After returning from a 5+ year hiatus from the small press publishing community, I’ve noticed things have changed. Most of the literary magazines I was familiar with are gone now, replaced with a smaller circle of print publications and a much larger network of online only entities.

I remember when I first launched Poetry in Motion magazine. I had a fairly sizeable database of writers acquired from a 2-year long anthology project. It was a “natural” to offer them the new quarterly--and it went over big!

At the same time, I was acquainted with a writer who had the desire to publish a quarterly too (they had a theme and a great name, but no more than a dozen potential subscribers). I offered to run a notice in our first issue about the new journal.

What happened next was startling—instant subscriber base for that publication. They were off and running and went on to be a real “player” in the small press community. The return to Poetry in Motion was negligible with respect to subscribership—but the good will was priceless. The true benefit was to our writers across the country who now had an additional creative outlet for their efforts.

Soon, I was exchanging ads with a dozen or more established publications in the same manner. The benefit to all was clearly noticed in increased submissions as well as subscribers. I don’t see that happening today and I sorely miss it. Perhaps I have not yet come across those magazines who would be interested. If you’re out there, get in touch with me!

In the meantime, I know our readers are interested in other venues for their creative writing. In that spirit, I will make every effort to review or present a new print magazine that is open to submissions in each issue of the Mississippi Crow.

—Nadia Giordana