Marcelle Heath: What is The Lit Pub and how did it come about?

Molly Gaudry: The Lit Pub is a publicity company for indie books, but we also sell our featured titles in our Community Bookstore. This way, we can try to measure the relationship between our publicity campaigns and book sales.

I need to share, however, that this is not what we thought it would be when we first began talking about it. Initially, we (Christopher Newgent and I) wanted to form an alliance of independent publishers and find a way to get cheaper ISBNs. I think it all started with ISBNs and was inspired by my need to find a second job that isn’t teaching freshman composition as a lowly adjunct.

The more and more (and more and more) we learned along the way, the more we were able to fine tune our plan to become this thing that we could actually do. Which brings us to what we are—a publicity company and online bookstore—and what we want to be. . . .

Heath: What are The Lit Pub’s goals?

Gaudry: I think we have a few different goals.

Re: publicity, we want to attract the best indie authors to hire us to publicize their books, and we want to attract wider and wider reading audiences to our website, which is where our publicity takes place.

Re: bookstore, we are only selling our Featured Books for now, but we hope to very quickly expand to be able to also sell our Library Recommendations, and after that we hope to be able to accommodate the wider independent literature community by selling all of its collective titles. (We have the warehouse space; we just need to ease our way into the mechanics of utilizing it!)

Re: community, we truly believe that publishing is an art form that can integrate the rest of the arts—visual artists and designers for book covers, photographers and filmmakers (and actors) for book trailers and short films, musicians and composers for film scores. It is our hope that we not only become a hub for literary arts but also for artists of all creative disciplines, and we hope to connect our publishers with these other artists to create a greater awareness for what we all do.

Heath: How do you envision The Lit Pub’s role in publishing?

Gaudry: The Lit Pub is an all-around champion of the best in today’s independently published literature.

Heath: How will authors, readers, and publishers benefit from The Lit Pub?

Gaudry: The way we see it now, authors and publishers whose books are featured on our website will benefit from the close, focused attention our publicists, publicity assistants, administrative support staff, and fans will help to generate for the featured books.

As for readers (I love this question!), I’m hoping that we find them all over the country, all over the world, and bring them back to our website where we will be able to introduce them to each other and to our authors.

I hope that we can provide for them a forum to discuss the books we’re talking about.

I hope we find readers who have never heard of independent publishing.

I hope we find readers who miss their local Borders and need a new bookstore to hang out in.

I hope we find readers who will tell their friends and book clubs about us.

I hope we find readers who want to get excited about the books we’re excited about, books they may never have heard of if not for The Lit Pub.

I hope we find these readers, introduce them to a world they didn’t even know existed, find ways to make them comfortable and cozy inside this new world, and then given them reasons to keep them coming back every month for more.

Heath: As an author and publicist, what do you make of the evolving landscape of publishing in the digital era? What advice can you give writers today?

Gaudry: It has never been easier to publish that book you always said you’d write. The hard part is finding an audience for it. The good news is that a personal blog and a Facebook account might be all you really need to market your book to targeted audiences. If you’ve got the time and energy—and determination—to do it yourself, there’s really no reason not to. So get to it! And good luck!

[NOTE: In August 2011, Gaudry sent the following email, updating information about The Lit Pub:

Dear everyone,

Pardon the mass email, but I just wanted to write because you have either interviewed me about The Lit Pub or are going to.

OK, so, if you didn't already know, the site has been down since early July. We're about 2 weeks from relaunching. Basically, we cut out publicity altogether, and now we're an online bookstore for the indies. We still only vouch for and sell books we love, so it's not a total free-for-all, but over time we'll add more and more titles.

Publishers can list their titles at any time; there are no annual fees or listing fees. Hopefully they can work with us on consignment, but if we have to go through distribution that will slow down the process slightly.

Here is a sneak peek at the very-much-in-process new site. The VIP Room has been significantly altered and the FAQ should now be more informative than it was before. Obviously, big changes to the home page.

http://dev.fuzzco.com/thelitpub.com/]

Molly Gaudry is the founder of The Lit Pub and the Director of Publicity, which means she can answer questions about how to get your book publicized at The Lit Pub.

Chris Newgent, founder of Vouched Books, is Sales Director, which means he can answer questions about how to get your book sold in The Lit Pub’s Community Bookstore.

Mike Bushnell is our Director of Business Development, which means he can answer questions about the future of The Lit Pub and what our goals are. Eventually, he’ll probably also handle advertising-related issues.

Elizabeth Taddonio is our Community Manager and she will be in charge of, among other things, our Facebook page. Liz is who to talk to if you’re a reader or a fan and have questions or concerns about The Lit Pub.

Erika Moya is our Social Media Editor, and she will be in charge of, among other things, our Twitter account. Basically, Erika keeps us up-to-date with the rest of the world.

And Mike Young is The Lit Pub’s inaugural guest publisher, and he’ll be publicizing Ofelia Hunt’s Today & Tomorrow on behalf of Magic Helicopter.

In February 2011, VIDA, an organization for women writers, released what has been called the VIDA Count, a totalling of male vs. female writer bylines for 14 of the top 2010 literary-type magazines. The numbers found the—perhaps expected—much greater representation of male writers in these publications. VIDA has also “counted” female writers in other publishing venues, and has more counts in the works.

