Firings in Stanford's Creative Writing program; Bard to cease publishing Conjunctions; Improving Class Diversity in lit world; submitting in September; learning from Sia; Buellers; markets; & more
I really appreciated the Brandon North piece you shared and thought he made a lot of salient points.
I would like to add one way, as a working class writer, to broadly expand your network without exposing your soul on social media is write book reviews. It helps you with your own craft and connects you with many colleagues and potential readers of your own work. As writers, we're probably not rioting in the streets for change anytime soon so this is a small way we can improve our lot within the system we've got.
Thanks, Christa. I agree that's a good way to network in principle. I didn't put it in the essay because the whole review-enterprise is a lot to consider in the context of my piece. Ideally, we would read and write reviews of books we love; but in practical terms, because of limited free time and the little money afforded to reviews, often people simply trade reviews (and blurbs!) with their friends and this subtly furthers the economy of favors that bolsters people with more free time and more social connections inbuilt (the well off, not the working class). It's not always such a transactional thing, but notice: how many negative reviews do we see in the indie space? Not many, in my experience. And this is because people largely treat reviews as PR / marketing gifts to each other, forgoing deep critical thought which, in my opinion, should address a book holistically, seeing how its accomplishments and its lack feed off each other. But instead I see a lot more reviews which are essentially summaries with personal reasons why the reviewer liked it, a la goodreads, except in a more prestigious space.
Yes, you’re right about the lack of critical reviews. Not necessarily negative, but in-depth and objective. And they’re often also on spec which a writer doesn’t necessarily have the time and energy as you pointed out.
The "literary community" covers a lot of ground, but I will focus on wriiters and teachers of literature and creative writing.
First of all, writers could, themselves, read more l"diverse" literature by African American, Latin America, Asian American, and Native American writers,along the scintillating work of writrs from Asian , Many writers I meet seldom talk about works by BIPOC writers and are embarassingly UNread of some of our country's most brilliant writerss and poets such as the poets Sterling A.Brown,z Gwendolyn Brooks,DouglasKearney, Tyhemba Jess, Daniel Borowfsky, George Abraham,Patricia Smith, Evie Shockley, Janice Mirikitani, Julie Otsuka , and others.
Teacher should order books by these writers for their classoom.Im talking about class SETS. When did a month long unit of Middle East Literature,, my ordering include such outstanding Middle East Writer as Mahmoud Darwish , Ghassan Kanafani,and Samir Al Qasim of PalestineI, Nawal Saadawi of Egypt,Hanan Al-Shayk of Lebanon, Zakaria Tamer of Syria , Samaad Behrangi of Iran, andYashir Kemal of Turkey.
Few if any teachers of American Literature teach any of the great American working class writers.Im talking about B.Traven who wrote many novels about workers in the US and Mexico and is best known for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He also wrote one of the finest short stories about work and imperialism "The Assembly Line" in his collection "Night Visitor". The brilliant James Alan McPherson wrote a story "Solo Song For Doc" in his first book Hue and Cry about a Pullman train worker excruciatingly harassed by his supervisor, a story that was shown on PBS's "With Ruby(Dee) and Ossie(Davis)"- a series of halfhour shows of music,dance and literature. Mcpherson's story inspired my own "Crazy Hattie Enters The Ice Age" one of eight stories in my collection I Looked Over Jordan and Other Stories( Boston:South End Press ,1980) which is currently out-of-print.
Then there are a host of fine novels and poetrry collections about working class people that selddom get taught or anthologized ( My "Crazy Hattie Enters The Ice Age" is in a 2007 anthology of U.of Oxford Press -American Working Class Literature (Nick Coles and Janet Zandy). More later!
RE: Shuttered Goddard College - - its MFA program included two lit mags, The Pitkin Review and Clockhouse.
It's interesting how the pride in housing a long-running reputable literary journal has gone downhill within the university's administration; Conjunctions [Bard College, ends after 33 years], Gettysburg Review [Gettysburg College,1988-2023], etc.
