down the writer's path

Publishing News: Narrative Magazine expands in growth and content

Narrative Magazine, an online favorite of mine, is having one heck of a year. The readership has doubled, the magazine remains free, the contributors continue to be paid, the annual contest grows, and big things are afoot. The magazine now includes poetry, and Michael Wiegers, the executive editor of Cooper Canyon Press, has agreed to be the poetry editor. Narrative's new issue is the first to publish poetry by novelist David Guterson. You'll find Guterson's poetry along with short stories, an excerpt from Ron Hansen's novel Exiles, a profile of Ann Beattie, essays, a memoir set in mid-twentieth century New York, a coming-of-age tale by Nathanial Hawthorne, and the usual assortment of book reviews. Why free? Narrative is a nonprofit organization with a mission to use the Internet to bring readers and storytellers together online, and by the results it's easy to see they are doing a bang up job.

That's not all. In their Editor's Note, Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenk report that Narrative is now the publisher of StoryQuarterly.

This past March, Narrative had the good fortune to become the publisher of StoryQuarterly, a little magazine that’s been around as a hard-copy annual for the past thirty-two years and that last summer made its inaugural foray into the online world. SQ, as it’s called by its familiars, has been shepherded in recent years by the indefatigable, gracious, and spirited efforts of publisher and editor Marie Hayes, whose care and attention to writers is legend within the world of small magazines and in the teaching and writing community. Marie has sustained SQ as a place hospitable to all writers who care about good work and especially to writers who are starting out. As SQ moves forward with Narrative, Marie will continue to provide a guiding hand, and SQ, which has long had the welcome mat out for new writers, will open its door even wider: in the past, submissions were accepted from November through January, but beginning this summer, SQ will accept submissions year-round. A notice will go out letting you know when the new SQ submission system is online, and SQ’s editors will look forward to reading your work.

Some of our readers have asked about the editorial crossover between SQ and Narrative, and we’d like to answer several central questions now. Each magazine will maintain its own identity. A submission to one magazine will not be a submission to both. Each magazine will have its own separate submission system. There will be some overlap in staff and services, such as art and technology, and for the sake of combined strength and for the support of each magazine, there will be collaboration on projects, such as events and story collections, but each magazine will have its own character and pursue its own vision. Other questions will be addressed in a Frequently Asked Questions section to be posted in SQ and updated in Narrative this summer. An updated SQ Submission Guidelines page will be posted in the next SQ, which will go live in July, just in time for summer reading!

For those of you who hate to read online and prefer to have actual hardbound copy in your hands when reading, starting with the September issue Narrative and StoryQuarterly will be offered in print-on-demand format. The magazine also has plans for something called Narrative Backstage which sounds like it will be a lot of fun for those who support the magazine by way of donations. There will be previews of unpublished works, audio files, video footage of authors, and exclusive stories. Sounds like they've hit on a great way to thank their financial angels.

If you enjoy good writing, give Narrative Magazine and StoryQuarterly a try. There's pretty much something for everyone.

Love of Reading essay selected as a Blogcritics' Pick of the Week

When I checked in at Blogcritics a little while I go, I found this nice entry from Asst. Books Editor Gordon Hauptfleisch:

Vikk Simmons, in Joy: The Love of Reading Leads to the Joy of Writing convincingly and exuberantly shows how "the constant push and pull between the two processes, writing and reading... energizes me, engages my creativity, and prompts more writing." And her related experience in working at a bookstore — as I did for several years — almost made me fondly remember the chewed-up bubble gum stuck on the shelves and the customers asking who wrote Dante's Inferno, or looking for Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholesterol.

My essay is one of this week's picks. Blogcritics editor Lisa McKay explained that "this week the Books section celebrates the first online Book Fair by examining the wonderful world of reading and taking a closer look at the relationship between reader and book. Books mean different things to different people, but we all seem to agree that they have a lasting impact on our lives. We share the best of them here, and encourage you to check out the rest." For a roundup of the essays, read Book Editor Natalie Bennett's "We Love Books."

