Mission
In 1999, Texas Tech University founded Iron Horse Literary Review in order to bring the literary arts to West Texas, which did not, at the time, have a national print venue for creative writing. We wanted an inexpensive way to bring America’s most respected poets, storytellers, and essayists to serious readers living in the remote panhandle. And that’s what we did.
Our early contributors included Kim Barnes, Frederick Busch, Robert Olen Butler, Li-Young Lee, Barry Lopez, Lee Martin, Bobby Ann Mason, Stanley Plumly, Pattiann Rogers, Scott Russell Sanders, Ruth Stone, Leslie Ullman, David Wagoner, and many others.
Too, we wanted to raise the critical opinion of so-called “regional” writers. Regional literature is not solely restricted to cowboy stories or rural settings, though many writers address such matters. But like all skillful stories and poems, regional ones offer artistry, shaping the specific into universal meaning. Unfortunately, many southwestern writers have difficulty placing their works in publications that also publish renowned literary writers. At Iron Horse, we hoped to juxtapose regional writers next to the headliners, thereby increasing the attention our nearby artists received.
In January 2008, Iron Horse Literary Review began publishing six issues a year. Instead of the traditional, ho-hum two issues per year, we began releasing five slim issues and a summer-read, double issue. Our subscribers receive the best fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and photography we can find, packaged in beautiful books, every August, October, December, February, April, and June!
When we began publishing six issues, we also slightly altered our original mission: not only do we continue to feature our nation’s most established writers and to highlight relatively unknown regional writers who deserve critical attention, but now we also spend a great deal of time ferreting out those up-and-coming writers who keep poetry, fiction, and nonfiction new, challenging the boundaries of what the literary arts can accomplish.
Our recent contributors have included high profile writers like Ron Carlson, Kelly Cherry, Percival Everett, Phillip Gerard, Bob Hicok, Mark Jarman, David St. John, Maurice Manning, Andrew Miller, Pamela Painter, Molly Peacock, Maura Stanton, Melanie Rae Thon, Afaa Michael Weaver, and others; and up-and-coming writers like Curtis Bauer, Nicky Beer, Laura M. Gilbert, Toni Jensen, Kevin McFadden, Erika Meitner, Caki Wilkinson, and Kevin Wilson.
With our new format—six issues a year—we include the following:
- An annual HOLIDAY ISSUE, celebrating a holiday of our choosing, like Christmas, Halloween, Labor Day, etc.
- An annual NaPoMo ISSUE, which includes poems by respected as well as up-and-coming poets
- The annual PRIZE ISSUE, which features the work of a single author—a chapbook of poetry, a collection of prose, or a novella
- One THEMATIC ISSUE, for which we set the theme early and announce a call for submissions
- And two OPEN ISSUES, in which we publish the best work we receive from our slush pile.
As always, we respond specifically to every manuscript we receive, sending short but personalized letters explaining why we are not accepting a manuscript when we don’t. Because our editors are all storytellers and poets, too, we know how frustrating it can be to submit work to a journal, wait six to eight months for a response, and then receive only a generic, anonymous, photocopied slip of paper that says nothing more than, No thanks. We receive 70-80 submissions a week, and we only publish approximately 40 poems, 8-10 stories, and 1-4 essays a year. Writers seeking a spot in any literary journal face the same incredible odds, and if we can’t find room for a piece in Iron Horse, we’ll at least explain why, so all of our submitters benefit from their efforts.
For the writers we do publish, we want them to know how much we appreciate their work (what an honor to publish it!), and we hope the only reason they feel “fortunate” to appear in our pages is because they know how hard we work to support their careers. Therefore, two features we include in Iron Horse are our extended contributor notes and a regular column, “News from Past Contributors.” Our contributor notes offer biographical information about our writers, but they also allow contributors to discuss their work habits and the processes by which they created the pieces that appear in our journal (which, by the way, is an excellent educational tool for new and experienced writers reading Iron Horse). In “News,” we update our readers about the successes our past contributors have recently experienced and where their current work can be found. On our Web site, we are happy to publicize new book publications by our past contributors; additionally, we offer a free page of ad space to any contributor who publishes a book up to two years after appearing in our pages.
In fact, our ad space (all complimentary) is reserved solely for advertising those books released by our contributors and for other journals willing to swap ad space with us. In this manner, we hope to offer a service to writers, publishers, and other journals. We want to help the literary arts and artists to thrive no matter where they are situated.
Of course, we’re looking for more readers and hope our format finds them! We want everyone to read and read and keep reading, because literature unites humanity. Writers address topics and events of ordinary human concern in unique and imaginative ways, and their stories and poems teach us something about ourselves. Our writers and our magazine are working together to increase the number of people who read quality literature, and we show up in our subscribers’ mailboxes SIX times a year as a reminder.
And we still offer a low subscription cost to both libraries and individuals: only $15!
Iron Horse is making a difference in the literary world and the world at large. We hope you’ll join our efforts by subscribing or submitting some great work!
Leslie Jill Patterson
Editor
