Featured Author Gary Thompson Reading

     The Suisun Valley Review, and the Solano Community College, is pleased to announce that featured author, Gary Thompson, will be having a reading at the Solano Community College Library March 4, 2014 at 1:00. We invite everyone to come and enjoy selected poetry by Gary Thompson.

More to come on our featured author in the coming weeks.

Democracy is (not) so overated

      This literary magazine is the only student ran literary journal, to my mind, where the students have the absolute final say over the creative works published in the journal. What that means is this magazine is created entirely by the students, and we all have to come to an agreement on every little detail of our magazine. This democratic process can not be swayed for anything, not even the for the smallest thing such as the size of the font. Fortunately, as a class we don't come to shutdowns over issues quite as frequently as congress does, but disagreements still occur, which leads to our productive discussions. In order for a decision to be made, the class has to come to agree at a super-majority vote. If the idea can not get more than 75% of the class behind it, than we can't move forward. This includes the pieces that get submitted to us. If 75% of the class finds that the piece is good enough to be published, then it has a home in our magazine. This vote takes place after intense discussion over the work, and careful thought put into it. This deployment of the democratic process is where the quality is developed and insures that every voice is heard. Seeing a piece of creative work that you have advocated for publishing actually make it to the final product is extremely satisfying and demonstrates that at least 75% of the class sees the same qualities and had the same emotions evoked by the piece as you did. Now if our congressmen fought for some of their pieces of legislation as fiercely as students fight for some pieces of work.

Let's Feel Inspired

      February is here, and so it brings with it dark clouds, cold nights, the Olympics and the start of the editors over here at The Suisun Valley Review to come to a collective understanding of what a good piece of short fiction or poetry truly is. We all have gone out to the local bookstores in search of small literary magazines, such as ours, to find pieces published in them that we all really enjoy. We each picked one piece, and put them all together in a packet that acts as our textbook. This packet of published work has been the focal point for us editors for the week. Every single piece in the packet has been scrutinized for things such as its overall craft, and quality as written work. We had to ask ourselves questions like, “What makes a poem a good poem and what makes a piece of short fiction outstanding?” All of the work we will receive as submissions to our mag will be fantastic, but we need to figure out as a class what makes a piece great and what it makes it truly amazing. Our goal is to publish only the best and the awe inspiring. It’s a tough goal to accomplish, but by looking at the works already published, we have taken to first step in accomplishing this goal.

     We've also begun to look for things that inspire design. It’s time to start thinking about what the internal layout of our magazine should be, and there are a lot of things to consider, things that wouldn’t even have crossed one’s mind if they weren’t creating a literary magazine from scratch. Like the spacing between the first and last name of the published author, and the color of the page number. These are all tough decisions that eventually must be made. To make those decisions we have to look at things that inspire us as editors and as designers of a literary journal. We've looked at things such as the color of the ski boots worn by Olympic downhill skiers or even the splash page of a different literary journal. Sometimes it just takes a second to sit back and look at the world for the inspiring. Our goal is to create a design that inspires the reader.

A part of the class got together to create a display case showcasing the literary magazine in the English department here at Solano Community College. It really turned out great!

2014 SVR Display Case in the 700 building at SCC

New Beginnings - New Submissions

The Suisun Valley Review is back to work on the Spring 2014 issue, and us editors couldn't be more excited. We can't wait to review all of the fantastic work we will receive in the comings months and look forward to publishing the very best of the best. With the new years comes a new blogger running this site with the hopes that the readers of this blog with gather a better understanding of what it means to be an editor for the Suisun Valley Review. So follow us through this literary journey.

In the meantime, looking to submit?

We are proudly accepting submissions until March 24, 2014. We accept submissions in the form of Prose, Poetry, Short Fiction and Visual Media for it's Spring 2014 Edition!

Be part of the Suisin Valley Review, a long running and ward-wiining Solano College tradition. Now in its thirty-fourth year, Suisun Valley Review considers carefully all submission received, and publishes work by first-time contributrs and published authors/artists alike. No preference is given to a specific style or genre.

Literary Guidelines-
SVR is primarily a literary magazine, and accepts literary submissions in prose, poetry and short fiction. Submission should include:
1) A cover ltter including the contributor's name, address, phone number, and email.
2) A twi to five line biography of the author/artist.
3) Submissions in .doc, .docx, or .rtf is submitted via email.
4)  an SASE if submitted by US mail.

Please email all submissions to: suisunvalleyreview@gmail.com

Visual Guidelines:
SVR also accepts submissions in fine art, photography and 3D art.
1) Submissions should be submitted at 300 dpi in TIFF or .JPG formats to our email address.
2) No more than 3 images per artist should be submitted.
3) Any submitted image may be selected as the cover of the magazine.
4) We publish in full color!


We can't wait to review your work.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

This has been a big couple of weeks for SVR's editors! We've gotten all of our pieces worked through in terms of voting, the cover together, insides together, and--oh, goody, this is the big one!--all of our letters sent off. In the meantime, check your emails and mailboxes, and make time for the release reading! Wednesday, May 15th, at the Solano Community College Library at 2pm. Of course, the address for SCC is 4000 Suisun Valley Road, Fairfield, CA, 94534. Hope to see you there!