SHALLA CHATS with fiction editor Sarah Miles

“Introducing Fringe Magazine”

by Shalla DeGuzman

 

First of all, who’s Sarah?

Sarah Miles is the fiction editor of Fringe Magazine, a new online literary magazine. She has an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College in Boston, where she lives and works. She is a former editor of Grubstreet, a literary magazine out of Towson University in Maryland. Unfortunately, her literary efforts do not pay the bills as of yet, so she stints as a staff assistant at Emerson College – for now.

Shalla: Hello Sarah. Thanks for coming to tell us more about Fringe Magazine.

Sarah: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Shalla: First of all, what makes Fringe Magazine different from other literary journals?

Sarah: The biggest difference is that we are solely an online publication. We publish every other month, which sounds like an overwhelming job, but we highlight only one author per genre per issue – I think this format gives our literary magazine more energy.

Shalla: What makes a story literary as opposed to commercial or genre fiction?

Sarah: For me, a literary story takes us past our comfort zone, a quality most people reading commercial or genre fiction are not looking for.

Shalla: What makes a story good? Is it the symbolisms used? Having lots of similes and metaphors? Having different twists?

Sarah: I’m a plot-driven reader myself, but a masterful command of the language has to be there, too.

There are so many ways to say the same thing, so how an author chooses to communicate an idea can be very important. And the emotional pull has to be there – if the reader isn’t involved with the characters, she’s not going to get much from the story.

Shalla: Do you have a point of view preference? Should our stories be in 3rd person-past?

Sarah: No, I believe in variety. In my own writing I use many points of view, even within the same story.

Shalla: Is Fringe open to experimental fiction? And how experimental can the story be? Any examples we can look at?

Sarah: That’s what we are all about; we provide a place for work that pushes boundaries. Just take a look at our past two issues and you’ll find experiments in both content and form.

Shalla: Are you open to multicultural stories? Gay/lesbian?

Sarah: Absolutely; we are open to any type of literary fiction, as long as it is a quality story.

Shalla: Since shorter submissions (like a 1-2 page flash fiction) take up less space, do they have a greater chance on getting published?

Sarah: We publish a short short every issue; short shorts are their own genre for Fringe purposes and do not compete with longer fiction submissions. We do limit them to 1000 words or less.

Shalla: Does Fringe Magazine pay for submissions published?

Sarah: Unfortunately not at this time, but we hope to some day. This is a labor of love right now.

Shalla: Do Fringe Magazine editors edit submissions? By how much? And does the writer get notified?

Sarah: Yes, we do copyediting and make suggestions, but we try very hard not to remove the voice and style of the writer. The writers always get a chance to approve copyedited work prior to publication.

Shalla: Your submission guideline says: We are granted first electronic publishing rights only. All other rights revert to the writer after publication. What does this mean? Can we still publish our story online?

Sarah: You may publish it online after we have published it, but you must acknowledge us as the first publisher; that, in fact, goes for all other types of publications after we’ve accepted a piece. So in other words, the story is yours to print where you wish, but you have to list us as the first publisher of the work.

Shalla: Where can we buy Fringe Magazine? Book stores? Or just online? What is Fringe Magazine’s circulation like?

Sarah: The best thing about Fringe is that it’s free because we are only online! We hope to publish a print anthology at some point, but that is in the future. We do accept donations, and are working on a mechanism to deal with them.

Our circulation has gone up every month we’ve had issues out – our website tracks the number of unique users and number of visits each month. Since we’ve been publishing, we’ve had at least 1300 unique visitors per month and on average over 2000 visits each month. While not all of these visitors are staying on our site very long, it’s encouraging to know we are getting exposure, and that would be difficult to track if we were in print.

Also, people all over the world are reading Fringe - we have visitors from Australia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and submissions from places like India and Israel. Publishing on the internet is certainly not static – it’s truly global publishing.

Shalla: Thanks Sarah! For more on Sarah Miles and Fringe Magazine, please go to www.fringemagazine.org

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Shalla DeGuzman's short stories have appeared in Poetic Diversity, the Mad Hatters Review, etc.; her articles in The Scriptorium and L.A. Freepress; her skits at the Stella Adler Theatre. Shalla, a former writer and producer of a health and fitness cable show, is currently writing a novel. She is President of The ShallaDeGuzman Writers Group where she interviews literary agents, publishers, editors, etc. News! Shalla DeGuzman gets nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize! Plus! SHALLA Magazine, which features short stories, poetry and more, is here! For more on Shalla: www.shalladeguzman.com

 

 

 

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