Publishing in Sargasso



 Sargasso has no official policy for accepting material
for publication. As stated in the editorial note of the
first issue, we are particularly interested in good, clear
writing by and/or about the people of the Caribbean,
although the door was left open for other work as well.
Then, as now, we were also concerned with interchange
between Puerto Rican and other Spanish-language Caribbean
writers and English-language readers, and we considered
Sargasso to be mainly a critical and scholarly publication
and only secondarily a poetry or short story magazine or
review. But creative writing has played an important
role, and we ask that unsolicited poems be kept to
between 20 and 30 lines and stories submitted to be no
more than 2,500 words in length.

 With the exception of solicited manuscripts, we try
to read all submissions--critical and creative--"blind,"
that is, without knowing the writer's identity (this,
for obvious reasons, does not apply to book reviews).
But writing has a way of identifying its author, and
especially if the writer attempts to adapt to
Sargasso's Caribbean bias. We have published work by
English Department colleagues and/or North American
residents in Puerto Rico, but that writing has more
usually focused on the non-Caribbean experience of the
writer or on Caribbean life "as observed" and not "as
lived."

 Sargasso 5 is the first in a series of issues that
deals with Caribbean Poetry, Fiction (Sargasso 6),
Theater (Sargasso 7), and Film (Sargasso 8), and critical
articles, translations into English of Spanish and French-
language Caribbean writing, and book reviews are required.
There is space for creative work in English--and
especially that in "Caribbean English"--as well, but our
greater immediate needs are literary translations,
criticism, and reviews. As Sargasso moves towards an
increasingly bi/trilinqual focus and format, we look
forward to publishing more materials originally written
in French, Spanish, and various creoles, "Patwahs," and
"nation" languages as well as in English.

 Lowell Fiet
 Editor