The Pathway to Publication: An Interview with Carolyn Kuebler of New England Review

On writing, editing, and the literary life

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A traditional pathway to publication for poets and prose writers begins with literary magazines, which in most cases are published one to four times a year. Some are housed at universities; others operate independently and are supported through donations, grants, and subscriptions. Quite a few agents and their assistants read literary magazines and query writers whose work they admire. Subsequently, some writers are offered representation, and in time, go on to publish their first books.

The Indiana Review was linked to the MFA program I attended at Indiana University in Bloomington and was edited by MFA students, with a faculty member serving in an advisory capacity. I read poetry submissions a few times for IR, and the hours I spent opening envelopes and reading dozens of poems made a deep impression.

I remember feeling overwhelmed by how much writing had been sent to this tiny, crowded office in the middle of our tree-filled campus, how many hopes we readers and editors—all of us graduate students and not professional editors—were custodians of until we made the decision to accept or reject. It seemed a miracle that anything was accepted at all—there was just so much.

Necessarily, most of the work was rejected. The majority of literary journal issues range from a hundred to two hundred pages, and even before Submittable, some of the better known, more prestigious journals routinely received hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions a month.

Earlier this year, I wrote about best practices for submitting to literary journals, including a sample cover letter - you can find that post here. Carolyn Kuebler, the editor of New England Review, a journal based at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, also shares her advice in the interview below for how to put your best pages forward when submitting your prose and poetry.

Carolyn Kuebler

Carolyn has helped launch dozens of writers, myself included. The first short story I published with NER, “This Parrot Is Hilarious,” was accepted for a 2002 issue. I’d published stories in a few other journals by then, but had been sending stories and poems to NER for about eight years before they accepted this story. No surprise, it was an exceedingly happy day when I received the acceptance letter.

The next story I published in NER appeared in the summer 2007 issue. In late February 2008, Carolyn left a message on my answering machine (I still had dial-up internet at the time too), and I remember her words clearly, “I’m calling with some really, really good news. Series editor Heidi Pitlor [who writes

Wordness

here on Substack] and guest editor Salman Rushdie have selected your story “Quality of Life” for The Best American Short Stories 2008!”

To say I was stunned is an understatement. I remember telling a family member later that day about this news, and he said, “Are you sure?” No, I wasn’t sure - it took a while for this unhoped-for news to sink in.

Only a few weeks before Carolyn called, I was wondering if I should give up on my writing. I’d been out of grad school for ten years by that time and was only publishing one or two short stories a year, three if I was lucky, and a few poems here and there. I knew this was all I could reasonably expect, even though I was hoping for more.

I didn’t have one story after another accepted after this outlook- and life-changing news arrived, but it made me believe that my work had value and that other readers and writers I admired found it interesting and worthwhile.

Over the last 21 years since my first acceptance, I’ve continued to send work to NER, and Carolyn has been an incisive and generous editor to work with from day one. As alluded to above, I know there are dozens of other writers who feel the same about her (and about Stephen Donadio too, her EiC predecessor at NER).

Along with her editorial work, Carolyn is an accomplished prose writer and book critic, and her debut novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable is out next spring from Melville House. Preorders can be made at Bookshop.org.

And now, here’s our interview (conducted over email).

Christine S/Bookish: If I remember correctly, you were a cofounder of the indie/small press book review periodical Rain Taxi and worked there for several years before moving to New England Review, where you are now editor (in chief). How did you become interested in this region of the literary world? 

Carolyn Kuebler: When I was an English major in college, I had the impression literature was something nearly heaven-sent and godly made, and I had no idea how books came into being, either as a writer or publisher. Nor that there was a large gap between commercial and independent publishers, and that the books most widely read, reviewed, and lauded often got there by dint of the money and power of a few tastemakers in New York publishing.

In Minneapolis I discovered through an internship at Milkweed Editions, and then working in bookstores and with other presses, that indie publishers played an important and creative role in new literary writing. I soon discovered there were a lot more interesting books out there beyond the NYT Bestseller list. And the more I read, the more I learned that the books that excited me most were usually those published with very little fanfare or financial backing.  

I wanted to do something about that – which is where Rain Taxi came in. It was a way to review and celebrate the most interesting books being published, and it was loads of fun to do this project with equally passionate friends. It wasn’t sustainable for me in the long run, though, so I went off and got an MFA and did a few other things before landing at the New England Review, where I started out as managing editor, a job I believe I was offered in large part because of all the skills I picked up doing the DIY project that was Rain Taxi, and later working for Publishers Weekly and Library Journal.

At NER I can continue working in the creative part of publishing, by helping select some of the most compelling, accomplished language-rich un-formulaic writing out there. It also has the ethic and energy, despite being housed at Middlebury College, of a kind of DIY project. The longer I do it, the more I see my role in publishing as a way to nurture and to value something vital that is so often unpaid and unseen. Working closely with writers to fine-tune their vision is deeply satisfying, and I think that close reading from an editor is vital to their understanding that their work is truly being valued, understood, and promoted to new readers.

CS: You write essays (e.g. "Self-Storage" which appeared in the Colorado Review in the summer 2022 issue and your first novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, is out next spring) as well as edit NER full-time. How do you safeguard your writing time? I know the demands of running an esteemed literary journal like NER are formidable. 

