The Brigadoon of Literary Magazines

It seems that several times over the last year, I’ve looked in the front matter of a book of short stories I’ve been enjoying, and in the place where the author thanks those publications that originally printed his or her stories, I’ve seen the journal Salt Hill listed as one of them. (Although I can only think of the example of Mary Gaitskill’s Because They Wanted To at the moment.) Google “Salt Hill,” though, and you turn up a bunch of results pertaining to pubs called Salt Hill or, yes, salt hills.

It’s not just me. Fellow fiction ed. Ashleigh heroically compiled a long list of literary magazines over the summer, and her listing for Salt Hill was something like “Not sure this still exists.” We just figured it had gone the way of the dodo, so to speak.

Au contraire! Today, via Pitt’s super-useful “dist list,” comes word that Salt Hill not only exists, but is welcoming submissions for its 21st issue. It turns out too that it’s affiliated with Syracuse University.

Here is relevant info from the aforementioned e-mail, followed by an explanation of why I’m not just putting up a link:

“The editors welcome submissions of poetry, prose, translations, reviews, essays, interviews and artwork submitted by April 1. We do not accept electronic submissions.

“. . .

“To submit address your work to the appropriate editor
(poetry, fiction or nonfiction) at:

“Salt Hill
Syracuse University
English Department
Syracuse, NY 13244″

And now here is the web address they provided: SaltHillJournal.com. Click on it. Type it in yourself and see where it goes.

This is the most utterly mysterious literary magazine I have ever heard of.

-Adam