Manifesto, AKA why we won't have a blog

[Jeff Chon]

I've been reading a lot of Editor's Notes and blogs from literary journals lately and I've come to the conclusion that we will not do them. Other than social media posts promoting the work, and work we do inside the journal (Reviews, interviews, journalism, etc) our imprint will be the people we bring in. We will not be doing musings on podcasts we like or bands we're into or which Crime and Punishment character Daenerys Targaryen reminds us of. In my mind, these types of things seem to forget that journals are great in spite of editors, as opposed to because of them. 

The East Bay Review will be great because of the people we publish. These are the people who will give us our personality. They are the ones who will put our mark on the world. They are all the personality we need. We are grateful for them and we will celebrate them because that is how we will celebrate ourselves. Our version of editorial peacocking will be "Look at this amazing Eric Miles Williamson story we published," and what more do we really need to say other than that? The East Bay Review will be about the writers and only the writers.

Having read a few of these things, I feel like they inject too much editorial personality into the journal itself.  This isn't about us and I find a lot of what I read on editor's notes to be really self-congratulatory and distasteful. Let's make it about the writers and only the writers. Any time we have issues, let's repeat that to ourselves: This is about the writers and only the writers.

Jeff