lee reid, founding editor

is the author of the self-published
chapbook The Shade Our bodies make.
she writes across genres and time
from the top of a hill in her
spirit-city, santa fe, new mexico.

from a 2017 INTERVIEW WITH SAPLING

BR: We came across it on the trail: a felled tree pruned of all extremities and sweating, sap swelling up from the handsaw wounds, glinting tiny prisms into the lens of my camera. “It’s tree blood,” my partner said, and the concept of a crystalloid bloodshed became unshakeable.

Sapling: What do you pay close attention to when reading submissions?

BR: I look for stories with a certain degree of solemnity, that are daring and vulnerable both thematically and linguistically. I’m a sucker for words that I would never think to write in tandem, for structure that is not only enticing to the eye, but so imperative that the story would collapse otherwise. I gravitate towards calculated artistic risks. 

Sapling: Where do you imagine Blood Tree Literature to be headed over the next couple years? What’s on the horizon?

BR: Coding. Lots and lots of coding. We embarked on this journey with the intention to eventually create a literary platform that engages the reader interactively and in ways the monotonous scroll of black fonts on white pages can’t. We dream of multiple art forms being integrated into the journal so that Blood Tree would represent authors as well as visual artists to create a symbiotic relationship between mediums. That being said, we are now considering submissions for video essays and short films, photo series, fine art collections, graphic design, and each and every variant of these media. See our submissions page for details.