Editor’s note: Issue 06
Editor’s note for Issue 06 includes a look at numbers, insights and themes, and other notes from the Reservoir Road Literary Review Editor-in-Chief, Adrienne Marie Barrios.
Dear reader,
Thank you for closing out your year with another issue from Reservoir Road Literary Review. Looking back on this debut year, we’re absolutely humbled and filled with joy from the experiences we’ve had reading and viewing the work of contributors and submitters, interacting with authors and readers on various platforms, and hearing from those of you kind enough to reach out with feedback and praise for the magazine or individual pieces. We’ve already got some new things planned for 2022 and look forward to sharing those plans in another post. We’ll also share the annual 2021 numbers (after we pull them together from all six issues and submission periods) and a 2021 award nomination recap, each in their own separate post.
Numbers
In November, the reading period for Issue 06, we cut our submission caps in half due to a lack of bandwidth.
Here are the total submissions by category with acceptance rates.
Fiction: 75 submissions (75 cap), 2 acceptances; acceptance rate of 2.6%
Flash fiction: 75 submissions (75 cap), 3 acceptances; acceptance rate of 4%
Flash creative non-fiction: 75 submissions (75 cap), 3 acceptances; acceptance rate of 4%
Poetry: 75 submissions (75 cap), 4 acceptances; acceptance rate of 5.3%
Photography: 61 submissions (75 cap), 10 acceptances; acceptance rate of 16.3%*
TOTAL ACCEPTANCE RATE: 361 submissions, 22 acceptances; acceptance rate of 6%
*Please note: This is calculated based on submission count, not based on the number of photographs per submission.
Insights
This submission period brought a lot of stories that simply weren’t suited for Reservoir Road: they weren’t on topic, didn’t align to the vision, didn’t dig into difficult topics or the mundanity forced upon us throughout everyday life. Oftentimes, they were simply the wrong category, which is unfortunate. We hope the new year will bring more alignment to the kind of work we seek.
We did receive and accept a number of pieces that deviate from the standard format or flow, which is quite a nice way to end the year. We hope to see more that take risks and experiment in these ways.
Closing
I hope you enjoy Issue 06. As I said last issue, all issues are close to my heart. This one holds a special spot because it is our last issue of our first year, and what a year it has been. I look forward to many more.
Best,