By: Becky Fine-Firesheets

For those who haven’t followed the Pulitzer Prize controversy, the fact that the board of 18 members did not choose a fiction winner out of the three, fabulous novels presented to them by jurors has ruffled some literary feathers (the final nominees were David Foster Wallace’s “The Pale King,” Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams” and Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia!”).

While I’d like to think this decision, or indecision, resulted from the fact that all three books were so good they couldn’t choose just one, it ends up sending a stronger message that nothing was good enough to win.  I find this to be insulting to the nominees and to other authors who published wonderful works this year.  But even more unfortunately, I think the Pulitzer Board lost an opportunity to celebrate “distinguished” literature in a way that actually does reach the masses.  Badly written novels end up selling millions of copies for millions of reasons, despite their lack in quality.  Sure, the nominated authors have sold many books and have achieved some level of fame, but my point is that a typical American reader doesn’t go out of his way to find well-written literature.  However, he might see an article in the Times on the latest Pulitzer winner, pick that book up on his way home from work and then maybe even share it with his friends who are still hung up on the Twilight saga.

The Pulitzer Prize is an opportunity to recognize and promote an extremely talented author with real skill and the ability to tell a great story, while also sending the message that well-crafted novels are still important and worthy of praise and attention.  This year, the board blew it.

Many writers much more distinguished and prevalent than I also have opinions on the Pulitzer:

Professor, author and 2012 Pulitzer juror Maureen Corrigan finds flaws in the process in her article in the Washington Post.

Author Ann Patchett claims the decision is a major loss for the fiction world in her Op-Ed in The New York Times.

AP journalist Hillel Italie presents a less biased, more news-based take on this year’s process in The Seattle Times.

The Daily Beast calls the decision a “snub” and explores differing opinions about the Pulitzer Board.

The Huffington Post claims the Board’s decision means “no book is worthy of the prize;” various Twitter comments accompany the article.

Jen Schomburg Kanke: Which term resonates more with you: generalist, interdisciplinary, or public intellectual?

Wendy Lesser: Hm.  I wouldn’t necessarily use any of them to describe me, but I guess “generalist” comes the closest.  “Interdisciplinary” sounds too academic (it implies that things are already divided up into disciplines) and “public intellectual” went out with Partisan Review, if it ever existed.  I do like the idea that I can be interested in ALL the arts and other things besides, without having to specialize narrowly in any one of them.  But I don’t want to suggest that I have mastered all these different things.  That’s why I chose the title “The Amateur” for one of my books — and also because of its root in the Latin verb “to love,” which conveys my motivation for all this interest in the arts:  it would be no fun being a generalist if I had to work on things I didn’t love.

JSK: Are there limits to being a generalist?

WL: Yes, of course — there are limits to any position.  Lack of depth would be one of them, and lack of companionship in your field another. One doesn’t necessarily suffer from the limits, but they are there.  (But remember, I did not and do not label myself a “generalist”:  that was simply the least undesirable of the three choices you offered me.)

JSK: To me, academic disciplines imply not only differing knowledge sets, but also different paradigms and ideologies. Are you suggesting that, as a generalist you are outside of those things as opposed to someone who considers themselves working in an interdisciplinary setting who would perhaps just be combining them from different fields?

WL: Perhaps just ignorant of them as opposed to outside of them.  I do have a PhD in English but I try not to let it show.

JSK: Do you think it is possible to be a generalist and remain within the academy?

WL: I doubt it, but I really have no idea.  My only connection with the academy, at this point, is to teach one course a year to Honors College students at Hunter, a course called New York and Arts in which we just gad about and look at a lot of different things. This does not qualify me to comment on academia; I am allowed to be a generalist in my one course, but that is probably not typical.  (But then, I imagine it does help, in my annual rehiring, that I have a PhD in English.  So disciplines do rear their ugly heads eventually.)

JSK: So, having a background in English you’ll hopefully understand if I ask a freakish close-reading question now. I’m curious about the phrasing in the introductory note to your blog. In the note you say that one of the reasons you started it is because “people felt that there should be a part of the Threepenny website that was available only online.” Did you need a lot of convincing about this or I’m I just reading too much into that?

WL: Probably that was just me convincing myself that it was not self-indulgent of me to have a Lesser Blog.

JSK: In my opinion, your periodic posts about various art forms is a nice supplement to the magazine because it allows you to comment on events happening in the art world or current books without the time lag that happens with the full magazine (not that there’s a huge “time lag,” although sometimes I feel with the internet if we don’t have a comment on it the instant it happens then there’s a “time lag”). It’s not like you’re blogging every day about drinking your coffee while reading submissions and petting the cat, so I’d say you have no worries about being anywhere near self-indulgent with this project. With The Lesser Bog and the submission manager both now on-line, has there ever been any thought to moving to an on-line format for the entire journal?

WL: No, I am wedded to print, so the print version will always be the primary one. We do put about 5 to 8 things from each issue up on our website, just to draw in new readers, but we have no plans to put everything up on the site: to put the whole thing online for free would subtract from our paying print customers (as the NY Times has recently discovered).  We do have a complete digital version that is available for purchase through zinio.com — that is, anyone who wants to read the whole magazine on a computer or an iPad can get an exact replica of each Threepenny issue in that form from Zinio — but it is essentially a separate business operation; we just take a cut of the Zinio sales, so digital subscribers and print subscribers are two separate categories.

JSK: The Zinio option seems like one that might appeal to a lot of readers embracing e-reader technology so it sounds like a great way to keep the magazine current and lively. Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee have both used the word “fresh” in reference to Threepenny Review. After nearly thirty-two years, how do you and Threepenny keep from falling into editorial ruts like so many other fine literary journals are often accused of doing?

WL: Well, I’m glad to hear you don’t think we’ve fallen into a rut.  One never knows from the inside, and certainly the magazine LOOKS very much the way it did 31 years ago.  I think one way is to constantly have younger people involved with the magazine.  Since 1992, I’ve always had a halftime deputy or associate editor to help me with the work, and she or he has generally been under 30, at least when hired.  Another way is to collect new writers all the time, which we do. Sometimes I read their work in other publications and ask them to write for us, sometimes I find them in a class I’m teaching or a conference I’m attending, but mostly they just float in, unsolicited.  And now that we have an online submissions system (it operates six months of the year, from January through June, and then we close it for the second half of the year), we get even more young people and other kinds of unexpected writers to choose from.

JSK: What changed in 1992 that made you add an associate editor?

WL: We converted to what was then quaintly called “desktop publishing”– that is, we stopped using an outside typesetter and started doing our own typesetting in Quark Xpress. (We have since moved to Adobe InDesign, but we still do all the type, photo, and layout work inhouse.)  I realized I would not be able to handle all that extra work along with everything else I had been doing, and that’s when I first hired a halftime associate editor, who eventually turned into what we called a “senior” or “deputy” editor after a few years.  That first one was Lisa Mann (now Lisa Michaels, a published writer), and she was a real wonder, a great addition to the magazine — as most of my associate editors since have been.

JSK: Would you ever think of handing the magazine over to another editor?

WL: Not unless forced to by death or ill health.  Perhaps that “not unless” should read “not until,” strictly speaking, since it is, after all, an inevitability, but I prefer not to plan on it yet.

JSK: Speaking of making plans, other than the standard and quite necessary “read the journal before,” do you have any tips for writers who may be making plans to submit to Threepenny Review?

WL: The best way to get into the magazine is through the Table Talk section — short nonfiction pieces of 1000 words or less.  I recommend people try more of those.  Longer nonfiction is also in short supply, especially critical essays and sociopolitical essays — we tend to be get plenty of memoir and “creative nonfiction,” whatever that is.  As for poetry and fiction, I don’t think they should be listening to any advice from me; they should just be writing what they are meant to write and sending it to me.  But only in the January through June period, please!  (The enormous success of our online submissions system has meant that we only have to read for half of each year to fill the issue for a full year.)

JSK: Let’s face it, Threepenny Review is a pretty awesome journal and it’s nearly a one woman show. Were there every times you doubted your own awesomeness or the awesomeness of the journal?

