Discovery Friday: New Letters

Today's guest is Ashley Kaine from New Letters magazine, yet another literary journal discount program member. Here she is:

At New Letters magazine, we have street “cred.” That’s what 76 years of pushing the finest literary goods gets you. Here at University House—our beautiful, century-old brick house on a high hill among Locust and Evergreen trees—you’ll find New Letters magazine, an international quarterly of writing and art, New Letters on the Air, our nationally syndicated on-air affiliate, and BkMk Press, a small award-winning press. We deal the finest essays, stories, art and poems. You can find them in our magazine, in BkMk Press collections, or discussed on public radio with award-winning host of New Letters on the Air Angela Elam. We work hard to find the best in literature and art, and once we find it; we look for more.

Under the guidance of the late editor, Alexander P. Cappon, the magazine published Thomas Hart Benton, Diego Rivera, Edgar Lee Masters, Pearl S. Buck, J.D. Salinger, e.e. cummings, among others. Over 70 years later, we still publish today’s strongest writers, some well established like Chinua Achebe, Kim Addonizio, Sherman Alexie, Conger Beasley Jr., Robert Day, Albert Goldbarth, Maxine Kumin, Mary Jo Salter, and Thomas E. Kennedy, who alongside New Letters’ editor Robert Stewart, won the 2008 National Magazine Award for the essay, "I Am Joe's Prostate," published in New Letters Vol. 73 No. 4. In addition to beating out magazines like The New Yorker for the National Magazine Award, we won the 2010 “Pushcart Triple Crown” for “Two Studies in Entropy” – a fiction work by Sara Pritchard; “How to Succeed in Po Biz” – an essay by Kim Addonizio; and “In Africa” – a fiction work by Edward Hoagland.

“For a single publication to be selected for three Pushcart Prizes in one year is nearly unheard of,” said Robert Stewart, editor of New Letters. “This shows that New Letters remains – in its 76th year – on the front line of national magazines that publish literature. I am especially gratified that recent honors for New Letters have come from diverse sources, ranging from the 2008 National Magazine Award, with its more commercial component, to The Pushcart Prize, with its emphasis on literary writers and editors.”

On the same pages as our established, award-winning contributors, you will find new writers with savagely provocative voices, like our 2009 literary award winner in poetry Heather Bell. Or D.L. Tucker in his striking essay “Double Vision.” Some of the fiction, essays, and poetry found in our issues go on to find the limelight.

The short story "Dirt Men," by Tim Johnston, first appeared in New Letters’ winter 2009 issue, and became the lead story in his collection Irish Girl (U of North Texas Press, 2009). That book won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize. The story "Dirt Men" now has been nominated for a Pushcart by board editors. Johnston reports that "Dirt Men" is the story he reads most at author events, and that David Sedaris selected Irish Girl as one of his favorite books of 2009 (The New Yorker, The Book Bench, Dec. 11, 2009) and has now chosen Irish Girl as the book he will be recommending on his 34-city, 2010 book tour. And it was found here first.

See? Here at New Letters, we don’t avert our eyes to surprising literature. We publish it. We promote it. We hold annual literary award contests to honor it. Then we keep looking for more. Come hang out with the gang online at http://facebook.com/newletters, and request us as a friend. Or visit our Web site for information on our writers, issues, submissions, and annual literary awards (deadline mid-May), where we award $4,500 in cash prizes to winners in the categories of essay, poetry and fiction.

Subscriptions to New Letters are $36 for two years and $22 for one year. Call (816) 235-1168 or visit http://www.newletters.org/ to join the New Letters family of subscribers.

Discovery Friday: Copper Nickel

On Discovery Friday this week is Copper Nickel, a fine literary journal out of the University of Colorado Denver. The most recent issue (I'm a subscriber, and have been reading it all this week) includes Holly Goddard Jones (author of Girl Trouble), Bob Hicok, Dan Albergotti, and a whole slew of others. Great stuff. Here's senior editor Jake Adam York to answer some questions.

Oh, and Copper Nickel is part of The Writer's Center's Literary Journal Discount Program.

Tell us about Copper Nickel. What separates it from other literary journals?

Two distinguishing characteristics are important to us.

First, we don't have an "aesthetic." Many journals, whether deliberately or not, seem to have a style, which is why a lot of writers ask us what we're looking for, or whether we're "experimental" or "traditional." When we talk amongst ourselves, we talk about wanting to take whatever is "good." And we work hard to discover how each piece wants to work and try to judge each submission on its own terms. The result is, I believe, a truly eclectic journal---interested in emerging and established writers, in experimental and traditional work, in local and national talent.

