The following is part of an interview series:
PRINT LITERARY JOURNALS in conversation with BENNINGTON REVIEW

via email in Spring 2019

WENDY FERGUSON

How would you describe the aesthetic sensibilities of Cherry Tree, both in terms of content and layout?

JAMES ALLEN HALL

We aim to publish pieces that have lush imagery and musical lyricism and that have urgency. As we say in our mission statement, these pieces should “dare to be” in existence, and we’re interested in the mythopoetic, particularly in the ways in which writing reimagines and reconstructs the world and enlarges empathy. We don’t have many frills in terms of layout, but I think our design aesthetic is clean and simple in order to let the pieces speak for themselves. I think our emphasis on the mythopoetic can be seen in our cover art choices.

WENDY FERGUSON

How do you see Cherry Tree developing overtime, and could you tell us a bit about how and why Cherry Tree was launched? How has the publication grown or changed?

JAMES ALLEN HALL

Cherry Tree began as an idea of Founding Editor Jehanne Dubrow’s. She wanted to start a journal that would reinvigorate the image and also have something to say. In our third issue, we began printing a literary shade feature—work that speaks back and casts shade on homophobic, racist, classist, sexist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic institutions. “There is a lot of shade under the Cherry Tree,” we’re fond of saying. As a spin-off, we began the Cherry Tree Young Writers’ Conference, a four-day literary extravaganza for high-school-age writers in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. I think the journal’s presence has also strengthened literary editing and publishing at Washington College, where Cherry Tree is grown. Our screeners take a class called “Literary Editing and Publishing,” and our editors work with them in August during screening to make sure that their editorial acumen is on point and that they read carefully and write professional and thorough screening reports. We owe it to the more than two thousand submitters we reach with Cherry Tree.

WENDY FERGUSON

What are your thoughts on the development of digital media? How do you think that online publication of poetry and prose affects printed
editions? Why did you decide for Cherry Tree to be a print journal in this digital age?

JAMES ALLEN HALL

I’m not a coder or a web designer, but I think there’s room for all of us. I am interested in the ways that other print journals complement with online or digital offerings. But I am invested in print, and in reading by holding. There’s a lot of online/digital media, and a lot of noise. I wonder sometimes if print journals are now the thing that appears rarified—the artifact that can be displayed on a shelf, in a home, on a coffee table; the thing that can cut through the noise of all our online reading or podcasting, and be the quiet enjoyment over a glass of wine or cup of morning coffee.

WENDY FERGUSON

What are some key components you and your editorial staff look for in submissions? This can include structural aspects, stylistic qualities, content, etc.

JAMES ALLEN HALL

We love well-constructed images that are idea-bearing and not merely decorative. We want pieces that have deliberate and meaningful sonic texture. Work must offer more upon a second or third reading (which tells you how many times we read a piece). We tend to love microfiction, though we have also published longer pieces. We love a sense of mystery and myth, but not as a gimmick. Pieces must have a strong structural coherence. And they must delight and surprise in the language and in the plotlines. We want pieces that are effective emotional and intellectual works of art.

WENDY FERGUSON

From and editorial perspective, who is your target audience for Cherry Tree? What kinds of submissions do you think will be desirable for your readers? Are there certain qualities of Cherry Tree accepted submissions?

JAMES ALLEN HALL

Cherry Tree endeavors to speak to the head and to the heart. Our readers are smart folks who want also to feel the complex space authors engage when they write about controversial, risky, and urgent subjects. They want to feel their humanity and perspective enlarged. They want to know more and feel more richly. Submissions that see literature as both thinking and feeling—and that also remember to delight and surprise—will be most desirable for our readers. There’s a certain mystery—the kind of eerie light we find at the center of the best myths—that inhabits a Cherry Tree piece. A kind of wondering at the world and trying, in new language and in beautiful sentences and lines, to make out just what we are, we who inhabit this weird and doomed and redeemable place.

WENDY FERGUSON studies psychology and literature at Bennington College.

JAMES ALLEN HALL is the editor-in-chief and poetry editor of Cherry Tree.