WL: I have to say that doubt is not a big part of my personality.  There probably ought to be more of it, and perhaps I should begin cultivating it, but it’s probably too late for that.  As a writer and editor, and as a person in general, I have all the benefits and all the shortcomings of someone who habitually jumps into the deep end and assumes she will be able to swim.  And the magazine, I guess, has all those benefits and shortcomings too.  But since nothing life-threatening is at stake (this isn’t brain surgery, after all), it doesn’t matter that I am an overly confident risk-taker; that is, I don’t think it hurts the magazine to have all sorts of different things tried out in it. And I am very cautious fiscally — a good bookkeeper, a good hoarder, and a pretty good fundraiser — which is why Threepenny has been able to survive all these years.

As for the magazine being “awesome” — well, again, it’s hard to see that kind of thing from the inside, but I’m glad you feel that way.

JSK: Thanks for being willing to take time out of your busy schedule to talk about the magazine with me. I’ve really appreciated this chance to get to talk with you about the journal.

Photo courtesy of Nancy Crampton

Wendy Lesser, the editor of The Threepenny Review, is the author of seven previous nonfiction books and one novel. Winner of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and numerous other organizations, she has written book, theater, film, dance, and music criticism for a variety of print and online publications.

Jen Schomburg Kanke is a doctoral student in the Creative Writing program at Florida State University. Previously, she served as an editor of Quarter After Eight, a journal of experimental writing, and is currently the Assistant Poetry Editor of the Southeast Review. Her work has most recently appeared in Rattle, the Laurel Review, Review Americana, and Earth’s Daughters. She holds an M.A. in English, an M.Ed in Higher Education, and a B.S.Ed in Secondary Education all from Ohio University.

JM: I wanted to start by asking how you decided on “Prick of the Spindle” as the title of your journal. Obviously there is the fairy-tale, Sleeping Beauty connotation, but what do you like readers to associate with it?

As an aside, We get asked every other day what jmww means. At one time it meant something, but now it doesn’t mean anything, just initials, and sometimes we capitalize it (JMWW) and sometimes we set it lowercase (jmww) so there are no assumptions about feminine or masculine aesthetic. I like that aura of mystery, because we are really just about good writing, regardless of genre. We’ll publish a well-crafted detective story alongside experimental fiction.

CR: There were a few considerations at play when I chose the name. I wanted something that stood out, that had a deeper meaning, and that was lyrical. Those three elements are key to me when reading and selecting work for publication. The further meaning to the name holds up the idea that at the heart of a work should be something that causes or creates change--it speaks to the crux or turning point of a piece, and this doesn't even have to be something obvious that happens. It can be as subtle as the personal revelation of the character in a work, or a shift in a poem after which nothing else is the same. When Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on the spindle of the spinning wheel in the fairy tale, she was both fulfilling a prophecy, or more accurately, a curse (something beyond her control or will, which speaks to fatedness or the universe, whether on a literal or metaphorical level) and she performed an action that would have lasting effects on her own life and the lives of those around her. When I read submissions, I look for something that is, to a degree, aware of itself (and I love metafiction) in the sense that it recognizes change, development, or redirection in the subject or characters. I'm looking for lyricism too, in poetry especially, but also in prose. It's a rare enough narrative that employs a lyrical lilt. It's for the latter reason that I adore prose like Annie Dillard's in The Maytrees. I appreciate that you are both gender- and genre-neutral. We strive for a similar aesthetic--that of solid, unique, or interesting writing.

I'm curious about how you set about starting jmww. What led up to your decision to start a literary journal, and what was your original vision for the journal? Has it surpassed your expectations? Has your vision changed over time?

JM: In 2004, I had been out of school for a few years and missed the connection I had with other writers, so I thought about doing an online journal because it seemed inexpensive and easy (on an aside, Dave Housley from Barrelhouse was in the same program I was, so it’s funny that we both wound up starting our own journals around the same time. Of course, Barrelhouse is HUGELY successful). Also, there wasn’t a huge scene in Baltimore then, so I thought if I started a journal I might be able to meet other writers not only on the Internet, but in my own area.

So a friend from school, Catherine Harrison (jmww’s senior fiction editor), and I started jmww, or, at the time, Journal Managed by Wicked Women. My knowledge of HTML was very basic (check out some of the old issues in our archive), and the first issue featured three stories—one by me, one by Catherine, and one by Geoff Nelder. I remember being really impressed with other journals at the time—the now-defunct-but-great Small Spiral Notebook, Paumanok Review, and No Fixed Genre, and of course Summerset Review, Word Riot, and Lily, and they were our models, i.e., quality writing regardless of genre.

The journal has helped me connect with Baltimore writers in a big way—I’ve organized writers’ happy hours with Gregg Wilhelm of CityLit Project and met a lot of people, including Michael Kimball, who had just moved here from New York. We started a reading series together in 2008, The 510 Readings, which not only spawned a lot of other quality series, fiction and nonfiction, but I think really made Baltimore a destination for writers to come read. We’re especially proud of that. I’ve also used my connections with jmww to teach community-level writing classes and also speak to graduate classes about the need to take the initiative in publishing, whether it’s your own work or your own idea for a journal.

And the journal has grown so much—we publish an annual print anthology now and have a blog, we have launch parties and readings with other journals, we attended our first AWP conference earlier this year. But there’s so much we’re still working on, such as getting onto Twitter and making our catalog of anthologies available as eBooks and setting up podcasts, all of which you already do, in addition to running Aqueous Books! It amazes me, because you do it all with like half the staff.  I’m so envious and proud! And curious--What can readers and authors expect from the journal and publishing house next year? Or is it a secret?

CR: As far as how Prick of the Spindle and Aqueous Books are moving forward in the year ahead, we are waiting on the approval (I remain optimistic; there was recently quite a bit of back and forth of documents and paperwork between the IRS and our lawyer) of our 501(c)(3) application and therefore we have grants on our radar. Of course, securing funding will mean the ability to act upon some of our  larger-scope plans, which are mere seeds of ideas at the moment, and therefore too nascent to share. But some of them will have a community focus. At Aqueous we have quite a slate of books in the pipeline, all of which are on the website, and then of course, Prick of the Spindle has its first print edition releasing this fall (Issue 1 will debut in October, and already has quite an impressive roster of authors; also, it will be very thick).

But probably the deepest we’ve reached into the community so far has been with our recent partnership with the Pensacola Little Theatre, which produces an impressive array of plays every season, from Willy Wonka to The Rocky Horror Picture Show to other fare like How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying... The directors agreed to partner with us to produce the winning play from our youth drama competition (“Echoes,” by Monique Hayes). Monique hails from Maryland, but she flew here to attend the world premiere, and it was incredibly rewarding to know that I’d helped in some small way in bringing the written word to the stage. Experiences like that remind me why I do what I do, and I know you can relate with The 510 Readings. It feels like effecting change, or making a difference, or contributing to the social good on some level, and the feeling is great because it’s a feeling of giving to the culture you love.

Hosting a regular reading series is really a great way to branch out into the community, and I admire that you’ve done that with such success. We’ve done readings here and there but nothing on a regular basis, though I think that has to do largely with the size of the town I live in (smallish but up-and-coming), and the fact that most of the writers in my network are part of the online community and therefore pretty regionally scattered. As you know from your own connections, some of those contacts are international. So I’m glad to have started as an online journal and grateful that I live in a day and age where I have a worldwide community network at my fingertips, something that only a select few literati had once upon a time. About, say, 100 years ago, one would travel, or expatriate, or with luck and great connections, become part of a literary circle--most of which would presume the availability of the resources to fund such endeavors. Now, we can branch out into the virtual community and engage intellectually without leaving the comfort of our homes, and all at relatively little cost. I’m still in awe of it.

It’s interesting that you mention having started jmww with a sense of wanting to reconnect with other writers. What better way to make that connection than to work as an editor, after all? I can relate to and understand that. I think, as editors overseeing all aspects of the journal’s production, we also tend to look at the big picture, so we think in terms of what’s ahead as well as where we started. Correct me if I’m presuming wrong (this is all leading up to my very “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”-type question). What are the aspects you have found to be the most rewarding along the way (that’s not intended to be a loaded question, ha!)? Where do you see jmww in the next 10 years?