Cate Marvin’s first book, World’s Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinksy for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize and published by Sarabande in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Her poems have appeared inThe New England Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Fence,The Paris Review, The Cincinnati Review, Slate, Verse, Boston Review, and Ninth Letter. She is co-editor with poet Michael Dumanis of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande, 2006). Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published by Sarabande in August 2007. A recent Whiting Award recipient, she teaches poetry writing in Lesley University’s Low-Residency M.F.A. Program and is an associate professor in creative writing at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She is Co-Director with the poet Erin Belieu of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.

Marcelle Heath: VIDA’s 2010 Count has caused quite a stir in the literary community, generating debate about VIDA’s findings on the number of women contributors and reviews by women authors at the top magazines in the country. Many writers and editors were shocked by the glaring gender disparity in publishing. Others, like myself, were (unfortunately) validated by the pie charts: they represented both our personal experiences and deepest fears about institutionalized and pervasive sexism. While many expressed support and offered new ways to include more women, there were some who criticized and dismissed VIDA’s methodology.

What was your initial reaction when you saw the data? Were you surprised by how it’s been received by both the editors at the magazines in The Count and the public at large?

Cate Marvin: A SHORT ANSWER:

I was both surprised and not at all surprised by the numbers. I think I may have hoped to be surprised. That I hoped the numbers would not turn out as they did. Even though I fully suspected they would.

We at VIDA were gratified by the attention the “2010 Count” received, and especially pleased to find that so many editors were willing to re-assess their own “numbers”—because a great many venues have taken it upon themselves to conduct their own counts.

THE LONGER ANSWER:

I didn’t have what one could call an “initial reaction” to the numbers because the process of acquiring the data was so lengthy and time-consuming.

The idea for VIDA’s “2010 Count” was conceived almost immediately once the organization was formed, back in August of 2009, at which point I was in conversation with several female writers; it soon became apparent that the practice of “counting” was nearly uniform among us. I was then directed to Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young’s essay “Numbers,” which looks at gender disparity in the representation of women in anthologies of avant garde poetry. (This is a terrific essay, by the way, one that I urge anyone interested in “counting” to make a point of reading.)

We at VIDA were still in the process of figuring out how to launch “The Count” when Publisher’s Weekly “Best Books of 2009” list came out. This required an immediate response on our behalf and provided the impetus for our first press release regarding the omission of women authors from prominent “best of” lists and awards. However, we’d always planned to address a number of different venues in our “Count.” VIDA’s “2010 Count” is only one of several we have underway.

We’re presently in the thick of counting The Best American Series, for example, the numbers for which we’ll be posting on the VIDA site mid-April.

The “2010 Count,” in particular, was dreadfully ambitious from the beginning. We pulled together a list of prominent literary venues and review venues; I then made it a personal project to acquire the table of contents for these publications. One assumes it’d be easy enough to access much of this information online; however, the content of a lot of magazine websites tends to be difficult to dissect due to the merged display of print content and online content. Some magazines require a subscription for accessing on-line content. And while one may also acquire access to media content via databases such as JSTOR and Lexus-Nexus, it’s nearly impossible to turn up a decipherable table of contents pages. For these aforementioned reasons, I ultimately resorted to photocopying print versions of numerous TOCs at my local library.

Throughout July and August of 2010, I spent much of my free time counting. I had opted to not put my then 18-month-old daughter in daycare in order to save money. So, during the days I cared for her, I all too often lugged said daughter along with me to the library. During the evenings, while she slept, I counted.

Thus, by the time VIDA’s “2010 Count” appeared, in early February  of 2011, I’d already spent a lot of time with the numbers. And it’s a very troubling affair. Like you, many of my suspicions were confirmed. But I was also pretty surprised at just how consistent the findings were. I honestly didn’t think The New Yorker would count the way it did: the evening I counted the NYer (I think I finally went to bed at 4 a.m.), I remember feeling distinctly demoralized. I’ll admit: I’d entertained hopes of publishing a poem within its esteemed pages someday. Yet, after counting, this aspiration seemed ridiculous. I felt like a bit of a fool for having believed it possible. So, in answer to your initial question, seeing the numbers depressed the hell out of me.

In fact, I often (jokingly) say that VIDA will end up giving me cancer, as my smoking habit escalated with all of the counting I was doing during last summer, so often late into the night, by which I really mean into the early morning.

And it was a bitch to track down all of the magazines. My local library simply wasn’t cutting it. So I finally relented and put my daughter into daycare, headed up to Columbia University’s library, where I was able to find much of what I needed. That’s one heavenly library. Later, I’d have the wisdom to hit the New York Public Library. They have everything. It was fascinating to see the history of certain venues, such as the Best American Short Stories, which was launched as a “yearbook” in 1915. Looking at the authors who were published in the volumes from the inception of the series really struck home the fact that it’s a career making publication.

As I moved on to counting other venues, I began to feel the shadow of cynicism cross over me. I began to develop the suspicion that I was the butt of a huge joke. I’d be in the city, riding on the subway, or sitting in a restaurant, and notice women of all types and ages reading The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Review of Books; photos of male authors seemed to peer out at me from the pages, gloating. I wanted to ask these female readers if they were, in fact, enjoying what they were reading, ask if they noticed that nearly every article they perused was written by a man, that nearly every review addressed a book by a male author. And, if they did realize this, how did they feel about it?

September rolled around and I was back to teaching. I began to procrastinate when it came to counting.  Frankly, the project had become distasteful. I had piles of TOCs scattered all over my house, stacked in my closet, piling up in my office at school.  It was too much! I began to despair as the whether the project would ever be completed.

I then wisely enlisted the help of several women from VIDA. We divvyed up the TOCs and began counting in earnest. We were very careful: at least two or three individuals counted each venue, then cross checked their results with one another.

