Propagule publishes fiction, non-fiction and visual art. “We are especially interested in the aesthetically novel, experimental, transgressive, and uncategorizable.” Read the complete guidelines here.
SQF: Why did you start this magazine?
Editors: We started Propagule because we felt like the kind of fiction we most enjoy—thoughtful, experimental, and largely unreal in its aesthetics—wasn’t well represented in contemporary literature, especially in the sphere of the short story. We wanted to create a journal that would be the kind of journal that we had been seeking, but having little success finding.
SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
Editors: In no particular order:
Stories that are slippery. Which is to say stories that don’t easily fall into standard categorizations and rebel in one way or another against stylistic, structural, and ideological dogmas of the time period. We find that a lot of contemporary fiction is resolutely realist, and fundamentally anthropocentric. You’ll find plenty of stories out there trying to communicate the nature of this or that particular human (usually social) experience. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and it’s something we enjoy, but we often find ourselves drawn to writing that seems to slip out of the folds of the human brain, and stretches toward becoming something beyond or something other. We think this is one of the often unspoken dogmas of art—that art has to be about us (meaning: human beings). We think art can be about anything. Our art should be able to leave us behind, in a sense, when it feels the urge to. The pure modality of language is a perfect vehicle for this.
Stories that aren’t aimed at some representational notion of truth. Often fiction (or art more largely) will frustrate us when we get the sense that a creator is attempting to turn it into, so to speak, a means of stating a proposition. Take ‘proposition’ to be a (sufficiently adequate/accurate) depiction or description (representation) of the way the world is. We don’t deny at all that fiction, as far as fiction is language, does seem to naturally attempt to make models of the world. However, we feel that the best stories are those with greater ambitions than simply trying to state some worldly fact or another.
This last one is hard to define, but we’re always looking for a property similar to novelty. We want to read stories that don’t strike us the way that previous stories have. If we’re entering a house, we want to enter through a different door each time. Or we want to go to a new house entirely. Or somewhere that isn’t a house at all.
SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?
Editors: If the submission seems too traditional, too ideological, or too familiar, we’re not likely to be interested in it.
SQF: What do you look for in the opening paragraph(s)/stanza(s) of a submission?
Editors: Mastery of language. Sentences that flick and curl and spasm in strange, bright ways. Intriguing word-unions and lurking implications. If the prose is immediate and palpable, we’re much more likely to get interested in the concepts it’s engaging with. We love to see works that don’t show their hand immediately, if ever.
SQF: Submission guidelines are often long and boring. Is it really necessary to read them?
Editors: Up to you.
SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't?And how would you answer it?
Editors: That’s a good question. If you had asked what we think the end goal of fiction is, we think we would have answered “freedom”.
Thank you, William, David, and Nick. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.
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