JM: Definitely the other authors, editors, the sense of community has been why I do it. I’ve met hundreds of people in person, online, and at conferences who just share a great passion for literature and want to reach as many people as possible, to infuse that passion into the community and hope that others experience the same joy we experience.

I understand the big-picture view of the editor, but it really does take a village to run a literary journal. And it’s been an interesting paradox for me in the respect that, in a desire to make my life simpler, I’m kind of a Luddite about technology that’s been introduced in the during few years—I don’t even have a smart phone! So it’s great when other editors in the journal help to keep us moving forward—nonfiction editor Dario DeBattista will be starting up our Twitter page in the fall, and Phuong Huynh, who does most of our design, is working on making our print journals available as ebooks. And there are other avenues—videos, podcasts—that we are looking into as well. But sometimes it’s just about the right person stepping forward and claiming ownership of a project for jmww, since most of us have so much on our plates already. (And I want to put that thought out there for anyone interested in working on a literary journal—we want you and your ideas!)

One thing we probably won’t do is become a nonprofit. It’s not because we make a profit (I don’t), but because I’m not sure the advantages outweigh the disadvantages at this time.

It’s hard to know what 10 years will bring. We are 7 this year, so it’s coming up sooner than we think, but sometimes the journal feels very year-to-year for me. There may be a time very soon when I can’t handle the responsibility of running it, but I’m hoping one or more of our editors from within would want to step up and give it a shot! Or maybe we could have a contest—win a literary journal! But whatever happens, I’m not disappointed in our run. In fact, I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, for a project that kind of started out as a lark, a hobby.

One thing I want to ask you about is, it seems when you become a journal editor, it supersedes everything else. I think 95% of people think and refer to me as “Jen Michalski, the editor of jmww,” as opposed to say, “author Jen Michalski” or even “Jen with the big hair.” There seems to be a certain sacrifice, at least regarding your own career, that you make as an editor. Do you share that experience? Also, so that I won’t make a similar mistake in saying “Cynthia Reeser, editor of Prick of the Spindle,” I was hoping to learn a little bit about your personal projects.

CR: I’m only half-joking when I say I’m on a time-management plan. Running a journal and a publishing company is a time commitment, as is writing or art, so for me getting anything accomplished is about being as organized and tenacious as possible, especially when it comes to maintaining consistency in the work flow. You just have to stay on top of everything and be relentless about it.

I wrote three books that released in 2010--Light and Trials of Light (poetry, Finishing Line Press), and two nonfiction books, one on writing and publishing for children, and the other on publishing for the Kindle (both from Atlantic Publishing). I’m ghostwriting a book right now as well as always looking for time to squeeze in painting and my own writing, and then I also work as an editorial liaison for several scientific nursing journals and write reviews for (most) quarterly issues of Prick of the Spindle. So it’s sometimes a delicate balance. But you know what that’s all about... What about your projects? Do tell.

JM: Excellent! I was fortunate to be able to take a two-week writing residency this summer in the Georgia mountains, where I finished my novel (The Tide King) and started about 50 pages of a new one, Rabbits Singing. I’ve always maintained that I could write fairly well on nights and weekends in-between issues of the journal and on non-reading series weekends and after work (I’m a full-time freelance medical copyeditor) and when I wasn’t interviewing other authors at The Nervous Breakdown and when I wasn’t teaching classes, but then, working for 2 full weeks on nothing but writing, I became very distressed when I came home about what little time I did spend on it, on myself, and how much more I could accomplish if I didn’t spread myself so thin. So I’ll be doing some soul-searching next year about what projects are most important to me. But I agree; you have to have an MFA in time-management to do our jobs!

Cynthia Reeser is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of Prick of the Spindle and Publisher of Aqueous Books. Her poetry, fiction, reviews, visual art, and articles can be found in a variety of print and online sources. Her books include Light and Trials of Light (Finishing Line Press, 2010), a nonfiction book on publishing for children from Atlantic Publishing, which was a finalist in its category in the 2010 Indie Book Awards, and a book on publishing for the Kindle (Atlantic Publishing). Her visual art and a full curriculum vitae can be found at www.cynthiareeser.com.

Jen Michalski's first collection of fiction, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, is available from So New (2007), her second, FROM HERE, is forthcoming from Aqueous Books (2013), and her collection of novellas is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013). Her novella MAY-SEPTEMBER (2010) was published by Press 53 as part of the Press 53 Open Awards. She also is the editor of the anthology CITY SAGES: BALTIMORE (CityLit Press 2010), which won a 2010 "Best of Baltimore" award from Baltimore Magazine. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww, a co-host of the monthly reading series The 510 Readings and the semiannual Lit Show in Baltimore, and interviews writers at The Nervous Breakdown.

After this conversation took place, Moon Milk Review, edited by Rae Bryant, was absorbed in the new Johns Hopkins journal, the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, where Rae Bryant serves as Editor in Chief. 

> kill author: When Portal del Sol paired us with you for this feature—not just flattery here—we were really pleased. One of the things we’re struck by with Moon Milk Review is its “personality,” the sense that you’re always consciously striving to try new things with it. It feels like a “magazine” in the truest sense of the word too, rather than just a journal of fiction and poetry, because you’ve put things in there that a reader wouldn’t typically expect to find in a lit-mag. Did you have this in mind when you started MMR? Did you have a clear manifesto or particular aesthetic in your head, and has this changed much as MMR has progressed?

Rae Bryant: Yes, the pairing is a mutual pleasantry, for sure. > kill author has been a consistent artistic presence for us at MMR and for me personally. We really enjoy what you do with the author issues, the focus on the work, not to mention the curious anonymity of the editors. We fantasize at MMR that one day we will open the “whodunit” envelope and find you on a card with a spiked espresso in hand, sitting in the library. If you feel a need to divulge, we promise not to tell…

On the question of manifesto, yes, the eclecticism of the magazine was an initial vision, something for which we continue to strive, along with a sense of movement and so the “change” element was of utmost importance. Hopefully, we’ve been able to keep the vibe going to some success. We like to think of MMR as a “village” atmosphere, like walking through the East Village or Brooklyn and experiencing a juxtaposition of artists and artistic forms in an “other worldly” way. This is what we endeavor to create through our editorship. We’re merely the ring masters.

So the obvious question for you is how and where and why the secrecy, but you’ve been asked this before, and we respect and applaud the veil. So let’s take it into the future. Where do you see the veil next year or the year after? Will > ka keep its anonymity and if so, are there any plans for “secret” readings? A > ka masquerade would be amazing.

> ka: “We’re merely the ring masters” is a great way to describe your role. We’d never thought of it like that, but it’s how we see ourselves too. You’re right: the how, where and why have all been discussed, but the ring master metaphor is such an apt one to explain why we continue to do the anonymity thing. We’re just the organizers, creating the atmosphere of > kill author (and the atmosphere and aesthetic is very important to us), and obviously selecting the work. But we don’t > kill author to be about us. That’s not to say we’re against personality editors—it’s just not our particular thing. We’re the same when it comes to musicians (where the boom in home recording has meant a huge growth in “faceless artists”), to actors and, yes, even to authors. We prefer those who speak through the creative work they do, rather than feeling the need to be a big personality out front.

For the future, we’ll keep the anonymity going, certainly while we’re still editing > kill author. We couldn’t do anything else, considering all we said in the previous paragraph. If we stop the magazine and move on, then who knows if at some point our names won’t slip out? Maybe, but it would be less important then. Our only dilemma comes when we wonder what might happen if we wanted to hand > kill author to new editors—would they be willing to remain anonymous too? Could they be trusted not to reveal themselves? As for readings—heh, masked readings sound like a cool idea, but we’ll probably just keep to producing the magazine. For us, that’s the focus—those virtual pages every two months illustrating the > kill author approach.