CK: Showing up to my desk every morning with a cup of coffee before the day begins—before work at NER, before my daughter’s school, before even getting dressed—has been a lifeline to my own writing. Sometimes I get a couple hours out of those mornings, sometimes 20 minutes, but it’s a habit that has made all the difference. If I get some of that time in the morning, whatever happens the rest of the day will be okay. Because NER is on a relentless publishing schedule—one 200-page issue, with at least 25 writers per issue, every three months—and because we have a small staff and endless submissions to consider, I do have to guard that time carefully. Which means I can’t do some of the other things I’d really like to do, like gardening and going on trips and to concerts and becoming a better bird-watcher.

CS: The inevitable question: what do you see writers doing when they submit work to NER that drives you bonkers? And what should we do if they hope one day to receive an email from you saying, "We would love to publish your work"?

CK: Most of what I see anymore has already been read by one or more of our editorial staff, so I don’t see a lot that drives me bonkers anymore, but from what I hear things don’t change a lot in that regard.

The most common mistake is to send writing that isn’t ready. Sometimes a writer will be so excited to have completed a draft that they mark the occasion by submitting it to magazines, sometimes rather profligately. I’d recommend they sit on it for a few weeks or months, come back to see it with their own fresh eyes, before sending it out.

It’s going to take us a few months to read it anyway, so take your time and send it only after it’s the best you can make it. It also helps to have some idea of what we publish before sending your work.

Also important: simultaneous submissions are fine, but please do be sure to withdraw immediately when something is accepted elsewhere. If another magazine makes an offer first, the piece should really go to them. We don’t engage in bidding wars, and I think that if another magazine acts faster and more decisively, they deserve to have first dibs, no matter if the writer might have preferred a different outcome. Send it to your favorite magazines first and wait to hear back before sending it to your next round. And please don’t send more than one piece at a time.

Other than that, just keep working on your writing and don’t assume that if it’s not being taken by a magazine it’s no good. You really have to learn to be your own best judge, and maybe have a few honest friends in the wings.

CS: Would you share a rough outline of how an issue of NER comes together from the initial reading of submissions to its transmission to the printer that produces the elegant hard copy editions? 

CK: Our submissions cycle, while it appears from the outside to run for a couple months in the spring and a couple more in the fall, is really in progress all year long. We only close so that we know we’ll be able to manage what has already come in, with as many volunteers as we can handle—currently about 35—but not more than that. If we get more than we can handle with all that help, we’re not doing anybody any favors by staying open longer. We try to balance being open to the highest number of submissions with our ability to read them. And it still sometimes takes forever for a writer to get a response. Even so, we read, comment, hold, pass along, discuss, decline, and accept work all year long.

Once we’ve closed an issue we get to work on the line editing. Each piece is edited, copyedited, and proofread before it goes into layout. After “the list” is complete, I print everything out and put it on a big table and put it in order. At this point, the thematic strains and coincidences really make themselves apparent – for instance, the issue we’re finalizing now features an unusual number of ghosts and pregnancies, plus a couple of therapists and tarot card readings, and a number of investigations into ancestry, both proud and shameful. We’re still looking for the perfect cover art, which is obviously an important final decision, in terms of content.

Our managing editor meticulously manages the layout here in the office, in InDesign, and then she sends a PDF page proof to each writer for final corrections. Once those all come back, it goes to the printer, comes back as a proof for us to look over, and then is printed, bound, and shipped. The time from sending it to the printer to having it in our hands is about three weeks. And then the promotion begins! All while the next issue is being selected, edited, etc. The submissions queue is never quite empty. It’s the train that never stops.

CS: Please share a few words about what we can look forward to in future issues of NER (i.e. if you're accepting submissions for an issue for new writers this next year - or another themed issue, please note that here). 

CK: Our next issue, coming out this December, is our biannual emerging writers (and translators) issue, meaning every piece in there is by someone who hasn’t yet published a book. While we publish emerging writers in every single issue, we wanted to be more deliberate about it, and to make that fact better known. This is our third such issue, and we’ll probably continue to do it every two years in December.

Each summer issue includes an international feature. Last year it was Irish poets in tribute to Eavan Boland, guest edited by Shara Lessley. This summer it’ll be new translations from Korean writers, with guest editors Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello and E. J. Koh. We have a film supplement coming out in winter 2024 edited by J. M. Tyree, in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of Wong Kar-wei’s Chungking Express.

But otherwise, we’re just reading submissions on any theme, topic, length, style, and voice. Please find yourself a copy and read it as soon as possible! Read it like a book, from front to back, including the pieces that don’t immediately look like your kind of thing. Our goal is that an attentive reader will be rewarded for spending time with every issue, even if that reward is a disruption in one’s usual way of thinking, reading, and understanding what language can do.

Creator bio: Carolyn Kuebler became editor of New England Review in 2014. She was previously managing editor at NER, an associate editor at Library Journal, and founding editor of Rain Taxi Review of Books. She began her work in publishing as an intern at Milkweed Editions in Minneapolis, served briefly as marketing director at Dalkey Archive Press, then worked as a bookseller and events publicist at the Hungry Mind in St. Paul.

Carolyn’s novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, is forthcoming from Melville House in 2024. Her essays have appeared in the Massachusetts Review (where “Wildflower Season” won the 2022 John Burroughs Award for Nature Essay), Colorado Review, the Common‘s “Dispatches” series, and The Little Magazine in Contemporary America (University of Chicago Press). Her fiction has been published in the Common, Copper Nickel, Sleepingfish, and the Literary Review, and she has published dozens of book reviews, as well as small-press profiles and author interviews, in publications such as Publishers Weekly, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi, and City Pages. 

At Middlebury College, she has taught a course in Literary Magazine Publishing and occasionally advises students on creative writing and publishing projects. She has an MFA from Bard College and a BA from Middlebury College.