Some have derided the VIDA Count as “unscientific.” It’s true that we just presented the numbers. But we made every effort to ensure the numbers were accurate. The night before we launched, I stayed up till dawn on the phone with a close friend (and VIDA intern) who has bookkeeping expertise. She re-tabulated all of our data to ensure its accuracy.

By the time we completed VIDA’s 2010 Count, I no longer took offense at the numbers. I know this may sound strange, but I actually found the whole affair funny—no, hysterical.  What were these editors thinking? Or, perhaps they were not thinking. About their readership. I came to the conclusion that the female readership is largely ignored, which is also funny, given that we make up such a large percentage of the their readers (and, as such, we are the primary consumers of their product). If these editors were financially savvy, wouldn’t they include more female contributors? Wouldn’t they review more books by women?

I began to wonder why I ever considered myself an appropriate reader for these magazines in the first place. It suddenly seemed so clear that their content was never intended for me. But this also struck me as absurd, given the fact I’m an English professor and writer; wouldn’t I be among their targeted readership?

The fact is, I often felt bored when reading these publications. (And I felt guilty for being bored!)  Now I know why (whereas before, I felt I ought to be interested). I don’t subscribe to any of these magazines. Anymore.

Just as the 2010 Count was making its debut in February of 2011, several persons from the press contacted me. Before founding VIDA, I’d had very little contact with the media. One individual congratulated me on a “great story.” As a writer, this struck me as odd, because as far as “stories” are concerned, the VIDA Count required absolutely no imagination.

Heath: There are many vital conversations taking place regarding The Count, including the perception that women’s writing is less than: less interesting, less intellectual, less serious, less relevant, etc., etc. In addition, many people have essentialist notions of identity in relation to women professionalizing themselves as writers: i.e., we don’t send out stuff because we’re insecure, we’re not as aggressive as our male counterparts, etc., etc. What surprises me is how little attention is given to the fact that we live in a society that devalues women in all aspects of our lives, that these “essential” ideas about women and men are rooted in the fiction we continue to create—in language, in politics, in literature, and that these myths perpetuate inequality.

What do you make of the disconnect between perception and reality in terms of how women are perceived as writers and the fictional narratives both women and men create to perpetuate these myths?

Marvin: This is a question I’d like to pose to anyone who believes that literature plays a significant role in our culture. It is, in fact, the question that we at VIDA hoped the Count would prompt. But, here, you are asking me to speak to how I understand it. And, to be honest, I don’t. I don’t understand how people aren’t generally taken aback by evidence that is presented daily in media that women are tremendously undervalued, and often dismissed. This is, of course, the root of the problem.

And isn’t it awfully funny that we’re having this conversation in 2011? But it’s not funny, at all. It’s pretty scary, especially if you’re a woman. Even if you’re a woman who’s never intended to write and doesn’t much care for reading.

I personally think that women, as an entity, are quite adaptable, and that we’ve managed to accommodate the falsehood of “equality,” and much of this has to do with being “polite.” We are quite literally trained by society to understand ourselves as less significant than men—and even when we know that we are capable of greatness, we have also learned our place—and we know we will be criticized for being too outspoken or ambitious. From my experience with those who work on VIDA, women enjoy productive discussions, and would prefer to leave the arena when things get unnecessarily combative or ugly. I think it’s time we express our experiences and perceptions candidly, that we raise our objections when we feel them rise within ourselves. Too many women feel uncomfortable expressing themselves. I think the root of this lies in that we fear we’ll be disliked, or that we’ll be shunned. I think we should model the behaviors we wish to see enacted by others. I hope we can more firmly and cogently express our viewpoints, without apology, and that we will work to support one another. We really need to support one another. We need to learn as much as we can about one another’s work, about the different genres we’re working within, because we all share the same obstacles. And I don’t think men are outside this conversation. A great many male editors and writers are themselves deeply interested in bringing women’s voices to the forefront. I think the sooner the conversation becomes “about” gender, and less “between” genders, we’ll recognize that we’re all interested (one hopes) in a shared goal: parity.

Heath: What are VIDA’s expectations and goals for The Count? What are your goals for the organization as a whole?

Marvin: We at VIDA want to create a conversation. Many conversations. We wish, quite simply, to create a forum in which people who are concerned about gender disparity in literature can speak to one another. As such, we are about to launch a “forum” on our website in which members may carry on such conversations.

We’re also about to launch a blog, which we’re calling, after the Sexton poem, “Her Kind.” We plan to invite two writers at a time to conduct an extended exchange of ideas that response to specific questions provided by our blog editors, Rose Ben-Oni and Arisa White, who will serve as curators of these conversations.

We’ve also spoken a lot about establishing fellowships for female writers who are interested in engaging in critical discourse. We’d very much like to provide a substantial stipend, in addition to offering a retreat for such writers at which they would be mentored by writers with experience in this field. We want to help women writers become major players in the field of criticism, reviews, op-ed pieces, etc. It’s become obvious that we need more women presenting their critical prose to the literary world at large.

Finally, one of our ultimate goals is to host a national conference that focuses solely on women’s writing and its cultural reception, and we intend to include the genres of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, as well as playwriting and children’s literature. We’d like to for this conference to be less commercial than, say, AWP or MLA. By which I mean, we hope to offer a flat rate for all participants (rather than providing institutional memberships, which ultimately favor academics). It would great if we could provide housing at a low cost; this might be made possible were we to conduct our conference at a university campus. Most obviously, we would want to provide daycare. We wish to host a more intimate conference, one that isn’t so much focused on networking, as it is on building community.

