Thank you. Thank you.

Becky shares some thoughts...

In 2013 I had to leave a city in which I’d spent the past ten years growing a writing community. In Boston I’d cultivated deep and joy-filled friendships with many fellow writers. I was teaching novel-writing, spent a few summers teaching fiction and newspaper reporting to kids at a creative arts camp (yes, it was delightful; yes, they were hilarious and adorable). I had regular workshops, was frequently attending book launches, readings and parties among fellow writers.

Leaving Boston was very, very hard. At that time it felt to me that much of my identity as a writer was tied up with that city. I looked to my right and left and saw other writers, validating my own dream by pursuing theirs. Plus, I was making a living, which meant some people (eight-year-olds, at least), valued my input on literary craft.

But my partner was offered funding to pursue a PhD at University of Pittsburgh. So, off we went. The new city took a lot of getting used to. Pittsburgh has a vibrant poetry and small press scene. They have some great small bookstores that host events and readings regularly. But it wasn’t the same as Boston. For the first few years of my time there, I pined for what I’d had before.

What does it mean to have a literary community? What do people want from such a space? Is it necessary? Can it hinder one’s progress, if one feels their writerly identity is tied up with certain people, a certain place? Can you ever return to something you’ve left behind?

These weren’t questions I was conscious of asking myself. But, on some level, I must have been. In many ways, I was continuously searching for a means to reconfigure what I felt I’d lost.

These questions became even more urgent for me in 2021. We had to move again, from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, for my partner’s post-doc. By this time I’d come to love Pittsburgh. But now I was leaving another time, which meant once again parting ways with a small literary community I’d found, as well as good writer-connections and friends I’d made.

At the very same time that we were preparing to leave, the Bad Art Friend debacle broke out. (I won’t get into it here. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you can look it up.) This situation highlighted profound differences of opinion and ethics between me and the remnants of the Boston community I still had. I cut ties. Boston was officially over. Sadly, now, Pittsburgh was over too.

What does it mean to have a literary community? What is the foundation upon which that community is built? Does the foundation itself matter? How do you find community? What is it that writers want from such a space? More questions, the same but different, circling, circling. At the same time, I found myself more alone as a writer than I’d ever been in my life.

But, in fact, as it turned out, that was not true.

I was not alone, you see.

In 2020 I’d begun this newsletter. It was a re-boot of the newsletter I’d had when I was running The Review Review, my website dedicated to, what else, demystifying the world of literary magazines.

I’d begun it because I love covering the world of lit mags. And for some reason I will never understand, this remains a world that is under-discussed in MFA programs and about which there remains a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. I’d begun it because I enjoy this work, and I thought it might be useful, and in 2020 stores were closed, libraries were closed, my kid’s school had closed, playgrounds were closed and maybe I was just a little bit hungry (ravenous) for connection.

What I had no idea of then was what this space would become. Not once, as I was building it, thinking about it, having fun with it, did it cross my mind that here, in this space, I would go on to meet so many people—funny people, witty people, writers who want to learn, who want to read, who love to think, and ask questions, and crack jokes, and share opinions, and help each other, and read each other’s writing, and suggest resources for one another, and hang out on weekday afternoons just to chat about lit mags, not to mention actually read lit mags, and debate ideas, and mentor, and send me articles to publish, and share good news, and email me with questions, people who would show up again and again to share articles from this place, to leave comments, to talk to each other. I did not know, could never have foreseen, how such people would gather here.

I didn’t dare think it because I didn’t know it was possible.

But it was. It is.

As of today, Lit Mag News has nearly 14,000 subscribers. Many of you I’ve gotten to know through comments here and in person through our regular info sessions. Most of you I have not met, though I’m very glad you’re here.

But, as I said in last year’s Thanksgiving post and I will say again, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. And Lit Mag News readers, each and every one of you, are quality indeed.

Don’t take my word for it though. Take the word of the editors, who email me to thank me because after mentioning their fledgling lit mag in my newsletter, they were flooded with submissions and are grateful to get to read your work. Take the word of even more editors, who frequently email me to share news or a submissions call, because they want you to know about it. Take the word of several other editors, who’ve let me know that writers mentioned my interview with them in their cover letters, and the work from Lit Mag News readers is exceptionally good.

In our recent Lit Mag Chat, one attendee shared that she sets aside her entire Sunday to read the pieces posted in the monthly Lit Mag Brag column. Two attendees shared that their husbands know it’s a Lit Mag Brag weekend, because they’re busy reading others’ work and discovering new lit mags. (Maybe we need a t-shirt? Not now, honey, I’m reading Lit Mag News.)

It’s true that sometimes conversations get heated here. We live in difficult, polarizing, confusing and complicated times. The literary world is obviously affected by the pains felt nationally and globally. We are other things besides writers, of course. We have passions, loyalties, opinions and strongly held beliefs.

I am immensely proud, however, that the primary focus of this site, by which I mean the primary focus of all of you, continues to be supporting one another. Things come up. Frictions arise. But it has seemed to me that each and every one of us here is after something different than what we encounter regularly in other areas of our lives and certainly other areas of the internet.

Support. Camaraderie. Encouragement. Honesty. Insight. Humor.

Nourishment.

I know it, because I see it all the time here, in comments and in our live meetings. I feel it regularly from you. I hope you, too, feel that from one another.

All of this is my long and winding way of saying Thank You. Truly. Really. Sincerely. Absolutely.

When it comes to this site, when it comes to all of you, I have many, many things for which I am regularly grateful.

There are times, along my literary path, that I have felt alone. And I was.

There are times I’ve felt alone. And lo and behold, in fact, I wasn’t. You were all here.

And if you’re feeling alone, on this holiday or ever, I hope you know that you are not. We are here. And we are immeasurably grateful to have you with us.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thank you for being such a vital part of Lit Mag News.

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