"A Good Piece of Literary Citizenship & Other Matters": Interview with Ryan Ridge, Editor of Juked Magazine

The editors of Under the Madness Magazine had an amazing opportunity to interview Ryan Ridge, Editor at Juked. Juked is a donation-funded literary magazine with editors from all across the globe, and has been in publication since 1999: an impressively long lifetime of publishing works of poetry,fiction, and nonfiction. As up-and-coming editors at Under the Madness Magazine, we are always looking for opportunities to better understand the editing, revision, and selection process. To prepare for this interview, we constructed questions prior to the interview to ask,taking note of the responses. It was interesting to get the perspective of experienced editors, between our meeting with Juked and the recent interview with Soundings East, as it provided a variety of directions we can take to make Under the Madness Magazine start off strong! The interview took place over a Zoom call on September 24 at around 6:30 pm.

UTM: When you’re reading submissions, how do you avoid unintentional bias in choosing what pieces go into the magazine?

Ridge: I think that the trick is with that--you all have a decent-sized staff--for me, having a good team so that it’s not just my eyes, and working with other people, collaborating with other folks to get other eyes on submissions. So I have a couple different fiction editors right now, a couple poetry editors: the poetry editors kind of pick, and they do their own thing. One woman is located in Hong Kong, and the other guy, I think he’s in Florida at this point. So they collaborate abroad and pick and match their things that way, and I work with my wife as one of the fiction editors, and I have another fiction editor, he’s a professor down in Georgia. His name is Will Donnelly. So you know, there's always a few sets of eyes, which helps. We have a submissions manager, and the editors will go through and mark things that look interesting, but even if there’s something that’s not marked, I will go through and read it, because we don’t always have the same eyes. So I think that’s the real trick: multiple sets of eyes on things to avoid unintentional bias. If you can, get a reader or two each time, and that helps with that potential problem.

‍UTM: When you first receive a piece, are there any immediate clues that tell you a submission is going to be a good piece or a bad piece, without fully reading through it? Are there any giveaways?

Ridge: Yeah, and it’s not something that I can quite articulate, but generally, you can read the title and by the time, maybe at the end of the first paragraph, there’s an electricity. There’s kind of a charge and you feel, “Oh wait, I’m going to read this all the way through." If I read something all the way through, it’s always headed into the maybe pile, and I’ll return to it. Sometimes I’ll know right away, sometimes as soon as I’m done that this is it. You know, this is exactly what I’m looking for. But I’ll mark them maybe if I read through it. Sometimes, you know, I try to read through everything in its entirety, but you can generally tell on the nose sometimes. The maybes are the most difficult, and that goes back to Grace’s question. I do like to get the editor’s eyes on those as well. I forgot to mention that we have a nonfiction editor these days, and she’s a professor from Massachusetts so Juked is kind of spaced out all over the world. Hong Kong, Florida, Massachusetts, I’m in Utah, John’s in Washington D.C, the magazine started in Los Angeles so we’re collaborating from all over the world at this point. Generally, though, I can tell right away. It just feels alive.

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UTM: Would you consider your editing process to be more difficult? How different is it from actual writing?

Ridge: How different is the editing process than the writing process? I’d say the editing process has affected my writing process,in the sense that we’re talking about “How do you know?” and “When do you know?” and sometimes if there’s a really wooden beginning, where you’re not vibing with the beginning, and you think, “Well, I don’t know because the character wakes up and it takes a lot of time before the story gets moving,” which makes you aware in your own writing if you’re doing something that’s maybe not working. I am really more conscious of certain aspects in my work because of reading so much of other people’s work. I’d say there’s a give and take between those two things. I’d say the editing definitely helps the writing.

UTM: How do you plan, prioritize, and organize your workload?

 Ridge: There’ll be times when I fall behind. There’ll betimes when I get way ahead. The best method is to do a little bit each day. Say, “Hey, even if it’s only half an hour, take this half hour, read through a few submissions, and if I can get an hour, read through 10 or 12 submissions.” Just doing a little bit each day and piece-mealing it rather than saying uh oh"--because our submission window says we’ll respond within four months. If we don’t respond within four months, we’ll start receiving queries on the day of four months and one day. So we try to get back to writers within that window. It’s not good to get three months behind and you have to read a couple hundred submissions in two weeks. I had one editor, he was really fast. He could read hundreds, but he’s moved onto other things. I can’t be that fast and be accurate at the same time, so I like to do a little bit each day. I did a little bit of editorial work earlier today, in fact, and I’ll probably do a little bit tomorrow. Like I said, I’m the faculty advisor for our undergraduate magazine, too, so it’s constantly I’m working. I’m doing a little bit of magazine work every single day. When I’m not looking at submissions, I’m doing the administrative stuff, helping design posters and tasks like that.A little bit each day is the trick.

UTM: Are you a writer who submits to other magazines? Does that help you understand the process they go through and does that affect you as an editor?

Ridge: I think it’d be good for every writer to work on a magazine, even if it’s only for six months, a year, because then you kind of see how a magazine works. I’ve never queried because I know that if somebody’s going to consider my submission, they’re probably considering it. Now if it’s like an insane amount of time, say a year has passed or something, I might query in that regard because maybe they’ve forgotten about it or it got set aside. But generally, I think it’s just a good piece of literary citizenship, to do a little volunteer work on a literary magazine. Work on a magazine: then one understands as writers that, you know, we’re all doing our best. Especially during COVID times, during the pandemic. We’ve slowed down a bit, and also just because of the way the world’s been lately. I think we’re pretty caught up at this point in the process, although I still receive queries if it’s over four months. I got one this morning in fact. I’ll respond to them immediately and try to speed it up. The only reason I’m keeping a submission longer than four months is if I’m seriously considering it. It’s never that I’m just letting the submission sit. Instead, it’s always a maybe, a maybe that hasn’t had a second set of eyes on it, and that’s why it’s sitting. Then I say, "It's time to make a call.” So the push does work in that regard. I would say query after the appropriate time.

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UTM: When you reject submissions, in the rejection letter do you usually put a reason why you are rejecting it?

Ridge: We use a basic form letter. And then we have a kind of intermediate form letter where we might say not necessarily specific feedback, because we don’t have the person power. Because we always have to balance 500 submissions, for nonfiction and fiction, let alone on the poetry end. So we really don’t have the person power to give specific feedback, but we have a tier of rejection letters. For the personal rejection letter, I might say, “Hey, this didn’t land for us because of x,y, or z.” I also don’t want to discourage the writers, because what’s not right for Juked might be right for many other magazines.

 UTM: What is your favorite part about working with your team?

Ridge: That’s a good question. I’m just so appreciative that we’re all volunteers, and most of us are professors or work in education in some regard. So we all have jobs and we’re all writers too. We have second jobs, and editing is our third job or first job, whatever way you want to look at it. I’m appreciative to work with very brilliant people that do cool stuff, that write cool stuff and do a good job of stewarding the magazine and keeping us relevant and still cool after twenty years, because you know, I’d say five years is a long time for a literary magazine; ten years is ancient and twenty years... We’ve been around since 1999, that's twenty-one years. We’re dinosaurs. We’ve been around forever, keeping it going. I’m honored that we’re still kicking the can down the road. And you work with good people.

The meeting finished with additional inspiring remarks from Ryan, wishing us luck on our magazine’s first issue. It was a great learning experience and gave us more insight into the world of editing and literary journals, which we hope to translate into Under The Madness Magazine. We’ve enjoyed and taken account of all the tips given to us, and we’re more than thankful for this opportunity!