When new WWS members ask, “Where do I even start? Where do I find magazines, journals and websites that might publish my writing?” I always direct them to Entropy Magazine’s Where To Submit list, which compiles a huge selection of presses and journals that are seeking submissions. Entropy is a community-centered online journal that has been really hitting the high notes for several years. From fiction to longform essays, from astrology to a series about the weather, they curate a unique and vibrant space for a diverse range of authors.
I spoke to founder and executive editor Janice Lee about how Entropy started, where it’s going, and why you should submit.
As founder and executive editor of Entropy, what was your mission in beginning the journal and community space? How did you build a masthead, readership, and a pool of contributors?
Peter Tieryas Liu and I started Entropy in 2014 seeking to create a new kind of community. We wanted it to be built on trust and diversity, and at first, that meant we wanted people involved that weren’t in our immediate circles. So I didn’t ask my close friends and collaborators and grad school buddies initially. We used intuition and sense and gathered a diverse group of literary citizens that we were in touch with through social media, and at AWP Seattle, we asked a bunch of them to be involved in this crazy project, and they said yes.
Peter and I too, by the way, didn’t know each other well. He had submitted reviews to me when I was Reviews Editor at HTMLGIANT and we immediately trusted each other but were also drawn to the fact that we were really different from each other in terms of the communities that we participated in and our own artistic and aesthetic inclinations.
This diversity was important. The people we initially asked to be editors were also scattered. Different genres, communities, geographic regions, interests, etc. Having diverse editors meant that we knew they would bring on contributors that were diverse and that we didn’t already know about.
Since then we’ve worked hard to build Entropy more of as a community than as a magazine. We take submissions and have features and sections and make curatorial decisions and publish work, so yes, we operate like a magazine. But part of the impetus of its creation was to have a community space for writers. When we started, many other literary sites that had acted as these kinds of community spaces had ended or were winding down, or were moving on to different projects.
There are tons of amazing magazines and journals publishing super high quality content that is highly curated and selected. Entropy is not that. We’re super proud of what we publish, but we don’t want to be an elite platform. It’s meant to be an inclusive space. All of our editors (over 50 of them now) all have direct access to the website and can schedule and publish content directly. They don’t need my approval. It’s a model built on trust and compassion. We want this to be a safe space. A welcoming one. A place for dialogue and collaboration.
What are some of the ways that Entropy has evolved over the years and have you seen your day-to-day work as editor change along with it?
Entropy has grown in a way that I never could have predicted. Its reach still surprises me, and it means so much to me when contributors come say hi at events like AWP and thank us for publishing their work. A lot of these contributors are students, for many it is their first publication. We also hear from writers who have careers who appreciate the support that Entropy has shown them, and the important community space that it creates.
In this way, I’ve learned more about the capacities for intimacy through editing. Both in my writing and editing and publishing, I’m interested in asking questions, I’m interested in the vulnerability of language that allows for an honest attempt at expression and a way to investigate complex questions. This might be about life, seeing, existence, race, gender, politics, love, depression, relationships, food. I believe that writing exists because language fails. Because language fails, we keep doing what we do. That is the exciting part. Writing is an attempt to articulate the inarticulable. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of new people or hear from people because of things I’ve personally written or pieces I’ve published or books we’ve put out. Writing and editing and publishing and reading and sharing and dialoguing and thinking, all of this is about existing together as part of a larger community, and this larger community is where the work exists. It allows us to share what we see and to see what others see.
This is also a political act. How marginalized voices get to articulate their everyday, their reality, how all these realities can exist. An exchange. Various levels of intimacy are important for radical change. I’m constantly asking in both my writing and editing: how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy?
What distinguishes an excellent submission from an okay one? What are you looking for?
We look for honesty, we look for diversity, we look for sensitivity, we look for thoughtfulness, we look for engagement. We are open to almost everything. We keep creating new sections as people take the initiative to create them. Readers are welcome to write and pitch their own ideas for a series to curate or column to contribute. What we’re looking for is what benefits our readers or the community in some way.
Speaking of submissions, I’m really interested in the new Subversions section in Entropy and I think a lot of interesting perspectives about the submission process will come out of it. What was the inspiration behind starting that section?
Justin Greene, our Where to Submit editor, dreamed up that new series. He wanted to complement the Where to Submit list and create a larger dialogue around the logistics of submissions, and look at everything from the questionable power dynamics implied in the term “submission,” and the practice of submitting as it intersects with identity. We want to make the submission process easier and more transparent, but we also don’t want to buy into the commodification of writing and publishing. We provide the lists as a resource for the community, but wanted to be more open in creating dialogue around different vantage points and perspectives, including taking into account the problematic hierarchies that submission systems create. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to feature non-standard publications like zines or experimental publications.
Entropy is doing something unique and exciting in partnering with Civil Coping Mechanisms and Writ Large Press to form The Accomplices. Can you talk about anything that partnership has planned for this year?
Yes! So The Accomplices LLC is a literary arts partnership and media company dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices and identities, particularly writers of color, through traditional and new media publishing, public engagement, and community building. It consists of the entities Civil Coping Mechanisms, Entropy, and Writ Large Press. We wanted to combine our various strengths (Civil Coping Mechanisms: publisher & promoter of kick-ass independent literature, Entropy: a magazine and community of contributors that publishes diverse literary and non-literary content, and Writ Large Press: an indie press that uses literary arts and events to resist, disrupt, and transgress) to work towards creating more resources for marginalized writers, and doing this by more than just traditional publishing.
We just launched our new website and we have a whole bunch of new books slated for this year. I’m especially excited about Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, a book of speculative theory by Laura Hyunjhee Kim that is coming out this summer. We’ll be at AWP for the first time as a single entity and have a huge event planned for Thursday March 28, called Center Justify (and are partnering with AAWW, The Operating System, De-Canon, White Noise Project, and PSU Indigenous Nations Studies for an extravaganza of readings and lots of delicious food.) We have lots of new events planned in LA and elsewhere. We’ll be announcing some more partnerships. There are also rumors of a new podcast series and other new projects. We’ll be announcing updates on our website and our Twitter (@the5accomplices).
Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She writes about the filmic long take, slowness, interspecies communication, the apocalypse, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She is Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Co-Publisher at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Contributing Editor at Fanzine, and Co-Founder of The Accomplices LLC. After living for over 30 years in California, she recently moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon where she is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Portland State University.