Sapling issue #862
The one in which we talk to Jon Frankel of Whiskey Tit Journal.
Hi writers.
And because writers are also readers—Have you tried this immersive audio/visual reading technique? (This may be the latest BookTok trend, but really, I think it’s just a learning style!) NPR reports, “In a time of distraction, immersive reading might be what it takes for some readers to steal their attention back — and get lost in a good book.”
Now, here’s what’s happening in the small press world this week.
—Kit
Managing Editor / Sapling editor
Black Lawrence Press
Contest: Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Contest
Genre(s): poetry book contest
Award: Publication, $2,000, and ten copies of the book
Entry Fee: $25
Deadline: September 16, 2026
Guidelines: www.exophidiapress.org/contest
Journal: Pamenar Press Magazine
Genre(s): poetry, prose or any hybrid formats
Website: www.pamenarpress.com
Guidelines: www.pamenarpress.com/submissions
Open to submissions
Small Press: Clash Books
Genre(s): We are looking for horror, literary fiction & nonfiction with an exciting cultural hook. We do publish poetry but are extremely selective.
Website: clashbooks.com
Guidelines: clashbooks.com/submission-guidelines
Feature: Whiskey Tit Journal
This week, Sapling spoke with Jon Frankel, Managing Editor of Whiskey Tit Journal.
SAPLING: You’ve recently joined Whiskey Tit Journal as the Managing Editor, following Meagan Masterman’s tenure with the journal. Welcome! For those just learning about Whiskey Tit Journal now, what are two or three key things you’d like writers to know?
JON FRANKEL: When you submit to us you are submitting to me, and I am a slow and careful reader. I don’t reject a piece because ‘I don’t get it’ in the first line or paragraph. I will give the writer the same attention and respect as I want when I submit work. At the moment I have time to read things twice, even work I don’t like, because mood affects everything, and all art is subjective. That means I might reject excellent work, of course, and take some weird stuff that entertained me and I think will entertain the reader. We want diverse content: genres, voices, and aesthetics. I regard myself and the journal, and Whiskey Tit Press, of which we are a part, to be members of a community, the counterculture, which is as old as humanity. We link our ancestors to our descendants by reaching out to our contemporaries.
SAPLING: In your introductory letter to Issue 12, you write, “We don’t publish content, we publish poetry, fiction, and nonfiction written by human beings out of the work and struggle to be human.” Can you tell us a bit more about your hopes and dreams for the journal moving forward?
J.F.: It’s hard to maintain hopes and dreams these days! But I always have to believe, and have always believed, that it is possible to carve out a zone of sanity in the madness that is capitalism. Are we going to overthrow the system? Obviously not. But can we be part of something greater than ourselves? Necessarily. And this zone of sanity is NOT a safe space.
SAPLING: On a practical note, you read submissions beginning two months in advance of each issue, to be published respectively in June and November. What is the first thing that you look for in a submission? Any deal breakers?
J.F.: I look for exciting language; language-forward writing. I don’t look for perfection. I like momentum. I like the stillness and silence of a long look and the hurtling chaos of an avalanche of words. Bathos, pretentious academic writing, memoirs by people who’ve done nothing but take too many drugs or screw the wrong person don’t interest me. I’m not a therapist.
SAPLING: You are also an author. What have you brought from your experience writing and publishing with journals and small presses to your work with Whiskey Tit Journal?
J.F.: I’m not going to pretend that being on the other side is always comfortable. I hate rejecting pieces because I know how dispiriting rejection is. I know how much work writing is and how lonely. But I guess every journal editor out there does too. I also know when a writer hasn’t put in the work of revision, or hasn’t bothered formatting and proofreading their manuscript properly, or is relying on their credentials. Credentials don’t mean a thing. Imagination, style, intelligence do.
SAPLING: Whiskey Tit Journal is affiliated with the publisher Whiskey Tit Books. What can you tell us about the relationship between Whiskey Tit’s book publishing and journal arms?
J.F.: Miette gives me total editorial independence. We share convictions, anti-authoritarian instincts, a DIY ethos, a determination to ignore, evade, and if necessary attack the monolithic conformity that characterizes capitalist culture. But we are not a feeder to the press, nor does the press feed us work. I will publish the occasional piece by a Whiskey Tit author if I like it, but we want to showcase a broader selection work, especially nonfiction and poetry.
SAPLING: What one or two literary magazines deserve more recognition, and why should more people be reading them (and perhaps seeking a home for their own writing there)?
J.F.: Guernica shares our anti-capitalist rage. They frequently publish punchy stories about the down-and-out, people forced to eke by, bereft of dignity by The American Dream™. I also love the dense, weird world that Joyland conjures. I consistently see writers I love pop up there. It’s a great place if you want to start feeling a little more untethered from this world. No Tokens publishes poetry par excellence. There’s often something lonesome and transient in the poems—trips through motels, strip malls, and end-of-the-lines.
SAPLING: Just for fun (because we like fun), if Whiskey Tit Journal could travel through time, what would be your first stop?
J.F.: The usual suspects: Paris 1919, or London 1599.
SAPLING: Jon, thank you so much for taking us behind the scenes at Whiskey Tit Journal!
Jon Frankel is a poet, novelist, non-fiction writer, and freelance teacher who lives in Ithaca, NY. For 27 years he was a stacks manager and supervisor at Cornell University’s graduate libraries. He attended the last few semesters at Goddard College before its shameful demise, and completed his MFA at Lesley University in creative nonfiction, writing about his many trips to Vietnam and long engagement with the history of that country. Currently he edits the Whisky Tit Journal, an online literary journal. He is the author of GAHA: Babes of the Abyss (Whiskey Tit Press, 2014), The Man Who Can’t Die (Whiskey Tit Press, 2016), Isle of Dogs (Part 1, Whiskey Tit Press, 2020; parts 2-4, 2022) and, forthcoming in 2026, The Martian Princess. Writing as Buzz Callaway, he published Specimen Tank (Manic D Press, 1994). Jon is married and has five children and two dogs.
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