Can we move on to the subject of reading submissions? We’ve both talked about the manifesto and the vibe of our publications. When you read through all your subs, do pieces which fit your aesthetic immediately leap out at you? They tend to for us, and we sometimes feel guilty about it. We’re like “Yes! This writer just completely gets what we’re about!” We’ve been known to punch the air. It’s exciting, but because of that we always take care to examine those stories or poems in particular detail, reading them over and over again, to check we’re not being blinded by the original thrill. At the same time, we don’t want everything we publish to feel similar. We’ve featured work that’s consciously different for us—what many editors would call “not a good fit” in normal circumstance—but which succeeded in wowing us. Rightly or wrongly, we always give this information to the writer too: “this isn’t normally the kind of thing we’d publish, but it just grabbed us so much we have to feature it.” Does any of this match your experience of reading subs?

RB: Honestly, I have to say MMR tries to keep an open aesthetic. We do look for edge and character-focused storytelling. We like to be pulled into the story with character and language right away and with such a grip as to not let us go, but this doesn’t mean we’re looking for a “hook.” But yes, in terms of aesthetic, we do like to mix it up. Personally, I have an appreciation for anything Modernist-Minimalist to Postmodern and beyond, whatever it is we’re supposed to be calling the “new” wave of styles, so I’m constantly open to structure and what seems to be the author’s intended direction. What I don’t go for are stories that spend less time on character and language and more time on other things. What I especially go for are stories with character and language that is hard to distinguish from each other because the narrative voice is so entwined and necessary it’s impossible to imagine any other voice.

Speaking of language and character, let’s move into recent issues. I’m particularly moved by Josh Collins story, “I Am a Man with a Fractured Skull.” (Issue 14: The Joseph Heller Issue) The structure of the story plays an important role. The reader must pay attention to paragraphing and imagery in a more active way than most prose: i.e., disembodied axes, a mirror ball in the narrator’s stomach. The story takes on something of a poetic direction with this structure and imagery, a style not always comfortable for many editors. How does this style play out editorially when > ka reads submissions?

> ka: How does this style play out editorially? Carefully! That’s to say: if a piece like Josh’s—with, as you say, a poetic direction, a more difficult structure—grabs our imagination, we register the fact we liked it and it made an impact on us from the start, but then put it aside a little while to think over it before approaching it afresh with an even more critical eye so we can fine tune our opinions of it. We think about what the piece is saying to us—an important question is: is it also entertaining us to read it?—and hope it will have the same effect on readers. If it’s what might be called a “difficult” piece—we don’t really like the term “experimental” because how experimental something is really depends on your frame of reference—then we may very occasionally delve into a little of what the piece is about with the writer, but we admit it’s rare for us to do that because a piece needs to have an effect and an emotional resonance on its own terms without necessarily bringing the writer’s backstory and explanations on board.

It’s very easy to be wowed by explosive language, innovative structures and challenging ideas, but we do stand by what we say on our “About” page—we value work that knows how to tell a good story and can take the reader from A to C via B, but which makes that journey in extraordinary ways. Josh’s piece definitely fits into that category.

Talking of different forms of work, Moon Milk Review’s seasonal Prosetry Contests were a great idea and have used compelling images to inspire some equally compelling work. Going out there and inviting submissions with a particular challenge in mind is something we’ve considered—we’re especially interested in inviting writers to “remix” the work of others and perhaps have a whole issue based around such an idea at some point—but we’ve not yet dipped our toes in the water. Do you like the idea of a literary magazine putting an idea or theme out there and inviting responses, as a way of occasionally doing something a little different from a wide open submissions policy, and is there more to come from Moon Milk Review in this area?

RB: “Is there more to come from Moon Milk Review in this area?” Yes. We like the idea of multimedia and collaborative art. I took a long trip West recently and on the trip, I spent a good deal of time thinking about music and composition and how it might relate to text. When I was at the VCCA, I met composers and visual artists also in residence. In fact, my studio was a composer’s studio with a baby grand, and I couldn’t stop thinking about my grandmother who had attempted to teach me piano, though I studied clarinet instead. I studied very badly. Didn’t practice, was bored, but I’m glad I had the musical involvement, and now, as a writer, I find myself enthralled with music and musicians and the craft of putting rhythm and melody and words together. Anyway, this all makes me obsess about the “album” and how the concept of musicians coming together in a group might translate into writers coming together in a “group.” I’ll not say much more about it as it’s still sort of floating around my head, but yes, MMR is always considering the alternative and the progressive. Though, what you’ve stated is tantamount. The story. It’s always about the story. For me, if it’s prose or poetry or painting or music or film, it’s always about story. And I’m always happy to stretch my mind within a story’s structure and landscape, but if the story doesn’t come through, first and foremost, I find myself asking whether the piece was masturbatory—a writer getting himself or herself off—rather than artistically centered.

On the note of remixing, I love it. Truly, as writers, readers, editors, we are a culmination of what we’ve read. To engage in this amalgamative craft so transparently is a lovely practice, and I’m all for it. >ka is such a perfect publication to do this, too, as it pays tribute to literary greats with each issue. To continue the practice through a remix issue would be something I’d like to see. Playing with the voice of a loved author within the landscape of your own work, while paying tribute to said author, is fun and pays a compliment, I think, as long as the tribute is made clear.

On the topic of “difficult” or “experimental”—which I agree, experimental is definitely a relative term—who does >ka see as the more boundary pushing and story-centric writers today? The writers who have left the boxed idea of what a story “should” be but still keep the necessities of story? I guess another question might be, what are the necessities of story according to >ka? Hmm, necessities. Even as I write the word, I’m thinking how much I love stories that create their own necessities.

> ka: We’re going to skillfully sidestep the question about specific writers—though obviously not too skillfully, since we’re mentioning it at the same time as doing it—because we’re a little reluctant to put the knowledge of out there about who we admire for fear it’ll perhaps influence people too much in their submissions to us. We want writers to submit work because they genuinely feel they’re on our wavelength and inside our thinking, rather than because we admire the same authors. But—and here, again, the parallels with music are maybe significant—you’re right in your analysis that we definitely admire those writers who have stepped beyond the rigid ideas of what a story should be, while never forgetting how important the necessities of a story are to the reader. As you mentioned music in your previous response, it’s the same with that too. We tend to admire those musicians who hear and then interpret sounds in a unique, startling way, but—crass and simple-minded as it might sound—also don’t forget their audience sometimes wants a damn good melody and a few hooks too.

As for those necessities of a story and what they are for us: practically speaking, well, we’ve hinted above at the idea that we’re concerned with a writer not losing their readers. Take apart the story’s structure and the form, turn it inside out, shake up every convention you want, do whatever you want to it, but do keep in the back of your mind that there’s an audience out there too. Remember to take them with you. If you decide to push them down alleys, kick them in the guts and leave them gasping on the ground, at least drop couple of crumbs for them to see where you’re going. Otherwise you may as well just massage your own literary ego in private.

More intangibly, an absolute necessity for us, when it comes to both stories and poetry, is to be completely immersed in the world the writer creates through their words. We’re not talking about the people, the places, the ideas they’re writing about, all those specifics, but more the author’s own belief in what they’re saying and the way they’re saying it. In a way, it’s back to that favorite idea of fiction and poetry being forms of escapism (even if the subject matter often isn’t an escapist one). The story can be a one paragraph piece of micro-fiction or a full-blown epic, but if we’re not completely immersed in the writer’s world as we read it then it’s very unlikely to go any further with us. There’s no doubt this means we’ve rejected perfectly structured, expertly paced stories, full of mesmerizing writing, in favour of pieces that were ragged, uneven, sometimes with language that didn’t quite hang together, because we were completely sucked in by the latter rather than the former.

RB: Yes, we like grit in our stories, too. And refinement. Refinement is lovely, and when the two come together, it makes us swoon. Gritty refinement. Yes. That story stays with us. A pleasure to chat with you, >ka.

> ka: It’s been a fascinating conversation. Thanks for making us think about what we do, and good luck to you and Moon Milk Review for the future.

