Gina Frangello's Blog

To Revise or Not to Revise?

Last night, Other Voices had a reading at the quaint, semi-divey Charleston Bar here in Chicago. It was the kind of night I DO Other Voices for: some of our favorite writers read, and some other faves showed up just to hang out and support the OV community. The reading line-up was Elizabeth Crane, Geoffrey Forsyth, Megan Martin and Emily Tedrowe. I think I can safely say that it wasn't just my subjective opinion (as their sometimes-editor) that they all rocked. It was, in fact, one of my favorite OV readings in recent memory, and that three other stellar OV writers, Billy Lombardo, Barry Pearce and Kate Milliken (Kate lives in LA but hails from Evanston, and was a finalist in the most recent OV Books selection process) were in attendance too just made the night better.

I initially intended to cut out as soon as the readings were over, but instead ended up sitting around a small table with Geoff and his wife (who, appropos of nothing, looks exactly like my cousin Lisa), Billy, and OV's Managing Editor Kathy Kosmeja, my usual drinking buddy and partner in crime on the occasions when David is home with our kids. I found myself drinking Jameson's and telling a story about having been kidnapped in Mykanos when I was twenty. Everyone was in a good mood. There was a lot of laughing. But at one point, as is often the case when one is chatting with Geoff Forsyth, the conversation turned serious.

Geoff resembles a shorter version of that Phoenix actor who played Johnny Cash and has a name no one can pronounce. As a matter of fact, he resembles Phoneix PLAYING Johnny Cash: he has the same kind of manic, nervous artistic energy that just radiates off him, giving him the mannerism of a dangerously precocious, somewhat hyper-active kid. He's smart and funny and talented as hell, but there's something deadly earnest and knock-down serious about him that can make a person edgy. Geoff is very concerned with the purpose and creation of literature--of Art--and he isn't afraid to show it. He's the opposite of ironic, which can be both refreshing and unnerving in an era of irony. Though he has two kids and is in his late 30's, he's unashamed of constantly looking for teachers--of both literature and life. Lois Hauselman, founding editor of OV, was one such teacher; so was Chicago's local heavyweight James McManus. And now, according to Geoff (to my great honor and occasional chagrin), the torch has been passed to me.

Except for last night.

Last night, I had an uninspirational dilemma--and still do--that to some extent flies in the face of my work with OV. Geoff (and everyone I was talking to at the Charleston) knows me as . . . well, basically the (perhaps masochistically) noble editor of a nonprofit lit mag and press--a woman who cares so much about writing, including THEIR writing, that I have worked for more than a decade reading and publishing it without pay, doing battle with The Man (i.e. corporate publishing--or in this case, perhaps it would be The Woman, since for some Judith Regan of HarperCollins has come to embody the entire evil empire of publishing) for the sake of True Literature. But last night, even as I was wearing that hat, introducing our writers and passing out free issues to turn others on to the magic that is OV, another, less noble cap was constantly hovering over my head, striving to knock the first one off. This phantom hat, rather than that of Editor, was the hat of Struggling Writer Trying To Break Into The Mainstream.

This is, as many writers know, a pain-in-the-ass hat to wear, and often a futile one. It's one I wore for more than three years following completing MY SISTER'S CONTINENT, while two separate agents struggled to place that novel at the big corporate NYC publishing houses, without success, essentially forbidding me to send the novel out on my own to any of the indies, and refusing to send it themselves, instead chasing the carrot of the Big Deal--the big advance, the big distribution, the big publicity budget. I was extremely happy to throw that hat carelessly off at long last in 2005 and send my novel out to Chiasmus, accept their offer to publish it, and finally see my novel in print. I did not get famous or rich, and--lo and behold!--discovered that I didn't give a damn; that I had never really expected or desired that to begin with, but had instead been chasing my agents' desires for me (and themselves) by aspiring to the kind of publication THEY believed "best" and "appropriate." Instead here I was with a first novel out, and--surprise!--it was doing pretty well! Who needs Judith Regan? It's easy for any writer publishing with the indies to pull out the careers of certain frontrunners of that industry--longterm successes like Cris Mazza, Michael Martone, Wanda Coleman, Ralph Berry--and remember that one can have a more-than-respectable career without ever darkening the doorstep of the Evil Publishing Empire. But then, of course, this should come as no big surprise to me: it's the advice I am constantly giving other writers. Writers like Kate Milliken and Geoff Forsyth, who have stellar not-yet-published collections. Do not sell out, I tell them. I didn't, and my book got published! There is a community out there for you. Don't jump through those marketing hoops; be true to your own vision. And so on.

