NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines
The Main Street Rag
PO Box 690100
Charlotte, NC 28227-7001
Phone: (704) 573-2516
E-mail: editor <at> mainstreetrag <dot> com
Simultaneous submissions: no Email
submissions: Subscribers only Reading period: varies
(see website) Response time: usually 3-6 weeks Payment:
copies/honorarium (see website) Contests: yes (see website) ISSN: 38857 99813 Founded: 1996 Issues per year:
4
Distributors: Magazine: Direct sale and
subscription only; Books: Baker & Taylor, Parnassus Book
Distributors Copy Price: $8 Subscription (Individuals) 1
year:
$24 Subscription
(Libraries) 1 year: $24 (available through EBSCO)
Publisher’s Description: Main Street Rag is an independent small press literary magazine that features poetry, short fiction, essays, photography, reviews and interviews. It is produced by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company which also publishes books and produces projects for other small press publishers. Because we own the production equipment, we have greater control over quality and costs.
Our magazine is eclectic, but we favor edgy material for poetry and fiction—even in the humor we publish. Essays we feature are more often sociopolitical commentary as opposed to the how to of writing. Over the years we’ve interviewed such people as Gwendolyn Brooks, Anthony Bukoski, Rita Dove, Joy Harjo, Yusef Komunyakaa, & David Slavitt. Our Spring issue usually features the MSR Poetry Book Award winner.
Each year we sponsor both a Chapbook Contest and a full-length poetry book contest. From these we will select as many as 25 books for publication during the following year. Most of the titles selected for publication under the Main Street Rag label are juried in this manner.
Additional information is available on our website and all Main Street Rag titles and back issues can be purchased through our Online Bookstore.
Recent issues:
Volume 14 Number 4, Fall 2009
Features The Slow Vanishing:
Maureen Sherbondy Interviewed by Beth Browne. Contributors include
James Cushing, Rebecca James, Stephen Malin, Carol Peters, Fred
Rosenblum, Sarah Sloat, Richard Spilman, Kit Williamson, and more.
Volume 14 Number 2, Spring 2009
Features “Interviewing the
Interviewer: Suzanne Baldwin Leitner Discusses her New Novella:
Sessions with a Cheater’s Wife.”
Volume 14 Number 1, Winter 2009
Contains interviews of Cathy Smith Bowers and Rob Boisvert, short
fiction, poetry and a "state of the business" special feature about the
future of print publishing by publisher/editor M. Scott Douglass.