Old Pal publishes poetry, fiction, critical non-fiction, excerpts, audio, mixed-media, and various mediums of art. Submissions are limited to 15 pages of written work or six pages of other media. Contributors are paid $50.00 upon publication. Read the complete guidelines here.
SQF: Why did you start this magazine?
Alex Dannemiller: Karolinn, Ryan, and I were meeting regularly at a local bar, Roadside Attraction, and talking about writing and art, and we just kept thinking about starting a journal or magazine. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed editing and had prior experience working on journals, so I wanted to continue that kind of work. But, moreover, while Portland had and has a lot of wonderful publishers and journals, and a rich arts history that obviously predates us, at the time, I think we had this mutual idea that there were a number of people we knew of and saw participating in local events who weren’t published or not getting as much attention. So, we wanted to contribute to the efforts of boosting those voices that were part of the community. We also saw it as an opportunity to connect that local community with others whose work we really loved as well, putting them together in the kind of collaborative form a magazine can take. I also really wanted to do some different experimental things with a journal, which I still want us to push further into. There are a lot of publications that I admire that are very distinct, in terms of design, voice, or what they publish, and I wanted us to have our own entry into that field. I think too I just really love showcasing other people’s work, no matter where they’re from or what kind of work they produce, and I wanted to continue doing that with co-editors whose opinions and ideas I gelled with and really trusted.
Karolinn Fiscaletti: The Portland literary scene was shifting when we first started Old Pal. I remember that a few reading series and publications I loved were either shutting down or taking a hiatus, and a lot of my motivation to get this off the ground was to bridge some of the gap I was seeing at the time—to offer a space for literature and art that I loved. Like Alex said, a lot of that literature and art was coming from people whose work I knew but who weren’t getting much attention. In the beginning, we were just soliciting work from poets and artists we admired. Opening up to free submissions for our last two issues has been so exciting because I feel like we’re getting to see work from artists around the world—some of whom have never been published.
Ryan Mills: There was a lot of sitting around talking about poetry and art and the best places to encounter said poetry and art. At the time of Old Pal’s founding, the Portland literary scene was thriving, but cliquey. We started Old Pal in an attempt to be a welcome place for the various Portland groups, and with aspirations to showcase Portland to the larger art community across the country and the world.
SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
AD: I think the first is really the most subjective, which is if I find it entertaining or interesting or capturing my attention. I like insightful moments, well-told yarns, reflective human experiences, good imagery, scifi, horror, fantastical, weird, visually unique, or experimental stuff, just to name a few. What also interests me is kind of tied with the second thing I look for, which is something that is accomplishing what it’s trying to do in an effective way. I really try to judge the effectiveness of the work on its own terms. So, is it pulling me into it? Even if not, is it functioning well in what it seems to be attempting to accomplish? Even if the piece isn’t something I’d casually read, I might still be open to publishing it if it’s working really well or could be enjoyed by someone who does really vibe with it. I think the third thing is more of a large picture kind of thing. I do often consider how a piece connects with the larger assemblage of a potential issue, or how it will inform our vision for what Old Pal is. We’ve gotten some great, engaging, effective submissions, but they just didn’t feel right for the voice of Old Pal. I think that’s an important thing to understand as a submitter too, that a rejection might not be on the basis of the quality of your work, but that the publisher doesn’t feel it fits for their own idea of what their publication sounds like. Kind of like picking the right songs for a mixtape or playlist, you might not include a song you really love if it doesn’t fit with the overall mood of the tape.
KF: I’m a poet, so my demands are (deceptively?) simple. I look to be excited by form or medium or tone or musicality. I look to be emotionally engaged by content. And I look for work that (even tangentially) intersects with what I consider to be Old Pal’s aesthetic—a cool and fresh and tender style informed by the broad, growing body of work in past issues.
RM: The first thing I look for in a submission is an enticing entry point. Next, if a submission can sustain a level of interest to hold the reader/viewer’s attention. And finally that the piece creates some kind of moment of reflection or further ponderance after having finished reading or viewing.
SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?
AD: Kind of in line with my answers above, I think stuff that doesn’t seem like it’s ready to be published yet, stuff that feels like it still needs more revision to really work effectively in the ways it seems to want to. There’s been submissions I’ve read where x and z work really well, but y doesn’t fit yet, and the size of y is too big or too integral to attempt to fix through working with the writer in editing. It really just needs more time in the oven. I do want to note though, I’m not saying everything submitted to us needs to be masterly crafted or held to some impossible standard. We try not to be super stuck up or elitist. I’m definitely guilty of submitting to other journals things that still needed work or editing as well. Sometimes you don’t realize it until you’ve had more time to think about it or someone else points it out. One other obvious thing that often turns me off from a submission are submissions that just don’t fit with what we actually publish. I’m all for taking chances on new ideas and directions, and I don’t think submitters should be required to read every issue of a journal before submitting, but at the same time there are submissions where it’s clear someone hasn’t really paid attention to our guidelines or really looked at our magazine and are just sending us whatever. But I think that’s a common issue for journals.