Rae Bryant’s short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, released from Patasola Press, NY, in June 2011 and has been nominated for the Pen Hemingway and Pushcart awards. Her stories have appeared in BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review), Gargoyle Magazine, Opium Magazine, and PANK, among other publications. She has work forthcoming in StoryQuarterly, Ampersand Review, and other publications and writes essays and reviews for such places as Puerto del Sol, The Nervous Breakdown, Portland Book Review, and Beatrice.com. Rae has received Fellowships from the VCCA and Johns Hopkins University, where she earned a Masters in Writing and the Outstanding Graduate Award. In summer 2011, she attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where she studied with Alice McDermott, and the JHU Conference on Craft in Florence, Italy as a JHU Fellow, where she studied with and assisted Jill McCorkle. She teaches multimedia and creative writing in The Johns Hopkins University, Master of Arts in Writing program and is editor in chief of the program’s new literary and arts journal, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review.

The Editors of > kill author choose to remain anonymous.  See http://killauthor.com/about/anonymity/ for more details.

Review by Eric Tanyavutti
Kartika Review’s Spring 2011 Issue establishes its intent as an Asian-American literary journal quickly.  The cover displays a lovely photograph of two girls wearing hijabs, their hands and forearms shrouding their eyes.  In the first few pages Kartika describes itself as a journal that “publishes literary fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that endeavor to expand and enhance the mainstream perception of Asian American creative writing.”  Later, in the mission statement, Kartika declares as striving “to create a literary forum that caters to and celebrates the wordsmiths of the Asian Diaspora.”  In this, the terms of the journal are quickly established to the first-time reader.  Comprised of equal parts fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction (as well as two interviews), this is a journal whose first and foremost goals are clearly communicated to the reader as wishing to explore the issues and lives of Asians and Asian-Americans.

With this expectation, it is then unsurprising that Kartika Review’s strongest offerings are pieces that grapple with issues of identity, duality, place, and community; themes that are highly germane to Asian-American literature.  Katie Hae Leo’s essay, “My Life in Hair,” is a wonderfully complex piece, which follows the author’s personal relationship with her hair through a series of short, spare vignettes.  For example, in the very the first scene, Leo uses her thick, black hair as an infant as a marker; it is that which separates her from her adoptive American parents, who “were shocked by all that hair.”  From there on, Leo’s hair takes on a more and more complex role in her life, constantly changing and evolving as she does.  She adopts “The Dorothy Hamill” hairstyle.  She perms her hair.  She goes natural.  She cuts it all off, as a way to wound ex-boyfriends.  And later, when in Korea, she tries to take on the popular Korean hairstyles, but is, despite her attempts, still very American.  Within the narrow confines of “hair,” Leo mines a wealth of personal history that encapsulates a dizzying array of identities and roles.

Dena Afrasiabi’s short story “The Give and Take” takes a different tack towards issues of identity, but is similarly effective in its play with duality and stereotype.  In it, the “diaspora police” come to protagonist Soheila’s home to notify her of her inability to adhere to the expectations of her Middle Eastern background.  Soheila, a quiet librarian, is too ordinary, too dull for an immigrant living in the United States, something the diaspora police hope to correct.  Out of this, she is coaxed, prodded, and pushed towards a simple and singular identity from which she can be easily defined.  A witty and sardonic piece, “The Give and Take” pokes fun at stereotypes while challenging the often narrow definitions of what it means to be an American and an immigrant.  In contrast, Margaret Rhee’s poem, “Nectarines” is an incessant and weaving piece.  It is an exploration into the history of nectarines, but is also more than that; it dips into the personal and impersonal, the absurd and the realistic, knitting myriad threads and exploring concepts of duality and hybridity across the fruit nectarine and being a Korean-American.

Finally, the interview with Amy Chua (author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) near the end of the journal is a revelation.  Earlier this year, Chua was made popular by the Wall Street Journal’s release of a chapter from her book, titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.”  The reception to the chapter was polarizing.  To some, the article was a reinforcement of many parental stereotypes, while to others, it was an authentic look into the cultural life and expectations of Asians and Asian-Americans.  What’s unique about the interview is that Chua is allowed the space and nuance to explain not only her narrative intention of the book, but also her perspective as a writer and memoirist.  For example, Chua explains how she utilizes an unreliable narrator (herself) at the beginning of the memoir.  She notes that, “I am not the ‘I’ that speaks in the opening chapters of the book (which were quoted at length in the Wall Street Journal excerpt under a headline I never saw and did not choose!).  The narrator of my book is a patently flawed character — initially obtuse, boastful, outrageously confident — who goes through crisis and transformation.”  Beyond this, Chua talks about her process as a writer, and deftly paints a picture of herself not only as an author and memoirist, but as an individual and mother.  The interview is an especially welcome one because it allows for an alternative perspective of an Asian-American writer whose reputation had perhaps already been decided by many who have never heard of her before.

From these works, one can see how Kartika Review strives to expand the notions of Asian-American literature.  Grappling with preconceived notions of nationality, identity, and stereotypes, the journal attempts to not only demarcate the expectations of Asian-American writing, but, maybe more importantly, expand and push against them.  In this issue there are tiger mothers who are more than they seem, adopted children exploring the character of their hair, the entomology and history of nectarines, diaspora police, and much more that couldn’t possibly all be covered in this review.  This issue is a taste of the Asian and Asian-American voice and experience, but more importantly, a chance to challenge and expand the notions of what Asian-American literature can and should be.

Eric Tanyavutti was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, and is currently earning his MFA at the University of Illinois for Fiction.  His stories have been published in the Potomac Review and Roanoke Review, and will be forthcoming in Cream City Review.

Designing the ePub: When Perfect is the Enemy of Great

The Unboxing

Getting Issue #1 of Midwestern Gothic ready to be released was a last minute flurry of activity. Even with a relatively easy-to-use POD solution like CreateSpace , designing and publishing a book yourself is a time suck.

But all the hard work, InDesign wrangling and non-stop tweaking of online settings was definitely worth it when the final book came in the mail. It was beautiful and glossy – I wanted to tuck into bed and sleep in late on a Sunday with it.

Then I opened the ePub.

Lost in Translation

While we hurtled pell-mell towards getting paper with words out the door, the ePub fell a couple rungs to a lower priority. I’d read a couple articles about how to export an ePub and I was relatively confident that whatever looked good in print would look at least decent on an eReader.

It didn’t. It looked broken. Text ran off the screen, nothing was aligned and our table of contents was a shop of horrors. All the joy I’d felt just a few days ago with that beautiful book in hand was erased. I almost didn’t want to put the ePub up on Kindle or Nook. And I didn’t see how Apple would ever approve it for the iBookstore.

But most of the problems were in the first six or seven pages. Once the actual fiction and poetry arrived, things weren’t perfect, but they were passable. So we rolled it out, selling a fair amount of eBooks, but not as many as their print brethren.

The Second Time Around

So for Issue 2, I had a plan. We made a detailed timeline based on how long it’d taken us to set up Issue 1. The submissions period was based entirely on the actual time I’d spent on design. There would be no more rushing around at the end to make things happen. There would be time to focus on the eBook, and I thought time would be enough to solve the problem.

Again, I was wrong. While my second bite at the ePub apple was definitely better, it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Even with the hours to look up tutorials and read articles about formatting, the pieces just weren’t coming together. Again, we were faced with the decision of, do we put out an imperfect product, or do we hold back to make it everything it should be?

The answer came as I stumbled over a sample tutorial put out by Lynda.com. Basically, the eReader market is so fragmented, and even with the ePub standard, your book can be interpreted in as many ways as there are eReaders. Much like web design, there are best practices to follow, but to a certain extent you’re at the mercy of the device displaying your content.

Sure, you can spend a hundred hours making it absolutely perfect on every possible device, but is that worth it? Is perfect going to be the enemy of great?

Doing it Right From the Beginning

I’d had enough of doing it halfway. For Issue 3, I decided I’d better learn those ePub best practices. Lynda.com has a nice little series about creating ePubs from print documents, and it’s jam packed full of information.

Our design template was rebuilt from the ground up to be more ePub friendly. I also have a checklist of what to do to make sure all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted. There were even a few tricks I picked up to make laying out the print version of the file more efficient.

So now, after the third issue, I think we’ll finally have an ePub that’ll give me that same awesome feeling when I load it on a device. And maybe it’ll make it inside the iBooks walled garden. Now the only question is – should I spend the time to go back and redo Issues 1 and 2?