Second, we're working to be a national literary journal with a largely undergraduate staff. We have an undergraduate Creative Writing program here at UC-Denver, where our students continue to maintain that they're not interested in publishing or publishing in a traditional campus literary journal. Our students want more, and I and the other faculty members work to connect our students to a national community.

What would you like our readers and members to know about you? Can you tell us a little bit about what you like to publish?

Again, we're interested in anything that's "good." I have a particular interest, and many of my editors share this interest, in pieces that communicate their own parameters and then proceed to fulfill them. We're excited about strong realist fiction, but also interested in experimental fictions. We like narrative poems as well as near-hermetic lyrics. With non-fiction, I think we favor the lyric essay, and are excited to see pieces that arbitrate their forms rather than expository pieces. But, if something is accomplished, we're often happy to find a home for it.

Each issue, we believe, is carefully crafted, presented in an order that allows, for those who want it, to read the issue like a book written by a series of different authors. We'd like to see, in our own community, the literary journal become more visible and more widely circulated, and for us that means working to create a satisfying reading experience that isn't self-congratulatory, either to our readers or to ourselves.

That means we work not to repeat ourselves, but we're also eager to reach new readers. We publish the journal, first and foremost, to connect writers with readers.

What advice do you have for anyone submitting a manuscript?

Take yourself and your work, your time and our time seriously. We're happy to review manuscripts from anyone, but with almost 4000 manuscripts to process each year, it's frustrating to read a manuscript with a lot of typos, a cover letter that seems to feel this is all a joke, to receive robo-submissions (the author just keeps firing them off like a Gatling gun) or see a writer submitting and then withdrawing a manuscript several times over the course of a month.

We read each manuscript carefully which takes a lot of time. We try to offer comments when we feel we are close to connecting to a writer, and we hope writers will spend the some time thinking about us, as readers, as we think about them.

At the upcoming AWP conference in your home base of Denver, you’re going to have a pretty high profile. Where can we find you? What kind of events will you be promoting there?

We're major sponsors, so you'll see our name everywhere. On Thursday night, we're presenting Michael Chabon's reading at the conference as well as a reading of eight debut poets---Dan Albergotti, Jericho Brown, Stacey Lynn Brown, Michael Dumanis, Farrah Field, J. Michael Martinez, Alison Stine, and Allison Benis White---on our campus, just two blocks away, earlier that evening. On Saturday night at the Denver Press Club (just two blocks from the convention center), we're presenting what I'm calling "an edited reading," which will be presented as if it were an issue of Copper Nickel, with a table of contents, and a slate of writers who have contributed to the journal over the last few years. In between all that, we'll have a booth in the bookfair, where we'll be selling subscriptions for a very sweet low price, with some giveaways, and some new hot t-shirts. We receive submissions from more than 1500 writers each year, yet we have fewer than 300 subscribers. We're hoping to attract a few more at AWP, because we're hoping to be around for more than a few years.

Discovery Friday: Potomac Review

Here's my interview with Will Grofic, the managing editor of Potomac Review. This journal is locally produced, and it's part of The Writer's Center's Literary Journal Discount Program.

What is Potomac Review?

To be concise, Potomac Review (PR) is a literary journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. It is also shorthand for Potomac Review: A Journal of Arts & Humanities. Who doesn’t love the ampersand? We publish biannually in spring and fall and are housed at Paul Peck Humanities Institute at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD.

The staff consists of Editor-in-Chief Julie Wakeman-Linn, who recovered PR from the ashes 5 years ago, Katherine Smith and Robert Giron, who are the Poetry Editors, our cherished interns, and a slew of sharp associate editors. I wouldn’t be here, typing to this virtual audience, without the guidance and greatness of the first Managing Editor: Leila Emery

What would you like our readers to know about you?

I’ve been telling anyone that looks at me that Potomac Review just received a Notable Story in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 edited by Dave Eggers for Rebekah Yeager’s “The Couch” and a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2009 edited by Mary Oliver for Andrea Nolan’s “Edges.” Both were in Issue 44 (a few issues are still available to purchase at The Writer’s Center!). This is wonderful news; even typing it I feel all giddy, like Kyle Semmel listening to a new Bob Dylan single.

