LR News: Happy December!

As late fall begins to deepen into winter, we at LR have been rolling up our sleeves and starting to make preparations for Issue 4.  Here are a few announcements to let you know what else we’ve been up to recently, and what we are planning for the next few weeks:

Directory Listings

We are thrilled to announce that LR is now officially listed both in Poets & Writers‘ Literary Magazines Database and on New Pages!  Thank you very, very much to both P&W and the New Pages staff for reaching out to us and making this possible.

Reading Period for Issue 4 Closes on Dec. 21st

A reminder that our current reading period (for Issue 4) will close on December 21st.  We are still looking for original poems, translation work, and lots, and lots of art to feature in the issue, so please do consider sending something our way!  Our submission guidelines can be found here.  (Our submissions form proper can be accessed via the button at the bottom of the guidelines page).

Upcoming Holiday Hiatus

As usual, we will be taking a little break from the blog at the end of the year to celebrate the holidays with our families and to regroup as we work on Issue 4. We’ll officially begin our hiatus on December 21st, when the reading period closes, and will return in mid-January (our current hope is to have the issue out by the beginning of February).  Never fear, though—we won’t leave you high and dry with nothing to read!  As per tradition, will be running our annual staff picks post with a list of  recommended titles from 2011 just before we break:  we bet you’ll be so busy reading while we’re gone, you’ll barely even miss us.

* * *

That’s it for now. We have a lot of exciting content planned for the next few weeks, including a couple of reviews and an interview with a special guest, so keep your eyes peeled as we head into the final stretch of posts for 2011.  In the meantime, please keep those submissions rolling in. We look forward to seeing what you’ve been writing!

Best,

Iris & Mia
LR Editorial Team

LR News: Issue 3 Reading Period is Now Open

Yes, that’s right!  We are now taking submissions for Lantern Review Issue 3. What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than to write a few poems and send them our way?

A few hints:

  • When uploading files, try to avoid putting spaces or punctuation in the file names (the system has occasionally had problems with accepting such files in the past).
  • Visual artists should email us rather than use the online form (see the specific guidelines for this category).
  • Please query us if you have any questions or run into any technical difficulty with the submissions system.  We are happy to address your concerns as best we can.

The reading period will close on June 1st.

Click on over to the submissions guidelines page for more information. We look forward to reading your work!

LR News: Submissions Period for Issue 1 Now Open

Dear LR Fans,

We know you’ve been anticipating this for a long, long time, and have endured many push-backs of the date, but we’re happy to announce that our very first reading period is finally, and officially, open!  You can link over to our submissions guidelines here, or by clicking on the image at the beginning of this post.

A gigantic thank you to our brilliant Technology Consultant, Brandon, for the many hours he spent programming, creating the nuts-and-bolts behind the whole operation.  The database that he’s built for us will allow us to gather, filter, and screen your submissions entirely online without the need for cumbersome reams of email attachments.

Here’s how our system will work:

  1. Carefully read the submissions guidelines that you’ll now find on the “Submissions” page of our main web site.
  2. Format your work as specified and prepare it for uploading (poetry & critical prose should be in a single MS word or .PDF document with a cover letter as the first page; images should be in .JPEG format and multiple images should be compressed into a .ZIP file prior to upload).
  3. Follow the link at the bottom of the guidelines page to access the submission form.
  4. Input required information (quick tip: you may find it helpful to have the submissions guidelines open in another window or tab while you do this), upload manuscript, confirm that your work is original and that if it’s a simultaneous submission, you’ll inform us immediately if it’s accepted elsewhere.
  5. Click “Submit”!

That’s it!  You’ll receive a confirmation email to let you know that your submission has been logged into our database.  In up to 4-6 weeks, we will reply with a decision (please don’t query about your submission’s status before then; but if we take too long, feel free to send us a gentle reminder).  In the meantime, feel free to email us at editors [at] gmail(dot) com with any questions or updates you may have. Our reading period will close on April 15th.

Please do consider sending some of your work our way.  We’d also appreciate it if you could help us spread the word  (the banner at the top of this post is free for “grabs” if you’d like to use it to link to us on your own blog or web site; we also have a smaller, button version, available here).  Finally, as we are still figuring things out for the first time, any feedback you might have about how to make this process more user-friendly in future reading periods would be much appreciated, so please feel free to drop us a line to that effect. Thank you for all of your patience with us while waiting for this long-overdue phase of our magazine’s development to come to fruition.  We look forward to reading your submissions!

Best,

Iris & Mia
LR Editorial Staff