There is cause for celebration not only for the Fall semester coming to a close soon but also because the 2020 Staff recently completed the first round of submission review!
This year, Scribendi received about 550 submissions that are split between Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Photography, Foreign Language, Short Fiction, Visual Art and Open Media. The staff had about one month to read and review all 550 works so planning and reading with efficiency were necessary to ensure each submission was given the attention it deserves.
Luckily the Staff was able to rely on a schedule with deadlines that specified which category needed to be reviewed and ready for discussion. To start this process, the Staff would independently review submissions while making notes and ranking their top choices. The top choices would be sent to the Managing Editor to compile and the Staff would discuss the specific literary and artistic elements of each work that strengthened or weakened its likelihood to be published.
After lots of discussion and subsequent voting, the Staff was able to provide the initial top choices for each category that will be published. Even though these works represent the initial picks by the Staff, they are still not guaranteed publication in this year’s edition since a second wave of review and copyediting in the Spring will inevitably impact which works are published.
Therefore, Scribendi will be conducting ongoing review since the viewpoints and expertise of our Staff changes over time but will allow us to be proud of the works published.