Articles by Steve Semken

Introducing our latest intern Adam Jaschen. A few of his thoughts on publishing. I grew up surrounded by musicians, and it always felt like a beat was present, either in the air or in the way the people around me moved, worked, and spoke. To me, the beat was a unifying principle, an agreed-upon structure […]

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Meet out new publishing intern, Samantha Futhey. This past April, I attended the Association of Writers and Publishers conference in Minneapolis, representing Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment as their poetry editor. The book fair overwhelmed me in its impressive presentation of printed books and magazines piled high on tables of over 800 journals, university […]

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: For the uninitiated, a contributor copy is a free or reduced price volume provided to an author whose work appears in that volume. If you’ve just opened your Writer’s Market, those italicized cc‘s next to the various listings refer to contributor copies that a given publication provides to an author they published. My […]

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by Stefanie Brook Trout and Taylor Brorby The word anthology comes from the Greek anthologia, meaning a “flower collection,” and each essay, story, and poem in an anthology is like a flower in a carefully tended garden. Anthologists, like good gardeners, cultivate, weed, and select using a discerning eye. They know what they like, what […]

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I run my own blog now, and recently I wrote a little series about show, don’t tell. Most writers have heard that phrase before but struggle to understand what it means. Here is the introduction of my series. If you want to read my original post, click here. You can learn more about show, don’t tell […]

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A tiny year-in-review blog post for 2014. This year several changes to the press occurred, primarily, for the first time I had interns, who each in their own way did wonderful and remarkable tasks: editing, organizing an entire anthology, planning events, some marketing, read submissions, and much more. Each intern truly made me appear much […]

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Exciting News! from http://midwestbooksellers.org/2014/10/midwest-connections-picks-december-2014/ Chasing Weather: Tornadoes, Tempests, and Thunderous Skies in Word & Image A Photography and Poetry book by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Stephen Locke. September 19, 2014. Paperback, $25.00. Ice Cube Press. ISBN: 9781888160826 “The sky is made of rivers before and after they became rivers,” Caryn writes in Chasing Weather. “Weather is the great leveler, the great unifier. We’re […]

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A few months ago, I started “The Query Seal’s Den” blog to show potential authors how not to write a query letter. I like showing real examples of what not to do. Today, I’ve decided to list the things that make a great query. So here we go: Clear Writing Many writers try to sound […]

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To Make a Book By Stefanie Brook Trout, Ice Cube Press Intern, editor Prairie Gold: Anthology of the Heartland   I grew up in Western Michigan, the youngest of three daughters. We didn’t have a lot of money for extras, but my mom could never say no if my sisters or I asked her to […]

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Shortly after Steve brought me on as an intern to Ice Cube Press, I tapped into my natural audacity and floated the book proposal that would become Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland to Steve Semken, my ever-cheerful boss. Despite my lack of former publications (i.e. none), Steve agreed to publish the book through Ice […]

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