Conor Sweetman wrote: "The power of the small literary magazine is in its ability to confront us with new ideas, to expand our palates to the overlooked, the strange, the serendipitous, the delightful. This will never be very measurable, but that does not make it unnecessary."
For a few reasons, I've tended to avoid campus based zines. Too often their callow volunteers tend to up-vote what I call "the kinds of poems that have made most people despise poetry."
However, something about their vibe drew me to SHIFT (run by the MFA program at MTSU) - - and they just accepted all of the true crime poems I submitted. :-)
Thank you so much, Donna. SHIFT's prompt was "blurred genres." They were the first to accept my true crime Mesostitch Acrostic poems. And their contract is as long as The Book of Job. (smile)
TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics had held on to my true crime Mesostitch Acrostics, made happy noise about my work but, in the end, sent a stiff bare bones rejection. :-O
When I first looked at the masthead of The Red Lemon Review, I saw that two of the editors were students, one in Junior College. It struck me at the time that their schedules might well become busy beyond what they had anticipated, so I decided to wait and see if the magazine continued before submitting there.
Donna, if it's "youth led," my instinct is to steer clear of it. Priorities of student life and new demands will soon change the commitment to running a journal.
I suspect Annalemma might be closing soon. Their most 'recent' (if you can call April recent) blog post hints as such. I made the choice to withdraw a piece from them as a result.
I'm about to hit the year mark on about five places for submitting, but looking at websites nothing is said, I guess they are just REALLY REALLY behind or....?
The question in my mind after a year would be “are they going to respond at all?” If the magazines didn’t indicate in their submission guidelines what their average response time would be, or how long to wait before querying them, then I wonder whether you’ve checked their listings on Duotrope, Chill Subs, and Submission Grinder to see the stats on their response times for other writers. If a year is way beyond their norm, then it wouldn’t hurt to rattle their cages with a query.
I really appreciated the Brandon North piece you shared and thought he made a lot of salient points.
I would like to add one way, as a working class writer, to broadly expand your network without exposing your soul on social media is write book reviews. It helps you with your own craft and connects you with many colleagues and potential readers of your own work. As writers, we're probably not rioting in the streets for change anytime soon so this is a small way we can improve our lot within the system we've got.
Thanks, Christa. I agree that's a good way to network in principle. I didn't put it in the essay because the whole review-enterprise is a lot to consider in the context of my piece. Ideally, we would read and write reviews of books we love; but in practical terms, because of limited free time and the little money afforded to reviews, often people simply trade reviews (and blurbs!) with their friends and this subtly furthers the economy of favors that bolsters people with more free time and more social connections inbuilt (the well off, not the working class). It's not always such a transactional thing, but notice: how many negative reviews do we see in the indie space? Not many, in my experience. And this is because people largely treat reviews as PR / marketing gifts to each other, forgoing deep critical thought which, in my opinion, should address a book holistically, seeing how its accomplishments and its lack feed off each other. But instead I see a lot more reviews which are essentially summaries with personal reasons why the reviewer liked it, a la goodreads, except in a more prestigious space.
Yes, you’re right about the lack of critical reviews. Not necessarily negative, but in-depth and objective. And they’re often also on spec which a writer doesn’t necessarily have the time and energy as you pointed out.
Lots of great material in this post!
Speaking of class, there needs to be discussion about low-income people being priced out of publishing.
The "literary community" covers a lot of ground, but I will focus on wriiters and teachers of literature and creative writing.
First of all, writers could, themselves, read more l"diverse" literature by African American, Latin America, Asian American, and Native American writers,along the scintillating work of writrs from Asian , Many writers I meet seldom talk about works by BIPOC writers and are embarassingly UNread of some of our country's most brilliant writerss and poets such as the poets Sterling A.Brown,z Gwendolyn Brooks,DouglasKearney, Tyhemba Jess, Daniel Borowfsky, George Abraham,Patricia Smith, Evie Shockley, Janice Mirikitani, Julie Otsuka , and others.