Heath: I am often challenged to confront and question my own privilege in my work as well as erroneous ideas about women in general.  Often, I fail. What informs your work as a poet and professor? How do you articulate your identity, and what vision(s) do you have for your writing?

Marvin: I prefer that my poems don’t answer to identity; rather, I desire that they create their own identities. The most seductive and wondrously empowering aspect of writing is that one can own the page. I personally work with the assumption that I’m not required to be faithful to the actual.  And, for me, that’s what’s writing’s about. Escaping the body. Becoming autonomous through being anonymous, and thereby finding a space within which the mind and heart may engage the page.

When writing, I don’t think about numbers.

Sources:

A Literary Glass Ceiling?, Ruth Franklin, The New Republic

Submitting Work: A Woman’s Problem?, Becky Tuch, Beyond The Margins

On Gender, Numbers & Submission, Rob Spillman, Tin House Blog

VIDA and The Count Round-Up, Alyss Dixon, She Said What?!!!

VIDA: The Count Roundup, Stephen Elliott, The Rumpus

More on Fictionaut

In my virtual travels over break, I was happy to see Madras Press get some press in David L. Ulin’s piece on unbound codex, print-on-demand, and e-books in his article on books vs. e-books in theLos Angeles Times. Madras distributes the proceeds of their individually bound short stories and novellas to charitable organizations of the author’s choosing.

More on Fictionaut

These are just a few of the questions Defunct, a new literary magazine, raises. In his essay Sum of Zero, Chris Offutt writes about the defunct literary magazine, Zero, A Review of Literature and Art, published just six issues between 1949-1954, and its last issue in 1980. Most famous for its publication of James Baldwin’s essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” which declared Richard Wright’s Native Son a failure, effectively ending the friendship between the two men, Offutt notes Zero’s lasting impact on the literary landscape. The Paris Review published its first issue four years after Zero’s, and copied their style and format as well as the now standard practice of publishing unknown writers alongside established ones.

Offutt writes:

The bulk of our contemporary literary magazines still rigidly follow a style established by a pair of bohemian, far Left, proto-beat poets engaged in something fresh and original and rebellious. How drastic it must seem to them now!  Their revolution in Art and Literature gave birth to the prevailing style– revolution co-opted and homogenized for the masses, producing the same jarring disconnect of stepping into an elevator and hearing sanitized tones of The Stones, The Clash, Nirvana, or Ludacris.

For Offutt, it is the duty of young writers to battle with the vanguard, and that “the best and most lasting assault is by making work as good or better than them.” He also warns young writers to heed the errors of the past. Baldwin regretted the loss of his friendship to Wright all his life. Offutt’s call to arms is a brilliant polemic and heartbreaking analysis of the cost, material and otherwise, of producing literature.

One of many rotating images from PANK website

PANK’s Queer Issue, edited by Tim Jones-Yelvington, presents some of the finest writing from around the globe. In his introduction, “Why Queer?” Jones-Yelvington writes a eloquent if circumspect analysis of Queer identity and writing. He writes,

For an issue of a literary magazine to mark itself as Queer is necessarily a political act. It is a response to our absence elsewhere. Or in certain circumstances, even to our active exclusion…. But this issue is not solely a response to lack. It’s also a generative project. We are taking advantage of the opportunity Queer affords not only to obliterate (or at least destabilize) “normal,” but also to imagine new possibilities for both our lives and texts—or for our lives as texts. Or for the texts in which we find ourselves living.

Much of the writing is, indeed, generative in its openness and accessibility in terms of vernacular and structure. For instance, in Crystal Boson’s “she’s a prayin’ kind,” the speaker’s malediction is a blessing for the accursed:

i am fifth in the line of twelve men prayin for the night to end
some can wrap a prayer in gravy and straight conversate His name
some marinate in ass sweat soaked up to the spine
some can dark the hell outta a church door
the eighth will get home to find steak still cooking
the first will go home to find beer just turn warm
the one behind me thinks of a woman
they all feel Him turn over when i open up my mouth

Sofia Rhei’s Cinderella presented in Spanish in print and audio and its English translation by Lawrence Schimel, is marvelous in its inventive articulation of longing and mystery at the core of this folktale.

Cenicienta

La puerta del aseo está llena de inscripciones amorosas. Si no me
hubiera entretenido leyéndolas, no habría oído cómo alguien entraba en
el cubículo contiguo y se masturbaba lentamente, susurrando, entre
jadeos, un nombre muy poco frecuente: el mío.

Tan sólo pude ver sus extraños zapatos, ya que se fue de repente,
antes de que yo misma pudiera ahogar mis últimos gemidos mordiendo mi
brazo.

Ahora sólo tengo que encontrarla.

Cinderella

The stall door was full of erotic inscriptions. If I hadn’t gotten distracted reading them, I wouldn’t have heard how someone entered the next cubicle and masturbated slowly, whispering, between gasps, an uncommon name: mine.

I could only see her strange shoes, given that she left suddenly, before I could muffle my own last moans by biting my arm.

Now I just need to find her.

The piece I return to again and again for its stunning economy is Doug Paul Case’s “Bottom,” which captures the project of “imagin[ing] new possibilities for both our lives and texts—or for our lives as texts. Or for the texts in which we find ourselves living.”

That boy’s smile
opens to his molars.

PANK’s Queer Issue is a politically potent and exhuberant collection that shatters heteronormative boundaries and instead builds on the idea of inclusiveness, both as an aesthetic vision as well as a transformative community.