Rebekah’s story brings up an interesting aspect of PR because she won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest. PR helps run the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference every fall and publishes the contest winner. Every year we also publish our contest winner (shameless plug) and now will publish the Split this Rock Poetry Contest winner.

What makes it unique?

I’m sure other literary journals will sell you on how closely they look at every submission, but I’m certain they are lying. Well not certain, I’m sure a few of their readers don’t read every word of every line. Maybe not a few, maybe there is one bad egg with errands to do and no time for your nonlinear chapter construction. Or maybe the one egg isn’t even wholly bad, maybe he/she is near-rotten, just had twins and slowly going insane. The fact is, we don’t have any near-rotten eggs in our basket; I don’t think any of our readers just had twins this past year. We read everything, and 95% of our content comes from the slushpile (other 5% are the aforementioned contest winners and our featured poet).

What really makes us unique is the great blend of local and national writers; we’ll have Writer’s Center instructor Ramola D next to up-and-coming fiction writers Myfanwy Collins and Irene Keliher next to T.J. Forrester, whose novel and short story collection is coming out from Simon & Schuster (that ampersand again). We’ve always published a few people from DC/MD/VA, not out of necessity, but because for so many years Potomac Review stressed publishing Mid-Atlantic writers. Even though are focus now is more on publishing great literary work than where the author is from, that reputation still exists among Mid-Atlantic writers who submit, and this works to our advantage as we try and keep our feet grounded in the DC Metro-area literary community while also publishing people nationally and internationally.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you like to publish?

That’s hard to say. We like work of literary merit? We like what would render the Godmother of American Poetry Emily Dickinson’s “whole body so cold no fire could ever warm” her. I know she’s talking about poetry, but we like fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that feels like “the top of my head were taken off.” Or, more succinct, we like good stuff. There’s not one set tone or point of view we hunt for in our content.

What advice do you have for anyone submitting a manuscript?

Everyone says you should know the review you are submitting to, then they say buy our issues, which makes sense, and if you have the money you should do just that. Buy as many Potomac Reviews as your monthly budget allows. In these economic times though, I understand if that’s not the case (I’m actually impressed you’re still reading down here, what with these economical times and all). So I’ll make it easy for you. We do have some online content from our latest issue, free! content from our Pushcart nominees and Fiction Contest winner. We also blog regularly, which means you’d be able to see what our sensibilities are (and Julie Wakeman-Linn has this awesome feature called the “Maybe Dialogue Blog” where she chats with a submitter who was on the cusp of being accepted but still has some kinks in the story to work out).

Also keep your cover letters to a small-to-medium sized paragraph, unless your cover letter is your submission. Memoir as cover letter, I’ve never seen someone consciously do that before.

Introducing Hayden's Ferry Review

Hayden's Ferry Review is a member of The Writer's Center literary journal discount program. Find out how you can get great savings in the program right here.

I asked managing editor Beth Staples to introduce HRF to Writer's Center members and readers of this blog. Here's the response:


If you’ve never read Hayden’s Ferry Review, you’re missing out big time! Here’s why: It’s true, we’re definitely committed to publishing the most exciting work by emerging and established writers and artists. And yes, we’ve been supporting these artists for 23 years. On top of that, we love what we do, and clap our hands together every time we put out a new issue. But the most important reason for you to read HFR is because of the work itself. So we compiled a list of appetizers for you, some interesting facts and links from our recent issues to show you what we’re made of.


• Number of sheep visible that Levi van Veluw glued to his head for Issue 43’s cover (among trees, bushes, and – for the back cover – small lampposts):




10
See the one with lampposts here.


• Number of stories in Issue 44 written by Holly Hall that make you wish you had been that talented when you were 19:
1
The excellent “Turn about the Axis.” Read it here.


• Minimum number of startling revelations by poet Kevin Prufer in his Interview in Issue 44:

4
Including: He is terrible at starting poems, he reads Anne Bradstreet, every good poem is a formal poem, and poetry can’t change the world.
Find more information about Kevin here.


• Number of poets in Issue 44 from places you’ve never heard of but you now want to visit:

1
Award winning Galician poet Chus Pato. Read her here. Find Galicia here.


• Most common guess for the city pictured on Issue 44’s cover by Christina Seely:




Seattle, Washington
Which is wrong. It is Kyoto, Japan.
See another photo from Christina’s “Lux” series here.