The Best American Series for 2005 are out and my annual ritual begins

My end-of-the-year ritual begins anew with the publication of The Best American Series books. The series began in 1915 and remains strong 90 years later. The concept is interesting and allows for a certain amount of consistency by having a series editor, but also includes a different writer each year who is responsible for the final selection of entries and the introduction. This provides the various editions with a distinct flavor. The writings and spiritual expressions range far and wide and are not bound within the confines of any one faith. This year Zaleski, in his forward, considered the spiritual works created over the centuries and produced a list of “Twenty Five Great Works of Spiritual Writing.” We should, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, not judge a book but “see the object as in itself it really is.” Zaleski then quotes Mathew Arnold’s dictum on how spiritual texts should be approached:

“The correct way to approach a text is with open arms; to embrace, if only for a time, the author’s view of things, to engage his or her work not with suspicion (the default position of so much modern criticism) but with trust. We should read as a friend; and in the light of this friendship we will gain both enjoyment and a dash of wisdom. This approach, I would add, is a specifically spiritual exercise, training in sympathetic understanding, a strengthening of one’s ability to meet whatever comes one’s way.”

In his intro, Barry Lopez recounts a morning trek toward an embayment on the back of a valley glacier in the Lo Gorce Mountains of Antarctica where he experienced “a sudden immersion in the profound mystery of life, a mystery that seems to originate in arrangements of time and space that precede the advent of biology.” He stood before a “rigid tsunami” ice wall and felt a silence that “induced an aura of anticipation” and gave him that religious experience without the symbols of religion known to so many who become intimate with nature. This experience and emotional elation triggered an inquiry into time and space and revitalization. Where did this profound sense of release come from? Is this what lies at the heart of “spiritual writing” he wondered. What exactly does comprise “spiritual writing?” Lopez’s essay probes these questions and provides the reader with a compass for this year's anthology.

Natalie Goldberg offers a sensitive look at her relationship with her Zen master in When the Candle is Blown Out, while Todd Gitlin, A Skull in Varanasi, A Head in Baghdad, engages in a dramatic reflection of a trip to Varanasi, “renowned for pilgrims, for immersions, and for cremations.” Like Mark Twain who witnessed the same skull-cracking cremations, Gitlin is left to agree with the American humorist that “India is a hard country to understand.” The impact of witnessing such an event is what makes up the rest of the essay. Leaving time and space, Oliver Sacks, in Speed, tackles the whole notion of speed and confesses to his fascination for the “wild range of speeds in the world around me.” As a boy, young Oliver wondered at a tortoise’s slow pace across his yard and how it was that he could never catch the Hollyhocks or roses moving, yet saw the results of their growth every day. He sought to photograph ferns and document “their tightly wound crosiers or fiddleheads, tense with contained time, like watch springs, with the future all rolled up in them.” His fascination led him to two H.G. Wells’s stories, The Time Machine and “The New Accelerator,” and he questioned whether “the young Wells had seen, or experimented with, time-lapse photography of plants,” as he had. Sacks continues to reel in people’s perception of time and speed, from race car drivers to those suffering from epileptic seizures; then, using physiology and today’s advances in science as a springboard, Sacks ultimately considers how we may, some day, “enter all speeds, all time.”

The anthology's rich variety is achieved with the inclusion of writings by Edward Hirsch, Patricia Hampl, Thomas Lynch, Richard John Neuhaus and many, many more. Some are a bit didactic, or at best require a slower pace of reading; but if you enjoy diversity of thought and love a search for that which is reverant, you’ll find more than enough to enjoy in this year's anthology of "spiritual writing.”

This review is cross-posted on Blogcritics.org where you'll find my other reviews.

Poets and Writers Alert: Once again Houston hosts the CLMP Southern Literary Magazine and Press Fair

This morning the announcement for the 2nd Annual CLMP Southern Literary Magazine & Small Press Fair arrived in my email. CLMP is the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and once again the event will be at Houston's Brazos Bookstore, a place that makes roaming through bookstacks and bookshelves a delight. I made a point of attending last year and found the event to be all it promised and then some. My advice: arrive early, stay late. (And don't give up if the front parking lot is full; there is nearby on-street parking available.) While boxes and boxes of literary magazines are available and issues can be picked up for a song, they move fast and furious. For the best assortment get there as soon as you can. If you haven't looked lately, the price of a single issue of any literary magazine is fairly high, usually ranging from $8-$15. Annual subscriptions are the best way to go--unless you are lucky enough to attend this conference. Bookstores generally have a limited title selection, with Brazos being the exception. For writers, who want to be sure and select the best target market for their material, this can prove to be a frustrating and expensive process. Being able to pick up recent issues for only $2 or $4 is like a gift from heaven. I confess I left last year with two very full boxes--and then I bought a couple of books from the bookstore.

