So here’s a thing. An experiment. It might not work and there’s every chance nothing will come of it, but we want to try it anyway. Because if we can’t take a risk or two here, in the online literary journal that we run, where can we? (Rhetorical question. Don’t send answers.)
After initially deciding we weren’t going to do any kind of “letter from the editors” at the start of each issue, since Issue Five we’ve done just that. Hey, we change our minds; we’re difficult that way. We’re not going to claim that the introduction is essential reading, and many of you probably pass straight over it. It’s okay, we understand: you just want to get to the good stuff as quick as possible. We’re not offended. But if there are readers who go through each issue from beginning to end — in that old-fashioned way of reading that people had before the internet apparently shrunk all our minds — then we like the idea of providing them with a welcome, a glimpse of where our editorial heads are at right now, and a taste of what’s to come in the following virtual pages. It’s the polite thing to do. Our moms brought us up well.
We’re also anonymous, though. You’ll have noticed that if you’ve been paying attention. > kill author has deliberately chosen to go against the idea of having “personality” editors so that the focus can be on the work we publish. Which then makes us think: maybe we don’t need an introduction to each issue after all? Maybe it doesn’t fit with our big idea? (Again, rhetorical questions. Don’t raise your hands.)
Then we thought: guest editor.
Okay, not really an editor. Going through submissions, choosing what to accept and what to reject, running the site? Still a hundred per cent our job, and there are no vacancies. But a guest editor who gets an early preview of what’s in the upcoming issue, picks out a few personal highlights and offers a few of their own literary thoughts as a foreword? Yes, it could work. It might not. But it could.
We want to keep this as open as possible, so although we might approach one or two people ourselves, we’d really like you to let us know if you’re interested in being a guest editor (who’s not really an editor but just writes the introduction) for the next issue. If it works, we’ll keep the idea going — maybe not all the time, but occasionally. If it doesn’t work, we’ll act all embarrassed and then quietly forget we ever wrote this post.
This is open to anyone. You can be a writer who is in the next issue, or who we’ve previously published in > kill author, or who’s never featured here. Just as long as you can write between 700–800 words on (a) something a little literary-minded, even if it’s quite lateral (we like lateral), and (b) find a few good words to say about some of the material in the issue. Oh, and it helps if you like our journal too. Even if only a bit. We’re not against hearing disapproving views of how we operate, but if you blindly hate us and everything we do then move along because this gig’s not for you.
Here’s what to do. Send an email to mail@killauthor.com with a line or two telling us what you might like to write about in your guest spot. Put “Guest Editor” in the subject line, just so we tell those messages apart from submissions. And do it earlier instead of later, because we’d like to make a decision quite soon. Thanks.