• Number of naked torsos from Bill Durgin’s series in Issue 42:
6
You can see some of them (yes, naked!) here.


• Number of recordings on our webpage for Issue 42 of Shamin Azad reading her poetry in the original Bengali (you can download the translations there, also):
3
You can hear them here. With music provided by the After Art Band.


• Number of HFR stories forthcoming in The Best of the West anthology 2009:
2
You can read “Amanuensis” here. Find out more about the anthology here.


• Frequency of new posts on our blog about fiction, poetry, literacy, book news, the changing world of publishing, what’s new with our contributors and much more: Practically every day.
Visit the blog here.


• Question you should be asking yourself:
Why aren’t subscribing?
Especially with that generous discount from The Writer’s Center! (details here!)

There’s lots more content on the HFR website, and we love to hear from you! Send questions or comments to HFR@asu.edu.

New England Review

One of the blog's I follow is Hayden's Ferry Review's blog--HFR is one very fine literary journal and a member of our Literary Discount Program.

On their blog today is a post about another member of The Writer's Center's Literary Discount Program, the wonderful New England Review. Seems, sadly, that NER is suddenly in jeopardy. It's been told by Middlebury College, as the HFR blog notes from the LA Times blog Jacket Copy, that it needs to become "self-sustaining by 2011."

This is all written in the HFR blog (and the LA Times blog), and you can see this for yourself on those sites.

But to this I have to say: My God! In this time of declining support for literary journals, we have to absolutely support great journals like New England Review. I've said this before and I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, or dead, whichever comes first: Literary journals are one of the prime movers on the literary scene. Many young or unestablished authors first get their pub creds here--and in fact that's where many get noticed by agents and publishers. I know I personally have benefitted from a number of great journals supporting my work. It's such a wonderful thing to get that letter or call or email from an editor who says: "We love your work and want to publish it."

If these literary journals are not supported by the very people who submit stories to them, what will happen to them? And what will happen to that very democratic playing field where it is possible for you to get your work out to a broader audience? Journals like New England Review are trusted friends.

Dear Readers of this blog, consider subscribing to New England Review. Trust me, you will not be disappointed! And remember, as members of The Writer's Center you can get a 40% discount.

The Writer's Center's New Lit Journal Discount Program

I'm pleased to give you this special Saturday post (which I'm writing at 5:35 on Friday.)

Below is what I promised to write. News about our exciting new program for WC members. In the coming weeks, on this blog, I will discuss individually each journal. I will interview editors and, I hope, authors who've appeared in the pages of these journals. But first things first. Here's the deal:


LITERARY JOURNAL DISCOUNT PROGRAM FOR WRITER’S CENTER MEMBERS

For the past 33 years, The Writer’s Center has offered more than 300 writing workshops annually across a wide spectrum of genres, and each year we host more than 50 public events. The core of our mission: to promote the literary arts and those who champion writing and reading.

In our bookstore, we sell one of the largest selections of literary journals (in a non-academic setting) in the mid-Atlantic region. We believe this collection is a vital part of our community. Because we’re an organization dedicated to the craft of writing, and because some of the most compelling literary work today is emerging in lit journals—where many of our instructors and staff first published their work (and continue to do so)—we encourage our more than 2,000 members and workshop participants to read and subscribe to these journals.

The Writer’s Center hopes to continually expand its membership benefits. As part of these expansion efforts, we approached 7 leading literary journals and formed a partnership with them. The result is an additional benefit for you, our members: a 40% discount on one and two year subscriptions.

For writers, it’s important to know intimately what each journal you send your stories, poems, or essays to wants in a submission. You greatly improve your chances of acceptance if you’re aware of a journal’s editorial style, and what it regularly publishes. And the only way to know if your work fits in a particular journal is to read that journal, and then to develop a relationship with that journal—to love it and eagerly await its arrival each issue.

Now, with the Writer’s Center Literary Discount Program, you can choose any of the leading journals below and get a drastic discount on journals sent directly to your home. Subscription forms are available at The Writer’s Center. Click on the links to go directly to each journal.

Enjoy your weekend. Go Syracuse!


FENCE

HAYDEN’S FERRY REVIEW

NEW ENGLAND REVIEW

NEW LETTERS

POET LORE

SUBTROPICS

(Note: With Subtropics we're still determining payment method.)

THE POTOMAC REVIEW


If you have any questions about this program, please contact me, Kyle Semmel, at ksemmel@writer.org