Marcelle Heath: I’d like to start off by discussing the pleasures and pitfalls of online reading. What are your thoughts regarding reading habits and readership in general?

Timothy Schaffert: When I’m on the computer and I’m online, I’m generally doing fifty things at once. I start reading an article, I follow its links, I remember something I’ve been meaning to look up, so I look it up, then remember something else… in other words, I’m in a constant state of hitting pause, not to reflect, but to meander, to investigate something else. But literature calls for a full immersion; you want to turn yourself over to the author, and follow her lead. So though I do read fiction and poetry online—both new and old—the shorter it is, the more likely I’ll make it to the end of it without flitting away in search of information, or hyper-checking my email, or falling into the gaping maw of Facebook updates. But it’s while I’m online that I most often discover the work that I want to read offline.

Heath: What literary magazines, both print and online, do you see doing great things?

Schaffert: I’ve been rejected at some point by nearly all of them, so that colors my perspective. But it is dizzying how many journals are doing great work—clearly contemporary lit can thrive, even in less prosperous times. I confess to a weakness for the typographical excesses and giddy design schemes of McSweeney’s, which is kind of a literary Barnum-and-Bailey. I’ll probably never get around to reading the issue that’s designed like a newspaper, but I sure do love having it in my possession. The Normal School is a good-looking journal, and I admire the work they’re doing at Electric Literature. I love Fairy Tale Review, though I must disclose that I’m guest-editing an upcoming issue. The mini-books of featherproof books are a refreshing and charming approach to the publishing of short fiction. But, as a Nebraska native, I’d be remiss in not citing some of the literary projects (in addition to Prairie Schooner) with Nebraska origins: Cerise Press is a very classy online journal; both Octopus Magazine (an online poetry journal) and The Cupboard (a print quarterly) have editors who’ve spent some time in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s creative writing program, and the journals have gained national attention. Fine Lines, a journal based in Omaha, started as a teacher’s classroom project and brings a kind of good-spirited democracy to the publishing process.

Prairie Schooner Summer 2010

Heath: Tell us about your position as web editor for Prairie Schooner

Schaffert: Hilda Raz had the foresight to create a position that’s focused on digital development from an editorial perspective rather than a technical one; she has indicated that she wants me to bring a distinctive voice to Prairie Schooner’s online presence, to shape it into something singular and directed, even as it takes on multiple roles. I’m still just getting my feet wet, and picking up on the progress made by the journal’s managing editor, James Engelhardt, but my plan is to assume an editorial role with the blog, structuring it so that it’s offering a running commentary on the state of contemporary lit—and, at times, on the state of classic literature in contemporary culture—with postings from our staff and contributors. I suspect the blog may become a bit more essayistic than is conventional, but we want postings of depth, in the spirit of the print journal. And I’ll join in on other conversations happening at other literary blogs and websites. We’re also working in partnership with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities on a website that will feature born-digital multimedia work that is informed and influenced by the print journal, past and present. And I’m always trying to figure out how to best use social networking in a way that’s more than just promotion, or to at least keep up with the networks that are most relevant to the magazine’s purposes. But I’m not interested in having our online presence be equal parts everything—so we’ll always remain open to revising our approach as new online avenues emerge and old ones close. And it’s all, ultimately, in service of the print journal.

Heath: How does Prairie Schooner see its role in the changing online literary landscape?

Schaffert: The journal has been continuously publishing since 1926, and it keeps growing, keeps gaining support for its mission. Prairie Schooner will always publish new work by exceptional authors. Among the journal’s readers will be literary agents and book publishers, who will then carry the authors and their work to even more readers.

Heath: How has the economic downturn affected Prairie Schooner as a university affiliate?

Schaffert: Prairie Schooner and its editorship are endowed in perpetuity by the Glenna Luschei Fund for Excellence at Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska Foundation. Which is to say, the journal has great support from individuals such as Glenna Luschei and also from the university, which considers the journal a major part of its commitment to the humanities. And Hilda’s commitment to the journal has had lasting effect. A good editor must do more than just publish good work; she also makes sure the publication is respected and recognized for that good work.

Heath: Prairie Schooner is one of a handful of prestigious journals that only accepts paper submissions. Will Prairie Schooner move to an online submission system like Submishmash?

Schaffert: That conversation comes up every now and again, and the folks who manage the slush pile are aware of the possibilities. But I’ve not heard any specific plans in the works.

Heath: Prairie Schooner has consistently ranked among the best and most prestigious journals in the country. What’s your secret?

Schaffert: If there are any company secrets, they’ve not been revealed to me. But if I were to speculate, I’d guess that, as the journal gained esteem, as its stories and poems were anthologized and awarded, it managed to attract submissions from other serious writers. And once a journal is associated with well-respected authors it becomes catnip for other authors looking to publish their work. The journal can only be as successful as the quality of work it receives. Also, there’s been a loyalty to Prairie Schooner by the authors who published early work in the journal, writers such as Cynthia Ozick, Steve Stern, Maxine Kumin.

Heath: When can we look forward to reading Prairie Schooner’s archives online?

Timothy Schaffert

Schaffert: JSTOR is digitalizing the archives, so we’re hoping the project will be completed soon. Once it is, you’ll be able to access Joyce Carol Oates’ first published story and the last poems published by Charles Bukowski in his lifetime. You’ll be able to read work by Dylan Thomas, Eudora Welty, Rita Dove, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Truman Capote, Toni Cade, Sharon Olds, Raymond Carver, and Cyrus Colter. Over 80 years of literary history.