But somehow, here I am a little over a year after the fateful decision to send MSC out to the indies and take the first offer I got--and it seems I am (albeit with a book in my corner now) exactly where I started. I have a new agent, and from what my friends--and their friends--say, she is the kind of agent I am lucky to have. She is a bit of a grande dame of the agenting world, with clients on her list that I would not doubt stutter and stammer to meet in person. She liked my second novel and believed she could sell it; that it was not just good but "marketable." And I, of course, was happy to get that news. Why shouldn't I be? (I mean this sincerely, not defensively.) I had written the best novel I could write, and someone who knows the industry had proclaimed that it would find a home, and I might even--gasp!--get PAID. I might not have to hire my own publicist this time; I might have a print run that couldn't be half depleted just by people who actually KNOW me buying the book. Don't all writers want these things? Above all, don't we all want to be read, by as many (viable, smart, interested) people as possible? Screw the advance, the publicists, the placement on key tables at Barnes & Noble--don't we all want our books just to be in stores at ALL? As anyone who follows this blog knows, that has not always been my experience with MY SISTER'S CONTINENT. And so, despite trepidation, despite my own gloomy proclamations about the woes of big publishing, here I am with another agent, chasing that carrot all over again. Except that this time, according to my Big Agent (who is indisputably not only smart as hell, but a lovely person), the plan might actually WORK.

Except, it didn't.

Well, at least not yet. My agent sent the novel out to the first round of 5 editors. Of these, not one of them did what editors tended to do when they read MY SISTER'S CONTINENT (in other words, freak out, claiming they had to leave the room to escape my book it disturbed them so much, and claiming they could not pitch it to a marketing rep without "breaking down.") No, rather the responses were civilized and positive. The editors praised the writing, the characters, the (Italian-American, inner city Chicago circa early 1980's) setting. But 4 out of 5 ended up rejecting the novel (despite one claiming she had "agonized" over this decision) for the same reason: it is too "episodic" for the current marketplace. It needs a "tighter story arc." It needs "more momentum." My agent--did I mention that she's not a fool?--saw the writing on the wall and deduced that if we continued to send the novel out to more and more editors, we would just hear more of the same. The editors were speaking almost as a united front (though of course they had not conferred with each other, since their job is to snatch things from each other's jaws.) When this many people agree on something . . . well, aren't they usually right? And so my agent has instructed me to Revise. Revise to give these editors their story arc, their tightness, their page-turning momentum. I want to sell the book, don't I? Well when you want to sell a product, you give the buyer what she wants.

Let me make one thing clear. I am not one of those writers who thinks everything I write is golden, and won't listen to anyone else's opinion. (I am also not, for the record, one of those writers who thinks everything I write is shit, and is constantly falling into pits of despair believing I have no talent and am an impostor. I would like to think I have a fairly realistic view of my own writing, though perhaps that's never fully possible.) It is entirely likely that my novel COULD benefit from a revision. Believe me, as an editor, it has been my experience that most stories could, and why should mine be any exception? So why has it been nagging at me, eating at me, worrying me, the thought of revising my novel for these editors (or, more aptly, for the next round of editors)? Why aren't I chomping at the bit to get to work, eager to do what I've been told and (hopefully) make my novel "better" so as to secure a sale? My husband David IS excited about the first round of editors' response--he points out all the factors I just cited: that it's been met with enthusiasm; that the response has been night and day from my first novel; that my agent still seems dedicated and is standing by me and willing to keep working, keep waiting, until it's "right." So what's the problem? If I am willing to concede (and I am) that four editors together may well know better whether my novel needs revising than I--the emotionally invested writer--do; if I am willing to admit (and I am) that there is nothing inherently shameful in: a) revising a novel or b) wanting to sell a book, then what the hell is holding me back?

