Under the Editor's Pen

Issue 5 releases in fewer than four weeks now, with a fantastic new slate of anarchist sci-fi poetry and prose. Mark your calendar: the new issue will go live Friday, September 15! And you'll find a little extra something in your inboxes and audio streaming services that day. We can't give all of the details yet, but for the first time select Radon stories will be featured in an audio podcast. 

We will unveil our full cover art for issue 5 on August 25th, but and we'll give our Patrons the first look soon. But for now enjoy this larger teaser below!

Welcome Gidget!

This past week we welcomed a new editor, Gidget, to the Radon team.

Gidget is a speculative fiction writer with a passion for editing—her favorite thing about being an editor is supporting authors as they’re published for the first time. She knows how good that acceptance letter feels. Gidget is always on the lookout for stories that tie in Radon's ideologies, and loves to see what authors can create by incorporating our themes into one cohesive, meaningful, and sometimes revolutionary piece. She spends most of her time finishing up her second bachelor’s degree and will be applying for MFA programs upon completion this winter.

A quick shoutout to CLMP, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, for letting us use their job board to recruit editors. (Not to mention all the work they do on behalf of independent literary magazines and presses and allowing us to afford our Submittable.)

Gidget isn’t our only incoming editor, and we’ll send out introductions for the others as they get settled in.

Behind the Scenes for Issue 5

Currently, we’re still reading submissions for Issue 5, selecting the best stories and poems to soon share with you. While our submissions are always open, on August 15, we’ll cut off submissions for Issue 5—any pieces submitted after August 15 will be accepted for Issue 6 instead. Note: Due to a lack of fiction submissions, we will extend this slightly. Likely August 20th or August 31st at the latest.

Then what? In the four weeks leading up to Issue 5, we’ll start to dive into editing the accepted pieces. Radon is more hands-on than many magazines; we offer full edits to help every piece reach its full potential. Aimer particularly tends to dive deep with the poets, as you would expect from someone with a poetry MFA.

Around the same time, Aimer will begin preparing the website for the Issue 5 release, while Saga gets ready to typeset the PDF and ePUB versions of the issue. We used a different process for Issues 1-3, but in an effort to increase our accessibility to all readers, Saga utilized their new InDesign skills to create additional file formats.

Typesetting for Issue 5 should go more smoothly now that we have some practice, but there’s always more to learn.

We’re on Bluesky!

A quick thanks to Eden for all of their hard work making graphics and otherwise sprucing up our social media.

But the inevitable consequences of capitalism have us wondering where the writing community will truly settle next as Twitter becomes an eX-functioning website. While we have a Mastodon account, (radonjournal@kolektiva.social) we haven’t found much traction there.

However, thanks to a generous invite from our author Eva Papasoulioti, we’re on Bluesky now as @radonjournal.bsky.social. We have enjoyed the cozy community feel that Bluesky currently offers writers and publishers.

We’re also using Instagram more extensively, where we are @radonjournal.

As we move through the awkward landscape dominated by Twitter’s smoldering corpse . . . Please let us know if there’s anywhere else you’d love to connect with us.

(We considered Threads but have thus far decided not to engage with it for privacy and functionality reasons, though we could revisit this conclusion in the future.)

Theme Clarity

Though we do offer some clarity on our four themes—dystopia, anarchism, transhumanism, and science fiction—on our site's FAQ page, we routinely receive work that falls outside of our purview. We are relatively niche in our desired material and have grown more particular about what we consider a "Radon story" as the years have gone by.

The four words we base our journal around are each vibrant and specific, with storied pasts. This unfortunately means that interpretation of the words varies by person, and we'd like to help authors make informed submissions by offering greater clarity. Expect a series of four detailed social media posts in the coming months, and perhaps an updated FAQ.

Interview Series

The interview series with Radon authors that we began last year has left a positive mark in the community. We have officially caught up with all Issue 1-4 authors who wished to be interviewed, and we will be taking a short hiatus to publish Issue 5. After September 15th, we will be back with plenty of interviews from our newest authors.

Award Season

Fall remains a busy award season each year for indie lit journals. We have seven awards lined up to submit Radon authors for in 2023, beginning with the O. Henry prize by the end of August.

Sadly, Best Small Fictions by Sonder Press has become defunct after the 2022 award season, and they will be missed. We will keep our eyes peeled for more awards to nominate our authors for.

Currently we plan to nominate for: the O. Henry Prize, Best of the Net, Best Weird Horror, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, Best Horror of the Year, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize.

Seize the Press delayed

We apologize, but StP is still ironing out the final problems with their upcoming issue. A delay occurred during the editing stage. Based on our conversations with their Editor in Chief, it should arrive any day now.