Better to Have Loved and Lost a Lit Mag

"Sometimes writing saves our lives."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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I was at work when I read her email. She was closing the magazine.

I gasped. Maybe I’d misread it. I read it again. Yes, that’s what she’d said. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. I was substitute teaching. Although the class was busy with a writing assignment, it would be inappropriate to start bawling in front of them. And besides, who mourns the closing of a literary magazine? I waited until I got home and had a moment to collect my thoughts before responding to her email.

I realized I did indeed feel the need to grieve. Sometimes it’s a good thing–a growing thing–to lose something you love. You realize what it means to you. In the three years that I’d written for Clerestory, the editor, Sarah James, had inspired me, provided a safe and beautiful home for my work, and helped me grow as a writer.

I can’t remember how I initially heard about Clerestory. I think it was through a newsletter that listed current calls for submissions, but I can’t remember which one. I subscribe to so many. The theme for the first call for submissions I responded to was What heals? I had written a creative nonfiction piece I absolutely loved about going through a difficult time and learning to be grateful in my brokenness. Another (bigger) magazine had just rejected it. I took that editor’s suggestions and made the edits, but instead of sending it back, I sent it to Clerestory. It took a little creative thinking to figure how it would fit the theme, but I was happy with the result. In answer to the question What heals?, my answer was gratitude. Sarah James liked it. She complimented me on the essay, accepted it, published it, and paid me immediately upon publication. That sealed the deal for me. I was smitten by a lit mag.

I’m a devoted person. In my marriage and in my lit mags. After that first successful submission, whenever Sarah James sent out a batch email to all her contributors with her current call for submissions, I’d respond–every single time. They were inspiring. Although I write pieces for places around one-word themes and submit them on a regular basis (ahem, The Sun’s Readers Write), Sarah James’ calls with their half dozen or so suggestions on possible directions in which the writer might decide to carry the theme, always got the gears turning in my mind, always excited me for the next project. Even though it was difficult to wait to open her emails, I’d find myself holding out until I had space and time to write because I knew once the floodgates were open, there was no turning back.

If she was publishing a new issue, I wanted in. Clerestory was an absolutely beautiful online publication. Although the reader does not audibly hear music when engaging with the site, words and images emerge like a crescendo. Remaining true to the magazine’s focus on contemplation and social justice, Sarah James seems to have hand-picked the most compelling and lyrical essays, interviews, poems, and photo stories, as if she were choosing the most vibrant flowers in the garden for a bouquet. The website was easy to navigate. Visiting is more like meandering through a garden than exploring cyberspace. It highlights the writer and the story, not the editor and the site. It was an honor to be published there, and it remains a peaceful place to spend tea time.

More than the calls for submissions that had all the synapses in my brain firing at once and the gorgeous online abode for my work, the thing I’m going to miss most about Clerestory is Sarah James. She made me better than myself. In three years, she published several of my essays with little or no editing. When we worked on an essay for a special print edition, an anthology, though, things became more challenging. At the time, I was going through a very difficult situation that took all of my attention, all of my heart. As much as life drew me away from writing, I also desperately wanted to be a part of this perhaps once-in-a-lifetime print anthology. Knowing Sarah James and the elegance of her work on Clerestory, it was an opportunity I could not miss.

The theme of the anthology would be contemplation. She accepted my pitch for an essay on Madeleine L’Engle, and I went to work. I was reading, researching, and writing during one of the most challenging times I’ve ever experienced. She asked for a revision. I have to admit, I was a little surprised. She’d never asked me to revise anything before. This wouldn’t be as easy as I’d thought. Without going into detail, I told her I was going through some personal struggles. She asked me if I wanted to drop the project or, perhaps, write it when life settled down. I could possibly submit it for an online issue in the future. I told her I wanted to continue working on the project.

I sent her my second draft. With about a month before the deadline, it still wasn’t quite what she was looking for. Again (although I’m embarrassed to admit it) I was a bit surprised. At this point, I was feeling very humbled as a writer and quite exhausted by everything happening in my personal life. But she was so professional and so graceful. She asked me if I needed extra time to work on the piece. I declined an extension. I needed to focus on work–work that was outside myself and, at the same time, work that helped me untangle emotions too foreign to me for words— and Sarah James and Madeleine L’Engle were the perfect companions to accompany me on this journey that was testing my mettle.

Sometimes writing saves our lives. She accepted my third draft and published it in one of the most stunning anthologies I’ve ever had the privilege of owning. When I hold that book in my hands, I feel the weight of it. Not just the 180 pages of art and literature but the time, tears, and battles–physical, mental, spiritual–that went into it. She paid me for the essay, but, even more than that, she walked with me through my grief in a unique way. She (literally) helped me work through a crisis.

When we find a lit mag we can call home, it can be many beautiful, needful things for us: a friend, a tribe, a family. The right publication can be our safe place, seeing us through hard times. Not just personal trials but a polarized political world, racial tension, a global pandemic. They are places to come together, like a global front porch where we can pull up a wicker chair, grab a glass of lemonade, and share our troubles or sing a joyful song if the mood strikes. Editors can inspire us with vision, lead us to places with our work we might not be brave enough to travel alone. Sarah James at Clerestory was that for me. I will miss both the magazine and its editor. The inspiring calls for submissions, the safe and lovely place for my work, the editor who gently pushed me a little bit further and a little bit further. I am a better writer–a better person–for it. And so very grateful.

Where to now? I’m not quite ready to close the book on Clerestory. I’m going to sit with this sadness a little while longer. Reflect. Read some more of the essays I may have missed when I was in such a rush to see my own words published. Writing this tribute has certainly helped with the process of saying good-bye. Thank you for walking the path with me for a few paragraphs of the story.

In case you were wondering (like I was), what a clerestory is. . .it’s a window that allows light and air into an old church. Beautiful, isn’t it? It reminds me of how our words can illuminate our ideas and breathe life into otherwise closed but holy places. What a pleasure and a privilege we have as writers to be windows to such beauty.

(Thankfully, the Clerestory website remains open as an archive here.)

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