By Jim McGlashon
Have you ever wondered what it takes to make it into the highly esteemed, critically acclaimed,100-time award winning magazine known as 30 North?
Well, you’re in luck because we’re taking you awesome fans behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made!
It starts with you: a hungry, aspiring writer, or casual writer who decides to share their dabbles in the mystic literary arts with a small college magazine. You submit your beautiful work to our submittable and then your work is in the ether!
Dr. Stafford, our professor leading the magazine, filters through the submissions based on a certain criteria. Once past the first set of eyes in the vetting process, all the student members within 30 North proceed to proofread different literary genres of submissions.
Essentially, our staff is looking for coherent, compelling, and relatable pieces that the 30 North audience would enjoy reading. Personal creative fiction or poems often strike the deepest chord with readers, including our very own staff.
Within Submittable, our staff will rate the pieces with a thumbs up or down as an indicator of whether it should continue or not. Individually, we provide feedback as to why we gave a certain rating, consisting of our thoughts about how well it would fit within the aesthetic of our magazine, if it was easy to follow without jeopardizing complexity and intrigue, if we think the audience would enjoy this read, etc. The same goes for photographs or art submitted to 30 North; however, artists and writers will often submit multiple stories or works of art within one submission, and we might only find that 1 or 2 pieces within the sample are a good fit for the magazine.
After our personal opinions on a submission are given, we collectively vocalize our thoughts and opinions about each piece. Some pieces have an overwhelming positive or dissatisfaction amongst the staff, whilst others can be more difficult to decide if the group is more evenly split on the worthiness of a submission.
It often results in a bloodbath of gladiator matches as to who’s perspective is more valid, defending their favored submissions with their dying breath. It’s quite tragic-fatally losing approximately two or three staff members per week. Aye, 30 North lives on!
Once we have approved your work, you’ll get a lovely written acceptance email, declaring our acceptance of your work, and sometimes asking for some edits for a final piece to be included in the magazine. Just like that, your literary dabble has instantly sprouted into the amazingly published butterfly that will fly all about in the 30 North Magazine!
- 30 N Staff
30 N 