KF: If I am feeling bored it’s a bad sign. Things that bore me include preachy prose, poems that do not attend to sound or form, and art that I can’t access emotionally.
RM: If a piece can’t grab and sustain my attention, I am likely to look away.
SQF: What do you look for in the opening paragraph(s)/stanza(s) of a submission?
AD: Gosh, I don’t know if there’s something I intentionally look for. There’s common advice that the openings of any work are important for getting your reader invested, and I think there is some truth to that. In a way I guess I do look for, maybe, an awareness of that importance? But honestly, there are a lot of great stories or poems that don’t follow common advice. However, it seems in many cases there’s naturally an importance in where you’re starting. A good example where I thought about this recently was when watching the first season of The White Lotus, which begins with an opening that’s a kind of flashforward in narrative time. Why that moment? Why start there and not at a more natural starting point of arriving at the resort? How does that change the story or the reader’s anticipation or perspective on the story’s progression as they watch it? What I might look for then is if the opening’s starting point has an effective impact on the piece or if it feels like the right moment to enter that narrative and does it entice me to read on. But honestly, typically, I read at least two pages into every story along with its ending, and multiple stanzas of a poem or the whole thing if it’s short, before deciding to stay with it or move on. So, openings can certainly make a difference, but I don’t go into submissions looking for something in particular and don’t put the whole weight on the opening alone. You can always try to work with the writer to edit an opening to be more effective, but you can’t rewrite the whole thing.
KF: I don’t have a list. I like to approach the opening paragraph/stanza/musical phrase/image/unit of mixed media with an open mind and then monitor myself for signs of pleasure or displeasure. I acknowledge that this isn’t exactly a helpful answer.
RM: I look for an entryway into the larger piece. For poetry that could be some kind of signal of how the poem will be functioning or experimenting. For prose, attention to the language set of the piece and how that will be propelling the piece forward.
SQF: Many editors list erotica, or sex for sex sake, as hard sells. What are hard sells for your publication?
AD: It’s funny, it actually depends on the kind of erotica for me. If the sex is serving some other purpose, exploring some additional thing through it, or if you’re just really freaking good at writing entertaining erotica, I might be on board. Religion is actually a harder sell than sex for me. I’m interested in exploring concepts related to theology or spirituality, but writing that’s proselytizing, for any religion, is usually a hard no. People exploring their relationships with religion, or the complications or concepts related to religion, I’m more open to. But yeah, I’m not interested in Left Behind kind of writing.
KF: I like erotica and wouldn’t be opposed to publishing it if it struck me as beautiful. Along similar lines as Alex, hard sells for me would be most types of persuasive essays (we’ve had a few of those in our last two rounds of submissions and I almost never respond well to them)—or writing that is pedantic or condescending.
RM: Excessive and gratuitous violence is a hard sell, as well as any kind of bigotry or racism.
SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?
AD: How has your local writing and arts community influenced your magazine or what you look for? Something I think that’s interesting about journals or magazines that are “placed,” those that present themselves as based in a certain location, is that they can give you an insight into what the writing and arts community there is putting out. While we do take international submissions, we also actively try to stay tethered to Portland as well by making sure we publish local creatives. This is our home, and Portland’s arts scene is very active, eclectic, and diverse. One thing I really love about it is that there’s such a variety of smaller pocket communities that create some solid representation. We could always have more, but there’s a lot of organizations, groups, publishers, teachers, performers, writers, and artists, who are actively thinking about that too, questioning what more they could do or who else could they bring in. There may be valid push back to that statement though, as I do sometimes think performative inclusivity can still be an issue, and there may be some people that still rightfully feel underrepresented. And I do think that the pandemic hit a lot of the events scene, or at least wounded my own participation in it to the point where I’m less aware, but in the past, and somewhat still, it’s been a wonderful city for finding random readings or art events that spoke to different people. Maybe it’s been common knowledge and I just lived in a hole, but when I first moved out here in 2013 I was surprised at how active it was. There are big, nationally recognized organizations and publishers that deservedly get a lot of credit for that activity, but I think outside of their work what made me really love the community here are the efforts put in by individuals who kept welcoming people and showing up for them so that they could share their work with whoever was in the room. I want us to add our light to that fire and help keep it going. And I think we try to channel that atmosphere and collective spirit into Old Pal.
KF: Interesting! I like to be asked what the future looks like for Old Pal. I like to respond with my dreamy agenda of print publishing. I like to ruminate on putting people’s poetry collections out into the world.
RM: A question I would like to be asked of Old Pal is how we consider ourselves to be different from other (mostly) online lit mags. I would say that we are sure to give our submitters a clear timeline of when they can expect to hear back from us regarding their submissions, and that we stick to those timelines. Furthermore I would say that all of us editors work full time jobs outside of academia or publishing, and we use funds from our own earnings to pay our contributors.
Thank you, Alex, Karolinn, and Ryan. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.
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