jacob Parsons, Co-Editors-in-Chief, Slippage Lit

“At Slippage Lit we don’t want our contributors to feel restricted by form or genre, as such we don’t distinguish submissions by genre. We want your writing that slips between poetry and fiction, weaves together more than one genre. Have you written a memoir in verse? Fantastic, we want it! Have you written a science-fiction sonnet? Awesome, send it our way! Have you written a Horror Comedy that will have us in hysterics? That sounds like something we would like!” Read the complete guidelines here .

SQF: Why did you start this magazine?

Jacob Parsons: Having been submitting to literary journals for a while I grew increasingly curious about what it would be like to be on the other side of the table. I have discovered so many pieces of writing and writers I admire through literary magazines and being the person who finds and champions a work they love appealed to me. Of course we wanted our magazine to be distinguishable from the many other publications out there, which is why we decided to ask for submissions of people’s strangest writing. The stuff they are really proud of but think won’t be suitable for publication.

Admir Siljak: Now it looks like--even to me--that we started this magazine to open a platform for all those people dabbling in unconventional styles and genres, to promote good writing in often unseen forms and to share the gift of great stories by great writers with the world.
But it's actually because Jacob approached me one day and said:

“Hey, let's start a literary magazine.”

And so we did. All the rest came later, mostly as a result of my resistance to the idea.


SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?

JP: As we are asking for people’s strangest work we are hoping to read things we never expected to read, so pinning down things we want to see is difficult, but for me I love:

• An attention to language: Lyrical prose or fractured verse, I want to see that the writer has chosen their words very carefully and agonised over their sentences/lines.
• Bravery: Bravery of the writer to submit something different; something that isn’t common, or isn’t done at all. Submitting alone is an act of bravery, but I like to see a piece that takes it that extra step.
• Unconventionality in style or form: We want to be a home to weird, out of date, maybe even a little silly (but still good) works that writers write despite not being able to publish them. If you’ve written a good folk tale, a Shakespearean sonnet, a three line essay, a really good limerick, or just a regular story or poem with unusual contents, we’re happy to publish it.

SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?

AS: Blandness, failing to properly portray sensitive topics (i.e. suicide, rape, etc.), and talking about a topic everyone is familiar with, with a ‘cool’ detachment and aloofness that lends false credibility to a writer to write about something already written about from the same perspective a thousand times.

JP: All those things, but also not following guidelines. People, please double-space your submissions to the longer categories. My eyes are not what they used to be. It may sound petty, but if you are not willing to read the guidelines, why should I read your work?


SQF: Many editors list erotica, or sex for sex sake, as hard sells. What are hard sells for your publication?

AS: The only really hard sell is work that is not out of the ordinary. We have received a couple of really good stories and poems, something we’re glad to have read, that just weren’t that unusual. They weren’t written weirdly, didn’t have a strange theme, idea, style or form, they were just normal but good stories and poems. And though it’s tough for us, that sort of work will probably be rejected.

JP: It’s hard to reject quality work, but more typically contemporary styles will be unlikely to find a home in Slippage Lit. Other than that, we obviously won’t publish any work that is disparaging towards any groups or individuals.


SQF: Will you publish works already posted on an author’s website/blog?

JP: We don’t accept previously published work, if something is on your blog or social media and you want to submit to us, please remove it prior to doing so.


SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?

I wish you had asked: Why does your magazine separate work by word count and not genre?


Answer:  We do it this way because we want contributors to feel unrestricted by genre. We want to encourage experimentation and odd submissions that don’t fall neatly into a genre.

We also want readers to know what to expect in terms of how long a piece will take to read. Separating by word count fits the mission of Slippage Lit a lot better than making distinctions along genre lines.

Thank you, Jacob and Admir. We all appreciate you taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.