And Project Muse currently makes current issues available, and issues dating back to 2003.

Heath: I’d like to discuss your eloquent response to Ted Genoways’ “The Death of Fiction?” in Mother Jones, which I’ve reprinted here.

The small literary press has long sought out its smallness. It emerged to publish that work that wouldn’t be published elsewhere, literature without the popular appeal that would warrant substantial publisher investment—in other words, it is by its very design obscure, challenging, and enigmatic. Therefore, a literary journal often relies upon patrons, universities, endowments, grant funding, and other pursuits to fulfill its mission, rather than setting commercial goals and seeking wide readership.

If cultural significance were a factor in the lit journal’s survival, it would have been dead on arrival. Ultimately, the journals provide a suggestion of an aesthetic that doesn’t exist in the otherwise noisy and unsightly culture, the printed page a link to a legacy we respect. Fiction and poetry requires a different level of attention than news and biography; major publications eliminating short fiction from their pages seems less a sign that the end is near than an acknowledgment that the weekly/monthly magazine is better suited to conveying information and opinion than it is at engaging the reader in an artful endeavor. The market for new fiction may be declining, but I’m still overwhelmed by the amount of new work available in books and journals (and often new books contain material that originated in journals).

The threats to university literary journals may have less to do with a recognition of a sudden irrelevance than a short-sightedness on the part of artless bureaucrats faced with the beautifully slim budgets of “publishing” online. Journalism and art have long relied upon a partnership that may not necessarily be beneficial to either; calling for fiction writers to write more like journalists may not be the solution. The mysterious appeal of poetry and fiction, the romantic nature of the writing and reading of it, the desire to publish your work and the work of others, drives a commitment to the literary journal’s longevity and its quiet role in giving voice to the imagination.

The question of cultural relevance definitely hit a nerve with many writers and editors, especially the notion that writers and editors were disengaged with the public sphere, when in truth most rely on other means of income to write in the first place. Any thoughts about the vociferous response to the article?

Schaffert: When a mainstream publication concerns itself with literary matters, it tends to get the rapt attention of writers and editors. The Mother Jones article was clear and to-the-point; but it was also relatively short, so it invited debate and speculation. It’s been a while since I’ve read the responses, but I seem to recall people debating many different aspects of the essay—even making Genoways’ salary a point of contention. So people were responding not only to what was being said, but challenging his authority to say it. But often the surest way to incite an arts community is to take the stance of a cultural scold, to tell artists they care about the wrong things. Surely all writers have at least once been told—by an editor, a teacher, a family member—that they shouldn’t be writing about what they’re writing about. Your writing is too domestic, its characters aren’t worthy of literature, it’s too fabulist or it’s too realist, it’s too cold or it’s too sentimental, it’s too domestic or it’s too political. And in the case of the Mother Jones piece, it’s the very life of all literature that’s presumably at stake. And I think if you write phrases like “most American writers,” you’re probably going to get people flustered. It’s difficult to make generalizations about the publishing community, or to even identify it as a community, because I can’t imagine it humanly possible to read everything new that’s put in print. It’s probably not possible to read even a fraction of everything that’s new. You could have a very productive year reading incredibly inspiring work that was never reviewed in any major publications. If there’s a problem with contemporary fiction, it’s not a dearth of good work, but the glut of it. I’m not sure how you’d even go about beginning to characterize the writing public—as Genoways points out, the writing programs are churning writers out by the thousands. But at the heart of his essay was a twinge of nostalgia I could appreciate—he wants contemporary literature to matter more to the general public, and in his mind the fault rests with the writers and publishers. In my mind it rests with the general public. But for me to say that is to make one of those sweeping generalizations, I suppose. Ultimately people will discuss that Mother Jones piece for some time to come—just as I sit here discussing it still—which seems to suggest that, even if fiction is indeed dead, we’re still quite preoccupied with taking its temperature.

Heath: What’s Prairie Schooner’s vision in the next five years?

Schaffert: After over 20 years at the helm of the journal, Hilda Raz is leaving. Since she just launched her website, I hesitate to say that she’s retiring; I’m sure she has many projects in the works. Because Hilda was also a professor of poetry in the creative writing program, the search is on for another accomplished poet, editor, and teacher, and that person will be envisioning the magazine’s future, based on the foundation built by Hilda and the editors before her.

"Left Ascension" by Ernest Williamson from the premiere issue of Corium

Named after the inner layer of skin beneath the epidermis, Corium‘s debut issue features some terrific writers and writing, including Kim Chinquee, Laura Ellen Scott, Sheldon Compton, Sam Rasnake, Cami Park and more—not surprising, considering its veteran team: Lauren Becker, Heather Fowler, and Greg Gerke.

The site’s minimalist design is deceiving. What seems to be beneath the skin is violence: domestic violence in Stephen Elliott’s “Once More Beneath the Exit Sign,” the violence of war in Shaindel Beers “The Children’s War: Poems on Children’s Artwork of War,” and sexual violence in Andrea Kneeland’s “Pretty.” All of these pieces raise interesting questions about the relationship between hegemony and power.