Geoff Forsyth. Okay? Geoff Forsyth is holding me back.

Right about now, poor Geoff is probably ready to jump out a window. (Please, stay in your seat, Geoff--see, you've become a symbol here. It's not you--you didn't say or do anything to freak me out per se.) But see, it's just that as I was talking to Geoff last night, explaining my dilemma to him (and to Billy Lombardo, who kept his mouth shut and thus avoided confusing me further), Geoff effectively began to remind me of all my own rhetoric over the years--the words he feels have influenced him and helped shape him into the writer he is. He reminded me of things I already know but would very much like to forget. Like that revising to make a sale (or to MAYBE make a sale) is very different than revising because I genuinely believe I need to make a certain change to make the book better artistically. Like that publishing with a big house isn't necessarily the be-all, end-all. Like that my agent believed in the novel enough to send it out, but has now changed her mind because the editors don't agree with what she and I thought. Like that if I have no idea what to do to this novel, and dread doing it, maybe I SHOULDN'T be doing it.

Okay, here is another truth. Geoff didn't really say all that. Mostly he kind of stammered and asked questions. Mostly he seemed to be trying to understand what exactly my goal was, and how it impacted writers and their goals in general, literature in general. He asked, "What about books that don't HAVE a tight story arc, because every story is different?," bringing up the essential marketing problem with short story collections, and the essential reason corporate publishing has all but abandoned them, creating the necessity of upstarts like OV Books. Facing his tentative, student-of-life questions, I began to feel a bit as though I had just announced to a room full of eager Women's Studies students that I, their professor, planned to get my tits done.

Let me take a detour. There's a woman I know who is now what would be considered a "successful" writer by most people. Rumor has it her first book sold for 100 grand, and was "the" book her (big, mainstream) publisher pushed that season. I knew this woman when she was a graduate student, a proudly experimental writer who routinely trashed any plot-driven or "sentimental" narrative as bullshit, intimidating the hell out of her fellow students if we dared try to--well, tell a story instead of writing some language-based piece about taping cotton balls on a cat because he was somehow a symbol of Jesus. I remember her in a plaid shirt, belching loudly in class, glaring at people. She was not the most likeable person I had ever met, and one might say she was a bit of a poseur in a way that works for people in grad school, and not many other places. Now this same woman has written a cutesy, plucky little book full of quirky Southern aunts and full of plot "surprises." There is not a trace of anything that could be called "experimental" around. Rumor has it that this was the third book this particular writer completed: that her first and second did not sell, and her agent--a smart, kind, savvy man dedicated to her career--kept advising her about what "kind" of novel to write until she finally wrote it--and BANG!, sold it for big bucks. Success! Okay, let me say up front that these rumors could be a load of crap. I heard them third or fourth hand, and sometimes other people are jealous, and they talk. But having heard these rumors, my other grad school friends and I (and even some of our professors) have often speculated to ourselves about the nature of "selling out"--about what is gained and what is lost. Maybe we don't fully buy that this writer's story is quite as cut-and-dry as we've heard, but it stands stark in our imaginations as a cautionary tale of What Not To Do and What Publishing Is Not Worth. If this is what it takes to get in bed with Judith Regan, so to speak, then go to the convent with haste.

I don't want to be That Chick. I don't want to be that writer who sold out.

I also don't want to be The Stupid Ass Writer Who Arrogantly Thought Everything She Wrote Was Perfect, And Therefore Refused To Revise Her Novel Even Though A Whole Bunch Of People Agreed She Should, And Therefore Never Sold The Book.

How do we draw the line?