Each magazine has its own distinct style, needs, and wants. Sometimes they're subtle but they are there. Being able to collect material from a wide range of publishers allows a writer to read them critically and compare one against the other. Understanding the differences is crucial when submitting. A writer who can demonstrate a familiarity with the magazine when submitting a manuscript is someone an editor can appreciate. This year 75 publishers have signed up to be represented--a big increase over last year's good turnout of 50.

The panel discussions last year proved informative and I'm sure this year's, Beneath the Covers: A Look Inside Literary Book Publishers at 11:30 AM and Lit Mags 101: How Lit Mags Work And How to Submit at 2 PM, will be even better. If you are interested in submitting material to any literary magazine, you'll want to attend this event for a rare opportunity to meet editors who are more than willing to talk to readers and writers and who are eager to share their likes and dislikes and offer their take on the literary journal and small press industry.

Gulf Coast, the local literary journal published by the University of Houston, will be well represented. Some other literary magazines I enjoy include Fourth Genre: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction, Mars Hill Review, Creative Nonfiction, Ploughshares, Belleview Literary Review, Tiferet, and The Missouri Review. In addition to the fiction and creative nonfiction pieces, many issues contain great interviews with writers that offer a glimpse into the ways they work and think. Most websites offer online archives and selections from current issues, but I do think that actually having a bound issue in your hand allows you to take in the variety of the offerings and gain some sense of an overall impression that helps you gain the subtle understandings of the individual journals and magzines.

So mark your calendars and plan to attend this free event:

Houston, Saturday, January 29, 2005: 11:00 am- 5:00 pm
BRAZOS BOOKSTORE GALLERY
2425 Bissonnet Street

For more detailed information, a list of participants and contact information, keep reading:

Narrative Magazine offers a new twist on an old form

Last year I ran across an online literary magazine called Narrative Magazine that operates with a fresh twist. While some of the traditional literary magazines make a portion of their issues available online at no cost, Narrative makes all its contents, including archived pieces, free and available online. This is a great opportunity for readers who enjoy reading quality fiction and nonfiction by well-known writers such as Rick Bass and Joyce Carol Oates and by emerging new writers. Even more interesting for writers is that they pay their contributors $350 on publication. Even better, they will consider unsolicited, multiple-submitted manuscripts. The magazine also offers an annual $4,000 prize for the best work published during the year by a new writer. (Last year’s winner, Axis of Happiness by Min Jin Lee, is available to read online.) The editors also have admirable goals:

Central to our goal was the conviction that Narrative should be offered for free, with all its contents, both front-run and archived pieces, readily available. We have furthered this aim by establishing the magazine as a nonprofit publication, and we are currently working to build support that will allow Narrative to increase its payments to contributors; to collaborate with schools, libraries, and other institutions to encourage reading and literacy; and to establish internships and opportunities for students and young graduates interested in literature. Many of our friends who are writers, and other friends who are not writers but who love good writing, have given generously of their work, time, and support. As a result we are moving forward with plans to expand the magazine’s reach and to deepen its offerings to readers.

Now for the twist: the magazine charges a $20 reading fee for each unsolicited manuscript submitted--except during the two month open submission period in February and March when reading fees are waived. Monies collected go to the contributor’s payments and the annual prize. Before you print out your latest masterpiece, take the time to log on and review Narrative’s submission guidelines—online submissions are the rule except during open submission time—and make sure you’ve read through several issues so you send the most suitable manuscript. If you don’t have a manuscript handy or even plan to submit one, you might check out the new Readers’ Narrative section. You may have something to add to the conversation.

Even though the writer pays a reading fee, I think this is an interesting and positive approach. The aim is to increase readership and that’s happening on a global level. The fee keeps down the temptation to toss a lot of manuscripts their way in hopes of one sticking to the proverbial wall and makes the writer focus on presenting the best work and not just any work. It’s good to see an emphasis on finding new voices. The fact that a hefty annual prize is awarded makes the opportunity even more challenging and the fee can be equated to that of most contest entry fees—except here there is an opportunity to enter and not pay a fee at all.

If you are inclined to write the type of material that Narrative Magazine publishes, the issues not only provide a free source of published material to read and enjoy but to review and critique. Let the magazine become a source of inspiration. Set a goal to produce a work to submit during the upcoming open submission period during February and March. If you decide to take up the challenge, be sure and let me know.

If you enjoy the magazine, tell others.

