Guidelines
Reading Period: August 1 – March 31. Manuscripts sent at other times will be returned unread.
Sycamore Review is looking for quality, original poetry, fiction, non-fiction and art. The most successful work is exciting, new, fresh, creative, carefully-wrought. We accept unsolicited submissions of fiction, poetry, personal essays and art. Please query for other nonfiction, including book reviews, brief critical essays, etc. as well as all art. We are interested in expanding our nonfiction content. At this time we are not able to accept outside interviews, previously published works (except for translations) or genre pieces (conventional science fiction, romance, horror, etc.).
We do accept simultaneous submissions, but request prompt notification if the work is accepted elsewhere. Please note simultaneous submissions in your cover letter. All manuscripts must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. At this time SR cannot accept submissions by email: please do not request an exception.
Poetry manuscripts should be typed single-spaced, one poem to a page. Please send no more than 4-5 poems in one envelope. Wait until you have received a response to submit again.
Prose should be typed double-spaced, with numbered pages and the author’s name and title of the work easily visible on each page. Please send only one story or essay at a time.
Nonfiction: Sycamore Review does not publish scholarly articles or journalistic pieces. Most of our nonfiction content could be classified as literary memoir or personal essay. We are interested in originality, brevity, significance, strong dialogue, and vivid detail. There is no maximum page count for nonfiction, but remember that the longer the piece is, the more compelling each page must be.
Art: If you are interested in submitting art for either our print issue or online art gallery, please send a query email describing your work (Is it black and white? Photos of installations?) and introducing yourself to sycamore@purdue.edu. Do NOT send unsolicited images attached to emails. Your email will be deleted without being opened (we fear viruses). To submit work, please send via snail-mail as slides or CD-ROM (no prints!) or note in your emailed query a web address where your work can be viewed. For web pages, please indicate which pieces you would like considered. We are interested in serious, original work.
Purdue University acquires first-time North American rights, including electronic rights, for work published in Sycamore Review. After publication, all rights revert to the author. Sycamore Review does not publish creative work by any student currently attending Purdue University. Former students should wait one calendar year before submitting.
Sycamore Review pays two contributor’s copies for printed work.
Please mail manuscripts to the appropriate editor (Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction) at:
Sycamore Review
Purdue University
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907
(For contest guidelines, go here.)
Aesthetic Statements
Sycamore Review does not have a permanent aesthetic statement because of the nature of our editorship. That said, our genre editors do have preferences that you, as a potential submitter, might be curious about. Please remember, however, that we are constantly surprised by the pieces we end up liking the most. This, we believe, is one of the great pleasures of literature — its ability to undermine our presuppositions, to open our eyes, to stretch our hearts and minds
Poetry
As editors and also as poets, one of our primary aesthetic goals is to be inclusive, to consider the work of poets from and of all walks, factions and stripes. (We are fairly certain that good poetry is not restrained to any particular school of thought.) However, an aim toward inclusiveness remains feeble at best unless we recognize in addition our own individual patterns of occlusion, the ways in which our sometimes unconscious, sometimes political (in the broader sense) predilections literally close our eyes and ears to good and interesting work possibly deserving of publication. So, while we supply you with an outline of our vision for Sycamore, we encourage you to submit the work that interests you, but that may initially seem to fall outside of that vision. Taking that preamble into account, we are essentially looking for poetry that is moving, troubling, and ambitious, poetry that respects the power in metaphor and perhaps the value of restraint. We are looking for poetry that suggests urgency, poems that were necessary to write because of some situation, even if that situation is the poem itself, the need for some encumbered imagination to expel itself and to create. –Josh Wild and Mario Chard, Poetry Editors
Fiction
I love the grace and power of a well-written story, how through only fifteen or twenty pages, the reader can see the aspirations, faults and failures of a character, and from that glean some understanding of the skeleton arc of a character’s life. I am looking for a story that will move me, a story that, upon its completion, compel me to immediately call up my editor-in-chief and say, “Wow, do I have a story for you!” I prefer stories that have a strong sense of character and place and I admire stories that take risks with form and storytelling. I also like flash fiction. Sycamore Review mostly publishes realist fiction, though genre-blurring stories will also be considered. There is no length limit, but due to space concerns, it is difficult for the journal to publish stories that are longer than twenty-five pages. Please do not send novels or novellas. –James Xiao, Fiction Editor
Nonfiction
I am interested in writing that sustains its strangeness through the amicability of voice. A more forgiving Phil Lopate. A speaker that retains an observant nature while being more curious than contemptuous, that asks its readers not to pity–but to feel for–the characters involved while never losing sight of the humor hidden behind each day’s snags. Experimental nonfiction is welcome. New worlds are a must. –Ruth Joynton, Nonfiction Editor