I'm about to spend nearly 2 weeks in Beaver Island, at the house where I worked on the early stages of this novel two years ago, with my former agent, a wonderfully brilliant and funny guy who used to call on Monday mornings to discuss each new chapter, while I looked out on the huge meadow out back and listened to the windchimes clinking. It's an inspirational place, one I associate with one of the primary creative collaborations of my life (um, until that fabulous agent tanked his business less than a year later and I found myself out on the street.) Still, Beaver Island will be the perfect place to revisit this novel again, to search my soul and its pages to figure out whether it is still in-progress and the right direction will call to me, or whether instead this story is "done" and simply has not found the right editor yet, the right home, regardless of what my new agent believes is right for it--or me.

Like it or not, I have a feeling that Geoff Forsyth is coming on this trip with me. Last night when he was talking about teachers and inspiration, I kind of wanted to blush and stick a rag in his mouth to shut him up--flattery is lovely, but embarrassing, too. But if there's one thing we all learn in the end, it's this: that the parent ends up parented; that the teacher ends up taught. Maybe I will not be so quick to advise newer writers in the future as though the world is too black and white--as though the publishing industry is made up of those who are Good and Smart and True vs. those who are Greedy and Simple and Small. Maybe in the end we all want the same things--to be read and understood--and even a silly poseur graduate student must eventually conclude that her more-intellectual-than-thou, inaccessible novels do no one any good hidden in a box. Maybe it's often impossible to distinguish "selling out" from letting go of one's own ego and admitting something needs more work. And certainly it is also all right, more than all right, NOT to keep chasing a carrot, to be happier in a smaller-but-more-interesting pond, to leave the Judith Regans of the world to their own, and to choose another path.

I'm not sure what I'll discover yet in the pages of my novel, but for the first time I'm looking forward to finding out.

Sojourn to Naperville

A few weeks ago, I did something I never could have imagined myself doing. Another Chicago writer (for anonymity's sake, I'll call her "Amber," since I am pretty sure there are no actual writers named Amber, living or dead) and I piled into her car with neatly organized publicity folders for our books, sample reading copies, and a "pitch" letter, and drove all over the city and western suburbs whoring ourselves to disinterested bookstore employees. It was a grim little experience. Amber, who is a very talented short story writer, suffers from the paranoia that afflicts many--okay, most--writers, and kept saying that the booksellers were not just indifferent to us (oh, and indifferent they were!) but downright hostile. This brought out in my a reactionary Pollyanna optimism so that I kept insisting all was well and that surely some good would come of our (5 hour long) trip, when of course I suspected the exact opposite: that we would be forgotten, and our folders tossed in some slush pile of pitches the moment we used the store's toilet and raced out the door to the next store.

How did it come to this? To writers driving around like actors to an unsolicited cattle call, trying to pursuade bookstores to stock our titles? It's a complicated question, it turns out--as all questions of "marketing and distribution" turn out to be complicated, especially in the world of independent publishing. My novel, MY SISTER'S CONTINENT, has a distributor of course--it is available through either Small Press Distribution (SPD) or Ingram. But recently, when I asked SPD for a list of stores where the novel was available (where they had supplied the book to the store), they sent me a long list of libraries and (outside the city of Chicago, where admittedly MSC is all over the damn place) all of TWO BOOKSTORES! I was stunned. Okay, I knew MY SISTER'S CONTINENT wasn't exactly The DaVinci Code . . . but TWO STORES?! Lidia Yuknavitch, my editor, was quick to point out to me that Chiasmus Press has a list of a couple dozen stores nationally--mainly hip indies--where all its books, including mine, are carried, and of course any Barnes & Noble that carries the book gets its shipment from Ingram. But still. From sea to shining sea, my novel's primary distributor was responsible for getting it into a whopping two stores. It's enough to make a girl . . . well, get into a car with an equally desperate-and-depressed writer and start selling oneself. Sometimes these efforts lead to pretty cool successes, such as convincing my editor to actually send 20 complimentary copies to the Litblog Co-Op when they announced my novel as a finalist for their "Read This!" pick--she was convinced it was a waste of books and that they'd just get snarky and trash the novel in cyberspace anyway, but it turned out to be good publicity, totally un-snarky, and lead to some fun connections and conversations. Other times . . . well, anytime one is driving to the western suburbs of Chicago for ANY reason, usually no good can come of it, which is something I ought to have known . . .