Artemisia and the blurring of lines in fiction and nonfiction

The more I read, the more I notice the lines blurring between fiction and nonfiction. I recently read Artemisia: A Novel by Alexandra Lapierre. The book is essentially a biography of Artemesia Gentileschi. She is the daughter of the famed artist Orazio Gentileschi, and she became a renowned painter in her own right in the 1600s. It's a fascinating story, and I confess I had not heard of her before. The story ends on page 360. Pages 361 - 424 consist of notes on research and source material. When I picked up the book, I assumed it was nonfiction, along the lines of what I would call "creative nonfiction." But as I read, I discovered the story changed from the more nonfiction narrative to that of recreated scenes that are clearly fictionalized. Later I found the Daily News had labeled the book historical fiction.

This movement between the two landscapes of fiction and nonfiction can be fascinating. Capote’s In Cold Blood contained "fictionalized" scenes and, of course, there's the whole Dutch Ronald Reagan biography controversy. Artemesia's author has pulled the dialogue in the book from letters and other sources. Although the crafting of the scenes occurs in the fictional realm, the story strikes a ring of truth. The author may have drawn many conclusions, but then, most biographers draw conclusions . . . . I found the book compelling; the story remaining with me during the day and urging me back into its pages every evening. And despite the obvious fictionalizing of scenes, I couldn't stop thinking of the story in terms of nonfiction. Is this really so different from what is now being done in the memoir field or in some of the new creative nonfiction novels such as those by Dava Sobel or Eric Larson in Isaac's Storm? I don't know. I’ve always thought of historical fiction in terms of stories like Horatio Hornblower .

Fiction or nonfiction? I suppose the question doesn't matter that much but I do find it curious. I wonder if anyone really is certain which is which anymore?

There are many reasons to enjoy Artemisia: A Novel. Art and a good story are but two.

SCBWI gives the scoop on writing nonfiction for children

If you have an interest in writing for children and have what Art Spikol called a "grasshopper mind," then the "Writing Nonfiction for Children" conference might be for you. SCBWI Houston is offering those who write or wish to write nonfiction for children an opportunity to meet two speakers who work or have worked as editors for major publishing houses and learn how to write and how to sell their material. Pam Zollman, former editor for Highlights for Children and Houston writer, and Nina Rosenstein, Nonfiction Children's Book Editor formerly with Random House and now with Enslow Publishers, will spend an entire day discussing this very salable type of writing on June 19, 2004 from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm at North Harris College. Cost is quite reasonable at $50/non-SCBWI members and $35/SCBWI members and includes a boxed lunch. This is a great deal for new and the tried-and-true writers.

Cal Thomas's 20-yr-syndication offers valuable lessons

Did you know Cal Thomas is the leading syndicated political columnist with 570 clients? I didn't. Dave Astor's article in the April issue of Editor & Publisher chronicles Thomas's success. The fact that he's a conservative columnist makes his accomplishments all the more impressive.

Today, April 17th, is Thomas's 20-yr-syndication anniversary. Thomas continues to rely on tried and true sales and marketing strategies. Building relationships with editors is key. Meeting his potential audience through speeches, is another. Thomas did a number of "one-shot columns" before he made the leap into syndication, so for those writers and bloggers, who opine and hope for syndication, perhaps a walk in his footsteps might yield similar results.

The Passion of The Purpose-Driven Life: A marketing maven's dream come true

Although I spent the last several days compiling a final edit on my young adult novel, Divided Loyalties, scheduled for an August 2004 release by Awe-Struck, it's clear the recent media hype of The Passion of the Christ managed to seep into my grey matter. This morning I thought it time to play catch up with the backlog of sundry reading that has piled up. As some of you know, nonfiction has been occupying more and more of my writer-brain space the last couple of years, particularly in the realm of narrative nonfiction, a genre that has become more and more prevalent. If you doubt its popularity, take a stroll down the center aisle of any Barnes and Noble or Borders and chart the number of new books that detail great scientific moments, this plague or that fever, or any number of natural and man-made disasters--or at least the publisher's have identified them as having some popular interest or they wouldn't pepper so many tables and endcaps.

Most folks, writers included, think of the latest John Grisham or the NY Times list topper as the end-all, be-all in writer-achievement. I would certainly not turn my nose up at such an opportunity; however, there are any number of books, some more well known than others, that develop high sales and/or a long run of steady, mounting numbers without ever reaching those illustrious heights.