PSR to Begin Accepting Graphic Literature Submissions!

Today, we have some very exciting news at PSR! Beginning this issue, we will be reviewing submissions of graphic literature!

It all started when Van Jensen (whose graphic novel was featured on PSR Book Club) asked if we'd ever considered publishing comics in Plains Song Review. Well, we hadn't, but it certainly seemed like an interesting idea! After thinking about it and talking about it for awhile, we decided to give it a try.

I know what you're thinking. Graphic literature? Isn't that just a fancy-pants name for comics? Yes indeed! But comics have gotten pretty literary and high-brow in recent years. For instance, last year in an English class, we read the graphic novel MAUS, a memoir of the Holocaust that won a Pulitzer. Other notable comics include Persepolis and Skyscrapers of the Midwest. Literary magazines are starting to take comics more seriously too. Virginia Quarterly Review regularly publishes them, and McSweeney's devoted an entire issue just to comics!

I really think comics could be a good fit at PSR. They're such a uniquely American art form, which makes sense for a publication like ours. Furthermore, graphic novels are uniquely well-equipped to explore "place," as they are able to both depict place both through words and through images.

Of course, PSR's publishing standards will remain the same as ever. We will only accept submissions that explore the Great Plains, and we will only accept submissions that we feel are high quality. If we don't get any good comic submissions this year, we simply won't publish any comics. That said, I'm hoping that we get some really good stuff to show you when Issue XII comes out.

Graphic Literature Submission Guidelines can be found at http://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/PSR/psr.shtml.