Jeff Pfaller is co-founder of Midwestern Gothic, a literary journal that aims to collect the very best in Midwestern fiction writing, cataloging the oeuvre of an often-overlooked region of the United States ripe with its own mythologies and tall tales.

No money for vacation this summer? Look no further. 322 Review, appropriately named for themes of route and journey, broadly explores the cartography of human relationships and internal landscapes. Publishing both two print issues and four online issues a year, 322 Review invites submissions of poetry, fiction, CNF, and mixed media. Hop in the passenger seat blindfolded because 322 Review has the adventure and experiment already taken care of.

Angela Gentry

by Heather Frese

Heather Frese: Hello, and thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview!  Let’s start with something fun—what are you reading lately?  How about some of your favorite books to read and re-read, and why?

R.T. Smith: Right now I’m reading three books about Mary Todd Lincoln, biographies by Clinton and Burton, and a little book called The Madness of Mary Lincoln, which focuses on her insanity trial.  I was first drawn to Mrs. Lincoln by her interest in spiritualism and séances, but I soon discovered that she was an often pitiable and sometimes noble character whose life after the war was akin to Job’s.

The books I read over and again include Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Huckleberry Finn, Flannery O’Connor’s stories, Warren’s Audubon: A Vision, the poetry of Dickey, Heaney, Boland, Rodney Jones, the stories of Pinckney Benedict and Mark Richard, King Lear, The Odyssey, Owen, Donne, Stafford, Coetzee, Erdrich, Angela Carter.  That’s a sample.  I spend a lot of time reading submissions to Shenandoah, and pretty soon I resume reading the work of my fiction students.

HF: Holy cow, R.T. Smith.  You’ve got the kind of career those of us in the midst of our graduate degrees dream of—you’re the editor of a prestigious literary journal, and you also teach at Washington and Lee University and Converse College.  Your work has appeared in countless journals, you’ve published books in poetry and fiction and won practically every award a writer could wish for—Pushcart, Best American—not to mention the fellowships, Pulitzer Prize nomination, and winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  What sort of advice can you give to us burgeoning writers?  What’s the ride been like in getting where you are now?

RTS: It’s like dog-sledding uphill; it can be done, but you have to keep cracking the whip and yelling.  It’s really been a steady, modest career which has allowed me to make a living and keep indulging my compulsions.  Not much glamour or fanfare.  It’s really hard anymore to gauge the careers of anyone but those who’ve made it to the fast lane with National Book Awards, laureateships and prestigious chairs at universities.  If I were beginning today, I’d be flustered and bewildered by the abundance of magazines, presses, websites, writers, editors, blurbers—Lordy, but it’s a multitude, and many “successful” writers publish texts that either evade my understanding or leave me cold.

Here are a few simple rules I try to cling to: 1. try to write some every day, or as Frank O’Connor put it, “Get black on white.” 2. From the pen of Elmore Leonard: “Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.” 3. Re-write with a cold and clinical eye, as if you’d been given a chance to take a red pen to work by somebody you despise. 4. Don’t try to seem smarter (or more compassionate) than you really are, though your characters might. 5. Tell all the truth but tell it slant.  6.  Follow Dickey’s lead to be “precise and reckless.”  7. As Flaubert said, “The true end of style is clarity.”

We live in an age of literary gamesmanship, fragmentation, puzzle-mongering and very fancy dance steps.  Although I admire some of the writers who believe in the mysterious gestalts and post-structuralist experiments, at heart I’m a neoclarificationist.  Of course, we all want to make uncommon sense, but I believe it’s also important to make some common sense first.

HF: During my cyber-stalking/research on you, I ran across a talk you gave on Updike, and how incredible it was that he was able to write in every genre, except, perhaps, “military manuals.”  You are also adept at the genre-crossing game, having published both poetry and fiction.  Do you write in one genre at a time or switch back and forth doing both at once?  Does the genre you’re reading impact the genre in which you’re writing?

RTS: I haven’t written a real story in almost two years (a time occupied primarily by the re-imagining of Shenandoah), though I have done several prose monologues, “fictions” that don’t fully satisfy the range of needs we try to fill in our shaped and extended stories.  However, I live on that threshold where narrative and lyric overlap, like estuaries where salt and fresh water meet, and I’m likely to veer one way or the other according to how sweet my coffee was that morning or how soon the doves spoke.  And when one genre seems more accessible, I follow it till the trail goes cold, then try switching paths to ward off the Lost-it Blues.

HF: What are you working on currently?  Plans for any military manuals?

RTS: My new book, Sherburne, is a set of stories about a family of law enforcement officers in mountain Virginia, but it’s not indicative of my current hobby horses.  A year ago I was deep into a collection of poems about Flannery O’Connor, but I hit a snag.  The editor who’d been encouraging me suddenly changed her mind, at least on the tack I’d taken.  I’m sure the collection is fully realized, all there, but it probably needs to be trimmed, undone a bit, before I try to find another publisher.  That’s what I should be doing.  Instead, however, I’ve written a couple of poems about the Civil War, a topic I’ve often returned to and hope to expand on.  That’s what’s drawn me to Mary Lincoln.

I have also accumulated a series of short prose pieces, each one the slightly-archaic and tongue-in-cheek exploration of some oddity or strangeness, like spontaneous human combustion, birds falling from the sky, divining, hermaphrodites.  They’re called “Col. Othniel Sweet’s Mysteries of Nature,” and I have no idea what to do with them.  I started last December, and I’ve never shown any of them to anyone.  I don’t plan to write a drill or maneuver textbook, but I’ve read a couple, and who knows what Col. Sweet will turn his attentions to next.

HF: Let’s talk about Southern Literature.  To my chagrin, I was born and raised in Ohio, and thus cannot claim to be a Southern writer, despite my affinity for the region and its writers.  The big guns of Southern Lit—Faulkner, Welty, O’Conner, etc.—with their emphasis on place, family, and history seem to encompass Southern Literature in many ways, but how would you define contemporary Southern Literature?  Do you think the earlier delineations of Southern Lit still hold water?  Do you see the face of Southern Literature changing, and if so, how?

RTS: The giants are pretty much gone; McCarthy has transformed himself into Hell’s Cowboy, and even the talented Loyal Followers like William Gay and Tom Franklin know to leaven their Faulkner and allow a Marquez smile at the corner of the canvas.  Shadowy local gothic just isn’t enough anymore.  Collectively we still have our two old shames – we held people in bondage and we got whipped – and our continuing ones – we love NASCAR and the literal Bible too much and education and art too little.  And we still love to walk forward into was, but I think Southern writers today are all products of more complex identities, and the recognition of that.  Think about those poets from the highland South who call themselves Afrilachian (I have no idea how to spell this), or the Latina writers in Birmingham, the mystery writers of the Killer Nashville conference.  Maybe such a broad term as Southern Lit is the wrong instrument for investigating a house with so many mansions.

The country mice have often gone to the city or at least to graduate programs, and we’re as mobile and media-bedazzled as folks from Gotham City or Seattle.  My generation is probably the last to grow up with a mule, and by the time I was walking, it was retired, kept as a pet and a symbol.  Family, history and place are shiftier now, less predictable.  It’s pretty complicated for me, as I know there’s a whole school who claim that “Southern Literature” is more a construct than a useful descriptive term.  Define it?  Not in less than a full-fledged essay.  I will say this: standing on the shoulders of giants provides us with a long way to fall if we slip.

Lately I’ve been thinking about just the contemporary literature of the Southern Appalachians.  You might imagine that’s a manageably small congregation, but it’s not.  Consider Charles Frazier, Ron Rash, Kay Byer, Denise Giardina, Pinckney Benedict, the Pancakes, Don Secreast, Lee Smith, not to mention Charles Wright, Bob Morgan, Fred Chappell, Lynn Powell.  Wendell Berry to Maurice Manning.  Mining backgrounds, farmers, academics, furniture stainers and loggers, gays and wounded vets, bikers and greeners, Asheville lawyers and Kentucky wind farmers.  Highlanders were never as monochromatic as outlanders imagined, and now a gathering of Appalachian writers would be as varied and unpredictable as any AWP session could provide.  Even when they choose to work in a particular tradition, they are a ramified and unstable crowd, so the old categories now exist less as definitions than as questions, which is probably healthy but confusing.

