It's not easy finding The Missouri Review on the shelves. But he will!

One of the things that literary magazines and literary editors will frequently tell prospective contributors is that a writer should read our magazine before submitting work to us. I heard this advice when I was graduate school and first became interested in publishing my stories. Outside the offices of Natural Bridge, the literary magazine of Missouri-St. Louis, there was a small bookshelf filled with literary journals. Being new to literary publishing, most of the names were unfamiliar to me. Best I can remember, the shelves didn’t hold many of the big names like Ploughshares and Tin House. Mostly, the shelves were filled with journals run by graduate students, same as Natural Bridge. I distinctly remember reading several issues of Meridian, the literary journal out of the University of Virginia.

Point is, getting to know the journals is not easy. Journal editors, like ourselves, typically say vague things, such as we like “good writing.” We don’t want to say we do this or do that, because it might close us off to work that will surprise and delight our readers. Yet, magazines do seem to have certain aesthetics and taste – I can think of a handful of journals I love to read that I would never submit my work to – and when a writer is asked to read a couple of back issues, it can be overwhelming.

Poet Gary Hanna feels the same way. So, he decided to do something about it. In cooperation with the Lewes Public Library in Delaware, Hanna has created The Writer’s Library, a room free and open to the public where writers can read the literary journals that are best for their work. And, the Writer’s Library could use some donations. So if you have any copies of literary journals that you could donate, please do so! All information on how to reach Hanna is on their website, but in case you just feel the need to rush right off to UPS, here it is:

The Writer’s Library at Lewes Public Library, 111 Adams Avenue, Lewis, DE 19958. Or you can visit www.leweslibrary.org

Michael Nye is the managing editor of the Missouri Review.

My class’s Skype conversation with Michael is one of the features of the Council for Literary Magazines and Presses Lit Mag Adoption Program, through which creative writing instructors can sign their classes up for discounted subscriptions to participating magazines. I adopted TMR for my course in part because of my familiarity with the magazine: I was on staff for four of the five years I studied at the University of Missouri, and felt confident that any issue would include “teachable” material. TMR was also a good fit for my class because it includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction–as does the intro workshop at my present institution. Even so, I faced a challenge in drafting a syllabus that would accommodate whatever the magazine happened to contain. Knowing that we wouldn’t receive our first issue until the middle of the semester, I structured the first few units of the course around definite objectives–focusing on form, point of view, image, voice–and sketched out two broadly-defined units at the end of the semester, devoted to “journeys” and “change.” As I’d hoped, virtually every piece in the Winter 2010 issue could be fitted into these categories.

One benefit of working with newly-published writing was that the students knew I had no prior connection to the pieces we were reading. We were all in the same relationship to the texts; we were all undertaking the task of getting to know this material. In groups, students would work together to arrive at readings of individual poems in a feature, then we’d come back together to share our findings and discuss themes running through that poet’s work. The intertextuality of Tarfia Faizullah’s poems, the timeliness of Brian Brodeur’s challenged the students and provided them with good models. On the day we discussed Daniel Mueller’s essay “I’m OK, You’re OK,” a student who’d misread the syllabus was devastated to be left out of our conversation about predatory clowns. Working with such fresh material gave students plenty of room to develop their own insights. In TMR‘s Winter issue, they were encountering works that hadn’t been studied extensively: not by SparkNotes, not by Wikipedia, not by someone offering to sell them a term paper–not even by me.

Having Michael in our classroom that April day demystified the work of a literary journal, a kind of publication that some students in this, a general education class, may have been unfamiliar with at the beginning of the semester. For me, it was nice to see a familiar face again; for the students, helpful to put a face to the editorial process. The Winter 2010 issue offered us another small world moment as we discussed (inevitably) the cover art. Kent Miller‘s “Maho Beach”–in which a jumbo jet buzzes beach-goers–is not only an undoctored photograph, but also the work of a former staff photographer for our hometown newspaper, The Flint Journal. I am apt to dwell on such coincidences: what does it mean that I’m here, linked to these two places, and the cover artist shares the same links? To my students, the coincidence seemed less striking: a Flint photographer was on the cover of TMR, one of the journal’s editors was Skyping with us–that very day, a classmate had announced that she’d just been published online. Why shouldn’t Flint be a hub of the publishing world? That’s exactly the kind of question I want them to ask.

Stephanie Carpenter is a former TMR staff member and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan-Flint.

Tom Bissell, a regular contributor to VQR and author of several books, has a different and thoughtful response to the entire situation:

“Here is a different narrative of the VQR tragedy: Mr. Genoways, in elevating what had previously been a respected but quiet literary journal into one of America’s best magazines, revealed the basic incompatibility of the sinecure model of university employment with the high-pressure, emotionally tempestuous imperatives of commercial publishing. Mr. Genoways’ staff, including Morrissey, did not agree with the direction in which the magazine was going and moreover believed Mr. Genoways was spending too much money. Crucially, Mr. Genoways was bound by one extraordinary quirk of a university- and taxpayer-funded literary magazine. Morrissey, along with the rest of Mr. Genoways’ staff, were state employees first, VQR employees second. While Mr. Genoways could hire staff, he could not easily fire staff, which is the right and prerogative of, say, the editors of The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and The Atlantic, against whom VQR was attempting to compete in terms of content (if not circulation).

“Mr. Genoways was thus forced to run his magazine in what were essentially and increasingly mutinous circumstances. Paradoxically, as the magazine pulled in National Magazine Award nominations and critical acclaim, Mr. Genoways’ relationship to his staff became increasingly toxic. Job productivity suffered and resentments accumulated, even though Mr. Genoways, Morrissey and Waldo Jacquith (the former Web editor of VQR, who told The Today Show that “Ted’s treatment of Kevin in the last two weeks of his life was just egregious”) were drawing a combined compensation of $320,000.”

Read Tom’s entire piece here, and if you haven’t, The Hook’s original story is here. Also, lots of interesting comments at HTML Giant, too. Tip o’ the cap to TMR pal Tayari Jones for the link to Tom’s story.

Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review.

In addition to the dozens of docs screened during the True/False Film fest, a number of workshops and classes are offered. Wanting to deepen my knowledge of the industry, I checked out a couple, including “Hybrid Cinema: A Filmmaker’s Guide to DIY, Web and Self-Distribution.”

Jon Reiss, director of Bomb It, a doc about the “battle for public space throughout the world” (or graffiti), led the presentation. I was struck with the similarities of marketing a literary journal and marketing a documentary film. At one point, Reiss stated that when the doc was completed, the filmmaker was only half-way through the process. He or she must get it out in the public. I think, in some broad way, that’s true of a literary magazine. After we’ve accepted the final prose or poetry piece for our journals, we’re ready to put our feet on the desk, lean back in our office chair, and congratulate ourselves on putting together another fine publication. But as wonderful as our magazines may be, we haven’t done our job fully until we’ve reached the largest audience possible given our budget, personnel, and time constraints.

For many in literary publishing, marketing may be the least favored part of the job. As Reiss said early in his presentation, he went into filmmaking because he didn’t want to go into business—but that career choice turned him into a businessman. Likewise, I’m sure many of us feel the same way about marketing, but if we want our journal to succeed, we need to make smart choices.

Reiss uses his blog (http://jonreiss.com/blog/) to raise attention for his films and long-term audience development. You can check out his blog to see what he’s doing in this regard. And if anyone is interested in some of his specific blogging tips, comment below and I’ll add a “part two” later in the week.

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