Two micros from Scott Garson’s forthcoming collection American Gymnopédies, “Des Moines Gymnopédie” and “Manhattan Gymnopédie,” address class politics by way of music culture. Christina Murphy’s “Chilling Effects” is metafiction at its finest, reimagining artifice as loss. And Kathy Fish’s wonderfully funny “Still They Hear What They Want to Hear” is representative in its clever quirkiness of the debut issus as a whole:

A man and a woman talk in a bar.
A man and a woman talk while eating pudding.
A man and a woman talk about trivial matters with underlying sexual tension.
A man and a woman examine newspaper clippings.
And talk about their gigantic, oozing pasts.
She must be young and pretty, but kind of a slut.
He must be somewhat mysterious or dark or torn.
They must love themselves and each other.
But they are kind of lazy.
No, they are really lazy.
A man and a woman talk on a mattress.
A man and a woman talk while lighting matches and flicking them at one another.
A man and a woman talk talk talk in a diner.
A man and a woman have their first conversation.
And talk about an unknowable universe.
She says, “Why…”
He says, “Sweet Potato…”
They are given to sudden realizations.

In our second installment, below, we talk with Jarrett Haley, editor of BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men about masculinity, violence, gendered divisions of labor, and PW’s list.

—Marcelle Heath

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Logo for BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men

Marcelle Heath: As a literary magazine devoted to “Men’s Fiction,” you’ve published some fine stories by writers who address dominant notions of masculinity in their work. For example, in Sean Sullivan’s “My Father’s .45” the specter of violence in masculinity is portrayed through the narrator’s cleaning his father’s gun. In “The Winner” by G.C. Perry, the narrator is the silent and repressed father who refuses to help his wife. What are your thoughts on how masculinity functions in these stories?

Jarrett Haley: That I am not a sociologist or gender-studier by trade I should make clear to begin with. This should be obvious given that masculinity—as I see and feel it—I can best describe as some kind of nebulous something at work inside men, a thing of pride and comfort and at times anxiety, no doubt a big influence but ultimately something quiet, unexamined, generally unspoken of or at least spoken around, which I don’t think is altogether a bad thing. I find it kind of interesting in its vagueness, in the way these stories you mention, like others in BULL, make no grand statement about masculinity but just glance at a certain aspect or consideration.

Fathers have a lot to do with it of course, much more than I dare to dive into, but “My Father’s .45” is a prime example. And yeah, there’s violence in that story, but I consider that somewhat case-specific; I think a more universal notion is that of the permanently looming father—the physical loom in one’s youth becoming psychological later in life. The pressure to fulfill—whether put upon or self-originating—I think is widely relatable as opposed to the violence.  In my own case I can’t think of a kinder guy than my old man, but as I sit idly at this computer screen and think of him at my age and his worldwide exploits in the Navy, it’s like the story goes—“I know that he’s behind me and always will be.”

As for “The Winner,” I think it’s charitable to call the narrator “silent and repressed,” as I see that guy as an outright jerk. I suppose he could stand to represent a bastardized form of masculinity, an exaggerated (or not) example of the old guard. But in a story so short I take it that everything is amplified, and I see him essentially as a caricature of that prehistoric mindset, drawn to effect the irony at the end—that what he’s “won” is only a household full of anguish.

Heath: Many of the male protagonists have a conflicted relationship to the domestic sphere. For instance, In Alan Stewart Carl’s “What Our Fathers Knew,” the narrator is a member of a new era of men who are not like their fathers, who help around the house and take care of their kids, but it’s an uneasy alliance. “We can change diapers and snuggle on couches, but we never learned how to stand on the porch, drinking beer, unfazed by each other’s struggles, knowing what we share can’t be taken away by fortune, good or bad.” In the aforementioned “The Winner,” the narrator refuses to participate in the domestic sphere. In Christopher Siciliano’s “Home Furnishing,” domesticity is perilous terrain when the narrator’s wife trades in her sexuality for a couch while cockroaches carry him off. What do you make of how the ways in which women and men negotiate the division of labor in the home are reflected in contemporary men’s fiction?

Haley: Rather than speak for Alan I asked him directly about his blurb, and I’ll try to do him justice in paraphrasing his answer: that unlike some of the fathers of us 70s babies, today

many men are happy to split the power/chores evenly, but they are certainly aware that such equality is pretty new to our culture and, for some men, there’s a sense that something has been lost. I think that ‘something’ is the product of mythical remembrances, but it’s nevertheless a weight or at least a rough texture that they feel as they move through their lives.

I especially like Alan’s expression “at least a rough texture,” which I think captures the nuances at work in the story.

I think the keystone of “Home Furnishing” is found in the line disclosing that the narrator’s wife hides the bills from him, “knowing how it stings [his] ego that [he’s] not a competent provider.” This is a circumstance that’s become relevant now more than ever, and one that’s unique to contemporary life now that a double income has become more or less obligatory. How this affects his household, and how the narrator deals with it and these cockroaches, I find really crafty and fresh.  If Alan is dealing with the slight degrees of difference between the modern age for men and the age of our fathers, “Home Furnishing” is a full-blown 180º from that time and explores the impact of living in it. The overall significance of the story I leave to readers to interpret how they will.

Heath: As you discussed in your interview with Roxane Gay at PANK, women have been underrepresented in your submission pool. In BULL’s submission guidelines, you state: “BULL is intended as a resource and repository for Men’s Fiction, and though we showcase Men’s Fiction exclusively we have no intent to shut out or alienate any manner of reader or author. We invite submissions from any and every writer who believes their work squares with our purpose and aspiration.” What has been the response to BULL? Have you had more success in receiving and publishing submissions by women?

Haley: Since then we’ve had about the same slim success in receiving submissions by women, which doesn’t bode well for much success in publishing submissions by women.  Out of the few we get something clicks every now and then and I’m happy when it does, because I think BULL is all the better for it as far as perspective. But saying “success” here feels a bit squirmy to me, as if it’s something we’re actively trying to do. All we try to do at BULL is put out the best of what writing we receive, regardless of who or where that writing comes from. To do anything otherwise would be corrupt.

