Dear friends and gentle hearts–
For those of you who have been longtime followers of LO over the years (or more likely if you’ve recently submitted work to us and have been waiting on a response), you may have noticed a slower and seemingly nonsensical publication schedule. My sincere apologies for this! Right now we are operating on a skeleton crew, with a few stalwarts doing overtime. Simultaneously, we are doing a major overhaul to Literary Orphans’ structure to right the ship and make sure we’ve got a solid plan on how we want to run it going forward.
I would like to call out TL Sherwood and Peter Marra for their incredible dedication to the mag over the years and especially now; thank you both, you are godsends.
Right now the concrete is still hardening, so there is not much I can tell you about this super secret plan. The one thing I am sure of and I can tell you, is that LO will be dropping down from 6 regularly scheduled issues a year to 4 regularly scheduled issues a year. But the important thing here is that we will not! change our name to Literary Orphans Quarterly because that just sounds pretentious–and the only thing we have pretension about is the terrible, terrible “music” you listen to. In the coming issues, we will be revealing our secret plan in the most transparent way possible (with details on reading periods, publication schedules, etc.), as well as updating the sites like Duotrope about our schedule changes and all that.
The other thing I can tell you is that we need more Readers for the magazine so that we can get back up to speed! Warp 9 ensign, let’s go. I created a Submittable Form for Readers to fill out if you’re interested in applying, keep in mind that this is a volunteer position. Your reward for dedicating your time to being a reader for LO is likely a new glasses prescription as your eyes worsen and maybe some new psychiatric drug prescriptions as you slowly descend into madness like every good writer should. Oh, and the peace of mind you get knowing that you’re giving back to the writing community and helping keep the ever-pretentious Literary Orphans Quarterly afloat. And of course, you get to see a good cross-section of the competition, you little machiavellians you. No seriously, reading other people’s work for a lit mag is very inspiring and always makes me feel extra creative, to know there are so many brilliant writers out there writing their hearts out and sharing it with the world. You do not have to be published before to be a reader, you just have to have a love of great writing and be hungry to read it.
Submitters waiting for responses, since there are only a few of us reading, please do not be alarmed if it does not say “In-Progress” on Submittable for your submissions. This occurs when your submission is assigned, and since we’re on a skeleton crew right now it is primarily grab-and-get. When Editors like yours truly click on your piece and read it, and share it for a second opinion, it does not update Submittable alerting you. So when can you expect to find out about your piece?
So there we are, come join our merry band of undead sailors! Share the call and Submittable application far and wide! Sign up yourself! If you don’t have the time, then cajole your friends into it!
Let’s get to work,
Mike Joyce
Director, Editor-in-Chief
Literary Orphans Quart—I’m joking I’m joking,
Literary Orphans
–PS, the art on this page is by Marcos Lomba–a fabulous photographer and stand up guy.
You can see his work throughout this issue.