Referential Magazine

PLEASE FIND US AT REFERENTIALMAGAZINE.ORG.

Hello Referential Readers,

I invite you to take a look at the first issue under our new editorship. We have moved right next door and now can be found at referentialmagazine.org. Please update your favorites.

And please subscribe to Referential’s “Regarding” Blog at blog.referentialmagazine.org. (This is the final post at this site.)

Note: the writing and artwork at this original referentialmagazine.com site can be accessed through the new site’s archives.

In our first issue, you will find our editors’ choices for “The Best of Referential.” Please check out the work we preferred, given our tastes. “Best,” in any artistic endeavor, is subjective. I invite you, after reading our choices, to glance through our archives to see if there are selections you might have added to the list.

And finally, submissions are now open to all our categories, and will remain open until we fill the next issue (in December), or until the work overwhelms our small staff (several of us are under five foot five).

Thank you for giving us a look, and please refer us to a friend.

Warmest wishes,
Sean Toner

Hello Referential Magazine readers and contributors. We, the new editors, are excited about our stewardship of the magazine and we hope that you will continue to enjoy our content.

My name is Sean Toner and I was an admirer of Referential before I became a contributor last year. When a call for new editors was sent out this July by founders Jessie Carty and Andrea Beltran,  I launched my resume and accompanying “I can do it” text.

And by “I can do it,” I meant to say I can assemble the right team to keep Referential meaningful and special. Please check out our bios following these introductory comments.

Referential will strive to have the same spirit of balance between heart and mind as the editions that came before us. In our first month we may put up some new curtains, choose new carpets, hang our own paintings. We will also be adding a room or two. But we respect the property we are moving into and will keep the spirit of interconnectedness that made the magazine so attractive to us.

We are adding a Reprints category: we will bring to the web pieces that have only appeared in print publications. More details to follow on our submission page when it opens in September.

We are adding a Regardings section, in which past contributors are invited to answer a few questions about their work. Think of this as 15 minutes of Fresh Air.

We will become a quarterly magazine.

Our first issue will be a “Best of Referential” issue; our editors will choose our favorite poems, short stories and creative nonfiction from the founding editors—a bridge between the old and new.

Our “Best of” issue will appear Sept 22.

Submissions will open for our December issue in September, once we are up and running.

Our Editors

Reprints Editor

George Dila‘s story collection, “Nothing More To Tell,” was published by Mayapple Press in 2011. His short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including North American Review, Literal Latte, Fiction Now, Cleaver, Palooka, Pithead Chapel and The Forge Magazine. A born and raised Detroiter, and a big city person most of his life, George now lives with his wife, Judith, in the small Lake Michigan coastal town of Ludington. His website is georgedila.com.

Poetry Editor

Ona Gritz‘s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Bellevue Literary Review, Seneca Review, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and many other journals and anthologies. In 2007, she won the Inglis House Poetry Contest and the Late Blooms Poetry Postcard Competition. Her chapbook, Left Standing, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2005. Her first full-length collection of poems, Geode, is due out soon from Main Street Rag. Her website is onagritz.com.

Fiction Editor

Ethan Joella‘s fiction was a finalist for the 2010 Robert Olen Butler Short Fiction Award and the 2008 Eric Hoffer Award (that story appears in Best New Writing 2008). His work has appeared in The International Fiction Review, The American, Delmarva Review, The Collagist, SNReview, Perigee, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Cicada, and Stickman Review. Ethan is also a poetry reader at Ploughshares. His website is ethanjoellacommunications.com.

Managing Editor

Robin Parks’ stories and essays have appeared in The MacGuffin, Hippocampus, Perigee, Prism International, Philadelphia Stories, and other journals, and her fiction has won the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. A former managing editor of the Bellingham Review, Robin has an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was the Presidential Fellow in Creative Writing. Her website is robinparks.com.

Poetry Editor

Dan Simpson, the recipient of a Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, has published work in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Hampden‑Sydney Poetry Review, Passager, The Atlanta Review, The Louisville Review and Margie, among other journals. Cinquo Puntos Press published his essay “Line Breaks the Way I See Them” and four of his poems in Beauty Is A Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, now in its second printing. His blog, Inside the Invisible, can be found at www.insidetheinvisible.wordpress.com.

Editor-in-Chief/Nonfiction Editor

Sean Finucane Toner is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose creative nonfiction has found homes in The Best of Hippocampus, Referential, Ardor, Brevity, The MacGuffin, Opium, Apiary, Word Riot, The Monarch Review, Perigee, Writers on the Job, Philadelphia Stories and “The Book of Worst Meals,” as well as at a Literary Death Match at the World Café in Philadelphia. Sean has an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University, has served as vice president of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and as director of its Free Forums at Drexel University. His website is www.seantoner.com.

Thank you for your time, and we look forward to you reading, sharing and contributing to Referential Magazine.