alice blue review, based out of the Pacific Northwest, is an online journal of poetry and prose founded in 2005 by Sarah Gallien, Amber Nelson, and Will Gallien. Poetry editor Amber Nelson was kind enough to give some insight into how this journal maintains its place among the prettiest and best-regarded online journals.

How did things start? Sarah, Will, and I were frustrated [over work that wasn’t getting published] and tired of cliché poetic tropes, or seeing the same phrasing over and over again—alice blue was a response to traditionalist writing. At first we wanted to see more work that was exciting, experimental, and good-but-not-taking-itself-too-seriously. At the time of founding, our models were Octopus and H-ngm-n. We spent a lot of time on the design. We wanted to find a way to really make the reader feel like they were with the writer and the piece on each page.

And since then? I do all of the poetry reading/editing, and Sarah does all the prose editing, web design, and artwork/photography. Will is part of the curatorial process at the end, making decisions about the finalists. The quality and volume of submissions are greater every time we do an issue. Currently, have deadlines for three issues a year, though we maintain rolling submissions. We narrow submissions down to a top thirty before making final decisions together. I can’t say it hasn’t been a fight at times, but it’s really more of a conversation now. [Making a new issue] is like cooking, where you should have a sugar and an acid and salt…all of these together to balance things out.

What happens if somebody reads an entire issue in one sitting? I hope they want to come back. I think every issue is really different. I hope our readers enjoy it, feel feelings, maybe laugh.

What keeps this journal around? Part of it is that we’ve all put a lot of time and effort into maintaining it—made it a priority in our lives to promote the work that we love. And that such wonderful writers trust us with their work; that we’ve had such a wonderful and loyal readership. And, personally, it’s been awesome having been able to publish writers who hadn’t published widely, and having heard what it meant to them for us to publish them early on in their career.

What’s in a good poem? I want to have a feeling associated with the poem, and that can be delight, it doesn’t have to be sadness or something. The thing I take away from books that I think are really great is that I have an experience. If it takes some risks that I find interesting, I’ll throw it into the top thirty and see what happens.

How is prose handled at alice blue? In the last few years, I’ve been excited to say that we can now publish what can be considered “traditional” stories alongside of the more flash fiction or linguistically playful stuff. And we’d love to publish more nonfiction! Sarah, our prose editor, really works with her writers to a really incredible degree.

What does an acceptance mean? The people who make it into the top thirty get a genuine invitation to please, please submit again. The acceptance means you’re part of the family. We love seeing our writers be successful—we want to buy their books when they come out.

And a rejection? Very little. Plenty of people have made it in after first getting flat-out rejections. Our rejection letter fits our philosophy, our attitude.

How’s the future looking? Our ten-year anniversary is coming up. I would hope for ten more issues, but we’ll see how it goes!

Website: http://www.alicebluereview.org