HF: Do you consider yourself a capital “S” Southern writer?

RTS: Why not?  Though I find myself leaning pretty strongly against state-( or town-)sponsored  flying of Confederate flags, I know where I’m from and where I’m located.  I’ve kept to the South most of my life, and since I believe that a writer’s most important tools, besides a loose-cannon imagination and discipline, are his abilities to watch and listen, I know most of what I’ve heard and seen has been in one geographical zone.  Even when I don’t share beliefs, practices and values dominant among my neighbors, their way of life influences mine more strongly and unavoidably than people I don’t see and hear on a regular basis.  Driving a pick-up with no CD player last Sunday, I listened to one static-y local preacher after another exhorting and scorning till their little stations faded.  I am compelled to do so neither from technological deficit alone nor just for their cadences and often-accidental humor, but for their mother wit and because what they say has to be reckoned with, even if opposed.  It will never not matter to me what these zealots believe and preach.  That said, Melville, Frost, Dickinson, Trevor’s stories, Dubliners, Marquez – all have been vital in the sculpting of my imagination’s landscape, wordscape, dreamscape.  The Bible got there first, but these relative newcomers carry weight.  And it’s of no small consequence to me that my wife Sarah Kennedy is a poet who’s not from down here.  She’s a substantial facet of that hybrid imaginary reader whom I hope will see what I’m doing with language beneath what I’m ostensibly doing with story and shape.  The allegorical element in my work and the social criticism seem not to be evident to many readers (if I have many readers), but she gets it every time.

HF: You founded Cold Mountain Review when you were at Appalachian State University—what did that process teach you about literary journals and their place in both academia and the literary world?  What did you learn from being in on the process from the very beginning?

RTS: I learned it’s useful to cast a wider net than my own reading preferences would dictate, and I learned that everything quantifiable is going to be a headache sooner or later – readership, funding, your own time limitations.  An editor who’s going to survive as a person, especially if he or she doesn’t have a lot of canny and committed assistance, is going to have to learn how to decide very early into reading a prose piece or a poem whether or not it merits full exploration.  That gives rise to an uneasy feeling that never goes away, but certain kinds of errors early on do not bode well, and it’s time to act like a doctor sentenced to perform triage at a field hospital—identify the hopeless ones, genuflect and turn your attention to the others.  I know I have to be ruthless on behalf of my readers.  One other lesson I did pick up early—many editors are more self-sacrificing than I am, willing to give up their whole imaginative lives, and it’s a pleasure to know and converse with those folks.  Running a journal will infuse your life and infect your dreams, especially if you don’t have staff continuity and skill.  The other lesson that editing a newborn journal teaches you can be picked up lots of places, as Heller’s Yossarian learns—you’ve got to be prepared for the unexpected.  You’ve got to jump.  Every time I remember that CMR still exists after almost forty years, I take heart.

HF: You’ve edited Shenandoah since 1995.  Can you describe some of the changes that have taken place over the years?  What’s the most significant change?  Other than a tradition of excellence, what’s stayed the same?

RTS: The big change—news flash!—is that as of September 1 Shenandoah exists exclusively as a no-fee online journal located at shenandoahliterary.org, joining Blackbird, TriQuarterly, Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, How a Poem Happens and others,  which means the graphic and audio aspects of the journal are new muscles for me to learn how to work.  We’ll publish two full issues a year (Sept. and Feb.) but we’ll have a monthly feature, a poem of the week, a series of streaming quotations which will advance or can be changed with a mouse click and a blog that might have new posts at any moment.  Although I rejoice in the Bible’s claim that there will be no end to the making of books, I’m excited about this new venue and format and hopeful that it will reward the hundreds of hours that the designer and I have put into it.  I’ll never tire of the physical book format and celebrate as fully as Christopher Smart did his cat Jeoffry, but I enjoy shorter works online and love to hear the author’s voices and learn what others have to say.  I’ve long been a fan of the sites listed above, as well as Terrain, StorySouth, Per Contra and others.  Every item on our online version will be sharable and printable and will provide a space for reader commentary.  I’m eager to see how that turns out.  Now that we’ve got a first issue, a prototype, I’m also keen to see what my Washington and Lee interns will do to outreach my aspirations.

I believe the journal will not much differ from its earlier manifestation in content as long as I remain in the saddle.  I’ve edited Shenandoah since 1995 and think I’ve created a distinct identity for it, though I’m in the worst position to describe that identity with objectivity.  We will have more reviews and interviews, and the blog (which we’ve christened Snopes) will obviously be unlike anything in previous years.  There’s also a viewable section which describes the internship course, shows photos of interns at work and displays the comments from my interns who helped with the journal last winter.

HF: How do you and your editorial staff go about putting an issue of Shenandoah together?  What do you look for in a submission?

RTS: Since I’ve seldom had any assistant editors other than student interns, I make all the final decisions, but students read and write comments on the work that comes in and pass on to me the ones they want to argue for.  At the same time, I’m the first reader for over half the submissions, and I read them with an eye for error, sameness, sluggishness.  On the first round, I want to eliminate the obviously unsophisticated and unoriginal; I want to get rid of 80% of the options because I want to devote my time to the real possibilities.  I meet with the students and discuss their favorites, and we start ranking and debating, pointing to specifics, identifying clichés of phrase, situation, character.  I have no set number of works I need to select, though the budget plays a role here, and I want the amount of work to approximate what we’d print in an actual published volume.

As you can probably guess, I like (among other things) poetry with lots of narrative and fiction with a lyric pitch.  The following is a list of attributes of fiction to consider which my winter 2011 interns came up with: lack of excess (not overwrought), strong sense of setting, inventiveness of style, sensory details, credibility, character development, characters unique without being far-fetched, action, wit and ingenuity, wisdom, surprises, sense of shapes, tension (timing), energy, economy, humor.  Although there’s a bit of overlap here and there, you can see how with these parameters before us, a discussion might go.  With poetry, we have a similar list, but at the end of both we ask, “So what?”  For our interest to continue, there should be a rousing answer to that.

HF: You teach in the low-residency MFA program at Converse—what do you see as the benefits of a low-residency program versus a traditional one?  Drawbacks?

RTS: I’ve been a visitor and in some way involved with several creative writing programs, but I was never a student in either a graduate or undergraduate creative writing class, so I come at all this a little strangely.  The benefits of low-residency seem primarily practical and logistical—students don’t have to quit their jobs, relocate, see each other often enough to develop antipathies or remain in a distracting collegiate atmosphere.  The last of those is important to some students and anathema to others.  I see going back for a low-res degree as a very private pursuit.  One asset of low-res programs is that a student will often get to participate in workshops led by three or four completely different sets of writers.  However, since low-res students don’t have the opportunity to teach, they’re unlikely to negotiate their degrees into a university position, they seldom get to work with literary magazines, and most of the visiting writers who come in for the benefit of the undergraduates don’t show up in those summer and winter holiday residencies, so the grad students miss out on a lot.  I don’t think the scholarship programs in many low-res situations are very strong, either, but there are exceptions.  The crucial answer probably lies in the relative commitment of the directors and various teachers, as well as the quality and determination of the students.  If the director works in concert with her faculty and is dedicated to steady improvement, the resulting stimulating atmosphere will be one of the assets of a program.  I think it’s important to have some sense of shared standards and to create and cultivate a program as a team.  If the workshop leaders prepare like fiends and bring their most resourceful selves to the activity, if they deliver professional craft lectures and bring substantial experience, energy and cunning to the situation, a low-residency program can be amazing.  If the teachers don’t prepare before class or drowse off during discussion, don’t fully participate and attend most of the various (and admittedly exhausting) activities, then you’ve got a one-winged duck.  So the value and success of a program, low-residency or high, will depend on the quality of commitment by all—administrators, faculty and students.   I don’t know much about full residency programs these days, but I believe many applicants to low-residency programs should be encouraged to attend conferences like Sewanee and Kenyon and to work hard with local mentors, then apply to an MFA program in a year or two.  It’s not just a matter of location, location, but timing.

