SVR 2012 is alive!

Welcome to the 2012 blog of Solano Community College’s very own Suisun Valley Review! We are once again open for another semester of literary celebration through publishing. We have a team of faces new and old ready to review all submissions with the care and consideration that each piece of prose, verse, and art deserves. For submission guidelines, check out our Facebook or tumblr pages!

We’re currently in the process of getting to know the magazine, each other, and how our voting process is going to work. We have a sizable number of returning editors, but a lot of us are completely new, so it’s going to be important for us to get this system down. We have a bit of time left to do so, though; after all, even though we would love to get a steady stream of submissions throughout the next few weeks (hint hint) we know that the majority of our submissions are received between mid-March and March’s end.

Our other main focus is getting the word out! We’re distributing posters like the one you see above, sending fliers out, social networking, and doing fun projects like the display case.

In-progress:

(You might think that being trapped in a display case would be disconcerting, but she's got SVR - she's fiiiiine!)

All done:

We hope to see you all submit – you have nothing to lose!

WE HAVE A MAG

Thank you to everyone who submitted and especially to those that were accepted. Congratulations. Two complimentary Copies of the magazine will be mailed to those of you whom were accepted for poetry, fiction and visual art. If you haven't recieved your acception/rejection letters, they will be sent out as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience. I'll be keeping everyone up to date on the magazine up until and through Spring 2012. Thank you once again and PLEASE keep writing and submitting to this magazine, without you WE ARE NOTHING!

Deadline is GONE

That's right ladies and gentlemen, writers and artists, the deadline for the Suisun Valley Review 2011 edition has passed. Please do not attempt to send in anymore submissions of poetry, short fiction or visual art. We are currently critiquing and editing written submissions for inclusion in the SVR 2011. If any writers are wondering if their piece has been accepted or not, I cannot tell you, but towards the end of the semester we will be sending out acceptance and rejection letters. Those that are accepted will be invited to verbally present their work at a poetry reading.

I'd like to speak to the rejection letters for a second. Don't be discouraged if you recieve one. On average a writer will recieve fifthteen rejection letters for each acceptance. We're not saying that your piece is bad, or cannot be published, simply that it didn't make the cut for the Suisun Valley Review. We would strongly encourage you to keep writing and keep submitting, not only to the SVR, but to other magazines as well. There are literally tens of thousands of literary magazines out there and you never know when one of them might publish your piece(s).

The discussions in class have been very lively and brought up many good points about a lot of different pieces including what is working and what isn't working as well as whether a piece should be included in the magazine or not based on the craft of the piece.

I'll keep you updated on our progress as we continue our towards our eventual goal of a complete magazine.

Fiction...yep, it's for real!

Ok so first off we'd like to thank anyone who submitted to the Quinton Duval Award. The deadline of March 15th, 2011 is now passed and we wish you all the best of luck. However, ***the deadline for the Suisun Valley Review is set at April 1st***, so pleeeeeaaaasssseeee all you writers and artists get your poems, short stories and visual art pieces in ASAP. 
Now on to the class this week which was all about fiction. We had a short packet of short fiction assigned to us. The goal: to determine what makes a good piece of fiction worthy of publishing in the Suisun Valley Review. Overall it was a very successful week and the lessons helped me personally to take down a few notes on what makes a good fiction piece. I know for the most part we all feel pretty comfortable critiquing fiction now as well as poetry and artwork.

Now it's a good thing we're comfortable and confident because we were assigned our first real packet this weekend. That's right, we're already looking at and critiquing pieces for inclusion in the magazine. Of course that isn't to say we don't want more, cause we do, we want A LOT more, so make sure you submit! Remember you can submit two ways, electronically and by mail. The email to submit is suisunvalleyreview@gmail.com. The address is:

Suisun Valley Review
English Dept/Humanities
Solano Community College
4000 Suisun Valley Road
Fairfield, CA, 94534

Also remember that your submissions must include a cover letter with your name, phone number, address, email and two to three lines about the author. Also if you send by mail you must include a self addressed stamped envelope. Good Luck to all who submit!!!

Deadlines and Censorship

Hello creative world. I'm coming to you once again to tell you a few important things. First off, deadlines are fast approaching. Today is March 11th which means you have only 4 days a.k.a Wednesday the 15th to submit your poems or short fiction for the Quinton Duval Award (only open to SCC students.) Also, the deadline for the SVR is April 1st (open to anyone and everyone.) We have around 100 submissions right now which is about 1/10th of what we estimated at the beginning of the semester. SO PLEASE SUBMIT ASAP (no not actors, singers, authors and professionals) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Now on to censorship, which is primarily what this week in class was about. We had a nice long discussion on bias, morals and what would be ok to publish and what wouldn't. Overall I think the point was that there shouldn't be too much we don't publish because of content. Once again, like I said in the last post, we decide to put pieces (art, fiction, poetry) into the magazine based on the craft of the piece. The main thing is that we should BE AWARE OF our morals and our bias, not get rid of them completely. So yes u can cuss in your piece, but only if it enhances it somehow. If not then it will be obvious and won't be included not because we're censoring you, but because it didn't help the poem or story at all. One thing I think would be censored would be hate pieces, for example a piece from a member of the KKK with hate content towards African Americans or Mexican Americans.