Teacher should order books by these writers for their classoom.Im talking about class SETS. When did a month long unit of Middle East Literature,, my ordering include such outstanding Middle East Writer as Mahmoud Darwish , Ghassan Kanafani,and Samir Al Qasim of PalestineI, Nawal Saadawi of Egypt,Hanan Al-Shayk of Lebanon, Zakaria Tamer of Syria , Samaad Behrangi of Iran, andYashir Kemal of Turkey.
Few if any teachers of American Literature teach any of the great American working class writers.Im talking about B.Traven who wrote many novels about workers in the US and Mexico and is best known for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He also wrote one of the finest short stories about work and imperialism "The Assembly Line" in his collection "Night Visitor". The brilliant James Alan McPherson wrote a story "Solo Song For Doc" in his first book Hue and Cry about a Pullman train worker excruciatingly harassed by his supervisor, a story that was shown on PBS's "With Ruby(Dee) and Ossie(Davis)"- a series of halfhour shows of music,dance and literature. Mcpherson's story inspired my own "Crazy Hattie Enters The Ice Age" one of eight stories in my collection I Looked Over Jordan and Other Stories( Boston:South End Press ,1980) which is currently out-of-print.
Then there are a host of fine novels and poetrry collections about working class people that selddom get taught or anthologized ( My "Crazy Hattie Enters The Ice Age" is in a 2007 anthology of U.of Oxford Press -American Working Class Literature (Nick Coles and Janet Zandy). More later!
RE: Shuttered Goddard College - - its MFA program included two lit mags, The Pitkin Review and Clockhouse.
It's interesting how the pride in housing a long-running reputable literary journal has gone downhill within the university's administration; Conjunctions [Bard College, ends after 33 years], Gettysburg Review [Gettysburg College,1988-2023], etc.
Conor Sweetman wrote: "The power of the small literary magazine is in its ability to confront us with new ideas, to expand our palates to the overlooked, the strange, the serendipitous, the delightful. This will never be very measurable, but that does not make it unnecessary."
For a few reasons, I've tended to avoid campus based zines. Too often their callow volunteers tend to up-vote what I call "the kinds of poems that have made most people despise poetry."
However, something about their vibe drew me to SHIFT (run by the MFA program at MTSU) - - and they just accepted all of the true crime poems I submitted. :-)
Drat and I just submitted a story to Clockhouse. Oh well. Thanks for the heads up on that one, I'll delete the bookmark.
Congratulations on the acceptances, LindaAnn!
Thank you so much, Donna. SHIFT's prompt was "blurred genres." They were the first to accept my true crime Mesostitch Acrostic poems. And their contract is as long as The Book of Job. (smile)
TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics had held on to my true crime Mesostitch Acrostics, made happy noise about my work but, in the end, sent a stiff bare bones rejection. :-O
When I first looked at the masthead of The Red Lemon Review, I saw that two of the editors were students, one in Junior College. It struck me at the time that their schedules might well become busy beyond what they had anticipated, so I decided to wait and see if the magazine continued before submitting there.
Donna, if it's "youth led," my instinct is to steer clear of it. Priorities of student life and new demands will soon change the commitment to running a journal.
Yes, that is what I've tended to do too.
Archetype out of Canada has gone non responsive. No summer issue and nothing on social for months:https://archetypemag.com/
I suspect Annalemma might be closing soon. Their most 'recent' (if you can call April recent) blog post hints as such. I made the choice to withdraw a piece from them as a result.
I'm about to hit the year mark on about five places for submitting, but looking at websites nothing is said, I guess they are just REALLY REALLY behind or....?
A year at five places!! That’s bad. Have they all ignored your follow-up queries?
I actually haven't even bothered to ask. At the stage, I don't see the point and am expecting a reject.
The question in my mind after a year would be “are they going to respond at all?” If the magazines didn’t indicate in their submission guidelines what their average response time would be, or how long to wait before querying them, then I wonder whether you’ve checked their listings on Duotrope, Chill Subs, and Submission Grinder to see the stats on their response times for other writers. If a year is way beyond their norm, then it wouldn’t hurt to rattle their cages with a query.