I suppose I should address the question of whether or not creative writing workshops tend to homogenize the work of their participants.  This is one of the old saws – “the ‘products’ of programs look like apples off the same tree.”  It seems unlikely that real power of mind and heart, authenticity and originality can be smothered, so I don’t think even the sometimes regimented and often distracting nature of writing programs can defeat a talented student who’s not lazy or prissy or arrogant.  The strong will survive.  Iowa did not reshape Flannery O’Connor.  It just fed the fire and gave her room.

R. T. Smith is writer-in-residence at Washington and Lee University, where he has also edited SHENANDOAH since 1995.  His dozen collections of poems include Messenger (LSU) and Outlaw Style (Arkansas), both recipients of Library of Virginia Book of the Year Awards.  His fourth book of short stories, Sherburne (Stephen F. Austin Press) is being released this fall.  Smith’s work has also appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Poetry and several editions of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best.  He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Alabama Arts Council and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.  In 2008 he and Shenandoah were presented the Governor’s Award for Achievement in the Arts.  He lives in Rockbridge County, VA.

Heather Frese received her MFA from West Virginia University and her MA from Ohio University.  Her work is forthcoming in The New York Quarterly and The Southeast Review, and has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, Fiction Weekly, and Front Porch.  Her essay, “Fatigue,” received notable mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology 2011 and Best American Essays 2010.

Versal, an international English-language literary and art journal published in Amsterdam, is the editorial labor of expat poet Megan Garr, Utah fiction writer Robert Glick, and an extensive editorial board composed of North Americans and Europeans. Decisions are made democratically by the group, in good Dutch fashion, and the contents reflect their diversity of opinions. Although Versal typically leans towards what in this country is often called “experimental,” one never knows exactly what that will mean in any given issue.

Issue number 9 begins more playfully, even whimsically, than past issues. In Carmen Petaccio’s “Tornado,” the eponymous cyclone writes a note: “Hello. I am your tornado” (11). Or take Nate Liederbach’s “Demonstrum”: “Despite the sawdust and cigarette butts, despite the wretched fumes like so many regurgitated oysters, her golden snout was a velvet cloth upon my shattered brow . . .” (27). Jacqueline Vogtman’s “Letter from a Suicide to a Troll” has everything one would expect from the title. Brandon Betz’ “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before” is (yes) a comic game of chess between God and the Devil. “Literaturization: An Introduction to Miniaturism,” by Benjamin Van Loon, is a thoughtful, meticulously researched academic article about something that doesn’t exist.

There is also lots of semi-figurative, sorta-surrealist, or quasi-symbolist lyric poetry, as Tony Mancus’ “Where the Water Comes from and Gets Together with Its Friends”: “Look at the way the smoke comes alive, lifting/ the river clean up over our bed, how it unmakes our mess.// You listen to shivers through February./ No fires there in the coal or the coil.” Many of these lyrics are tone poems written in beautiful music: “Wings of thorn, ocean of pine, tassels,/ timeless rot. Here bends the ocean trench, bound in yarn,/ your all-in-all consuming watch. Wash, a photograph in // reverse does not repeat” (Jane Wong, from Sea of Trees).

But none of this really prepared me for Alice Notley’s Voices (at least the opening pages thereof), which is placed in the center of this issue of Versal. Eudora Welty once said that being a novelist in Mississippi is like living next to a mountain, and perhaps the same could be said of being published next to this poem. Very few writers capture the terror and despair in the present moment more acutely than Notley:

You entered this hall in your moonlit unconsciousness pleading

for a different life. You’re here without knowing it; therefore

attentive. Where did we really come from, the horizon, or nowhere?

We come from sleep, where we are now. We come from the district

of  tissue: from details that obliterate design like seafoam. Forget them.

You can’t ask for money where we are; you’ll watch your pain without hurting. (75)

This is relatively simple language that evokes rather complex thoughts and feelings. Voices, written in both prose and verse, seems to take place in a dystopian dreamscape/underworld and is spoken by a pre- or post-historic woman, an oracle who channels all the voices in the world. Notley has trodden similar ground in The Descent of Alette, but Voices is a more meditative, discursive poem with longer lines, looser sentences, and a more implicit narrative.

After that (because of it?), Versal 9 starts to seem a bit heavier, as in Rob Cook’s “Hunting for Statues Missing in their Own Stories”: “A man notices many silences: // One when he says good things to himself as he lets the dark out of his body. // Another that gives him the courage to pay attention to where/ he abandons each breath” (106). Or Steven Salmoni’s elegiac “Landscape with Clouds” with

“clouds, as they move, in their image as the problem of the ground, beneath. // So as to pass, these names, their qualities, mark a revenge of the whole. // I mean that passage, once expressed, always has an afterlife, the solution in small regions to the one that has just been implied” (124).

This is not to say that there are no ludic or aleatory poems in the second half, too – indeed there are, along with a theriomorphic transformation or two. The overall aesthetic here is arational, evocative, (sub)liminal, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy. The art work follows this pattern, as well: optical illusions, organic matter out of place, indoor rainbows, lost faces (and even a pre-coital contract).

Versal is well worth subscribing to, for those not afraid of the dark. The ninth issue confirms the journal’s reputation as a site of much trans-atlantic creativity and editorial acumen.

Joseph Harrington is an associate professor of English at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Things Come On: an amneoir (Wesleyan 2011) and Poetry and the Public (Wesleyan 2002).

A Graceful Design

From our first meeting, a goal of the editors and staff of Beecher’s was to create not only a new literary journal run by students, and filled with challenging, inventive content, but also to create a beautiful object. Beecher’s One was going to be an artifact to hold and love, something that would leave an imprint on every fingertip that flipped its pages, something that stood out on a bookshelf. Something that kicked Kindle’s ass.

One of the first ways we tried to accomplish this was by creating Beecher’s Zero. Robert J. Baumann, our first poetry editor, created a handmade chapbook filled with short entries from the editors about aesthetics. This would be the reader’s first introduction to who we are, and what’s important to us. The craftsmanship that went into these led to the appearance of our first full issue. No matter how much turmoil went into creating the pages, when taking in the clean black and white book you feel the impact of the design.

We were lucky from the start, because we had a talented and experienced designer. Dan Rolf, our design editor, had a vision that fell onto, and in between, each page of Beecher’s One. When you discover you’re hungry after not realizing it, and then eat a really good meal—that’s how Rolf’s design makes you feel. Comfortably full, wanting to experience it again, and at the same time, not quite knowing all of the ingredients that made up the recipe.

Although I knew that we all wanted Beecher’s to be a beautiful object, I didn’t know how Rolf was going to go about accomplishing this. His answer reminded me that yes the design was important, but that it has to start with the writing.

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Dan Rolf, Beecher’s Design Editor, on creating the first issue:

“The first and most important aspect was to simply showcase the writing. Beecher’s is a literary magazine first and foremost, and we wanted the physical object to be a straightforward medium in which to experience the textual content.”

“But we also wanted the physical object to display a reverence for the interaction between a text and the reader. Because the act of reading from a physical book is also a tactile one, we wanted Beecher’s One to engage this fact. So, the second aspect was to make the physical object record this interaction.”

“The book has a naked spine and rigid, toothy, absorbent white paper that is meant to show evidence of the reader by literally absorbing and recording the reading experience: the hands holding the book, the fingers on the page, the bending of turned pages, the weakening of the unprotected spine. This recording of a reader’s interaction happens with every well-used book, but with Beecher’s One we wanted to lay bare this interaction, allow the recording of the interaction to become the adornment.”

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We hope that to know Beecher’s One is to hold it in your hands, run a fingerprint down the thread in the spine, see the black typeface imprinted into the white sheets, leave a fingerprint on the pages. We hope that our greatest triumph was to create an intimate, unique experience through the combination of writing and design.

Caitlin Frances Thornbrugh was born and raised in Kansas City. She studied Creative Writing and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. She decided to stay in Lawrence to pursue her MFA in Creative Writing, where she is now working as the Managing Editor for Beecher’s.