The response so far? People are liking us, at least there are those who tell us so, and I’m very grateful that they do. And the majority of people who tell us that are guys, which I think is only to be expected.

Heath: In Laura Miller’s Salon article on the exclusion of women in Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best List, she discusses how women and men have pointed out that although women make up the majority of consumers who purchase books, they make up “about half of the authors on any given New York Times Bestseller list,” and that canonical works by men are still privileged over works by women because male readers perceive these works as not as serious than those by men. Miller writes, “What’s at issue isn’t sales or even access to readers; this is an argument about prestige and critical recognition.” What are your thoughts about PW, male readership, and questions of literary merit in works by women?

Haley: I never really knew how pervasive these Best-lists were until I started paying attention to the Internet at year’s end, but I guess that’s just the nature of the beast. It seems to me that anyone making these lists is bound to get in hot water with someone for some reason or another, probably because it’s taking a matter of taste and imbuing it with some kind of qualitative legitimacy. And I guess the further up you go—from your average blog all the way to Publishers Weekly—the deeper and hotter that water gets.  But of course hot water isn’t necessarily a bad place to be on the net, where a buzz of any kind is often the goal.

And I suppose I could throw my hat into the PW discussion here, but I have to admit that when I see the amount of comments on those articles and much of it is exchanges of snide, snarky, shot-from-the-hip vituperation it turns my stomach and I think, Why even bother?

So I’ll just say this:

Anybody who would question the literary merit in works by women because they’re by women is either insane, a bigot, or hopelessly ill informed.  Whether someone consciously or unconsciously gravitates to works by women or men, it’s ultimately an issue of personal preference—if not for the works themselves then for the author or some other factor that meets their taste. The same goes for those who hold a neutral orbit.

I used to work in an ice cream shop. Some people got chocolate, others got vanilla, some got tutti-frutti. It was their choice and they liked it.

As to whether women get their due share of critical recognition and prestige, well, I just don’t have a dog in that fight. Far be it from me to try and guess the reasoning and motives behind what Ms. Miller calls the “literary and critical establishment.” Given that choice of words I assume they’re as crooked as any other establishment.

But as far as canonical works by men having any privilege, there may very well be such a privilege but I don’t see how it benefits anybody but those dead men rotting away in the ground. I can’t see much use for prestige once you’re dead, or really old for that matter, which is about the time any canonization might possibly occur, and hopefully about the time one would have grown out of valuing highly the attendant trappings. I recall seeing Grace Paley read about two or three weeks before she died, and she didn’t seem to care at all about prestige, for her reading or her books even. And when asked something along the lines of what she wanted most in life, she said she wanted to have a cup of tea with a particular friend of hers, which I thought sounded like a very nice thing for someone to want at any age.

Heath: If BULL is for “Thinking Men,” who is the unthinking man and how would you go about educating him, besides having him read BULL?

Haley: I should say first that I cringe at the word educate—BULL makes no pretense of educating anybody. To do so would be arrogance in the extreme.  We make no claim to altruism, and if any occurs it’s accidental and limited to maybe stirring our readers to think, which I believe is something innate and existing prior to education. So think about what? Life, I guess, one’s own and that of others, as it applies to male sensibilities, to the extent that we can interpret them. I suppose this might be a mild form of arrogance as well—the interpretation and picking and choosing of what applies—but more so I think it’s our contributors who dictate those sensibilities in what they send us, and from this I just determine what should represent BULL as a magazine.

So in regards to all this I suppose the unthinking man would be one who lives his life without ever considering why he and others do what they do or feel how they feel, but is just a slave to his reactions. What we hope to offer in most our stories is alternative to this, a starting point for rumination, just like any other art form.

But this isn’t to say BULL doesn’t have its fun or is anti-entertainment. A good read is just as, if not more, important.

Heath: What does the future hold for BULL?

Haley: It’s getting to the point where BULL should sustain itself, or at least try to, which shouldn’t be hard because its means are modest, but which means we’ll have to start selling something.  We’ve got our fair share of bigger aspirations; someday I’d like us to put out books, or whatever the going form is, but I’d like to be able to effectively deliver longer stories, novels and such should we find them, if only because I hear a lot is being passed up due to a rumored lack of market.  But more immediately I suppose there will be a contest somewhere in the cards, an anthology at some point down the line.  For now I’m just happy to have found a means of meeting writers, working with them and promoting their work.  It can be a burden at times and is often overly consuming, but to never be without something to read or someone to correspond with—it’s a large part of why BULL exists at all.

Espresso Book Machine at Village Books in Portland, Oregon; photo by Lindsey Otta

As Richard Nash writes on his recent blog post” The Emergent Landscape, or, The Continuous Permanent Reinvention of Publishing”: “transformation is irrevocable, continuous, multivalent, and potentially asymmetric.” One of the latest reinventions to emerge is the Espresso Book Machine, On Demand Books’s digital photocopier, book trimmer and binder, and desktop computer that can produce a trade paperback book in five to ten minutes. Books currently listed in the EspressNet software include titles from LightingSource, Ingram’s print-on-demand division, and public domain titles from Google Books. Those out-of-print and backlisted titles are now readily available. Matt Briggs points out in his Reading Local Seattle article that for writers, “an author merely needs to have their book listed in EspressNet, which costs less than having galleys printed and much less than an entire print run.” And for readers this means that along with ebooks, print-on-demand machines produce “the same cornucopia for literature that the music world has already been enjoying.”