But successful or not, my efforts at marketing my novel have sometimes felt like a full-time job. Taking my cue from such indie-press publishing success stories like Joe Meno, Steve Almond and OV Books’ own Tod Goldberg, my motto (when I wasn’t busy being cut open to deliver a child) has been to make myself open to any prospective interviewer, to say yes to any invitation to give a reading, to go to any conference or book fair or classroom that invites me, to send reading or review copies to any store or freelance reviewer who requests one. And so I might easily spend one of my (4-5 hour) childcare workdays poring over the transcript an interviewer has sent me, giving clarifications; driving to a local radio station half an hour each way so that I can do a 5-minute reading on the air; writing notes and sending books (from my own stash since Chiasmus has long ago sent out above its maximum number of review copies) to a book fair coordinator or a university instructor who is considering it—and me—for something or other that might help me get some extra sales; doing a daytime reading at a small, mostly-empty bookstore. As I zoomed around the suburbs with Amber, guzzling Starbucks and listening to her story of fighting with her husband about her indecision as to what to wear to meet these indifferent booksellers (we could have been wearing haircloths for all they cared), I couldn’t help feeling more than a little cynical and ridiculous. As writers, Amber and I had progressed from trying to sell ourselves to agent to trying to sell ourselves to editors to now trying to sell ourselves . . . to EVERYONE.

And here's the kicker. Since publishing a novel, I no longer have time to actually WRITE.

Isn't it ironic? There’s always something to complain about, isn’t there? In truth my experience of seeing MSC in print has been an overwhelmingly positive one. While often books put out by small independent publishers can be totally ignored by the media, especially in the case of new writers, I’ve been fortunate to have received numerous (and overwhelmingly positive) reviews from major sources like Booklist, the Chicago Tribune and Bookslut. The novel went into a second printing. My husband frequently reads me rapturous little blog entries from avid readers around the country who were actually compelled to talk about my novel to their networks. And recently, at a reading at the Heartland Café here in Chicago, I even encountered a small but raucous cheering section of three twentysomething school teachers who read my novel back in January—at the recommendation of one of their mothers no less—and claim it is their favorite book and acted like I was Brittney Spears on a surprise visit to a junior high. I mean, okay, so I’m not making any money; so I’m not getting a (Donna Tartt circa 1993) photo spread in Vanity Fair, but really: my novel has been read by a small but enthusiastic group of people. What more can any writer, particularly in this difficult climate, ask for?

So I’ve made a decision, to help stave off idiotic and annoying bitterness about how busy I am, um, giving interviews and readings (what a problem to have!) In late October, I’m going to LA to do three MSC/OV overlap readings, and then I am, one year after the advance copies came out, calling it a day. I’m closing the MSC shop, so to speak. No more checking the Amazon ranking. No more readings and interviews and classroom appearances (well, at least unless someone’s class of 30 has really all gone and bought the book!) It’s back to business as usual: OV, my kids, and—I certainly hope—writing something new. I will have had an experience I always dreamed about: nearly a year of relishing having my first novel out . . . along with occasionally humiliating myself in conservative Naperville, IL by trying to pimp the novel to some bored bookstore buyer with a dotty braid. The up side—and down side—of this year of experience is no doubt that when my next novel comes out, whenever that is, I probably won’t have nearly this level of energy and enthusiasm to try to oversee every aspect of it as it makes its way out into the world. Like a mom on her sixth child, I may someday be a bit more secure than I was with my first baby, but also perhaps a little more weary, less thrilled by every modest success—less giddy by what was once unimaginable becoming tangible.

Well, unless I actually get a fat advance someday. Then, I can promise, my family and I are going on safari in South Africa on my dime, and I’ll be giddy all over again.

Community Part III: Legacy Vs. Laos

I have a confession to make. If I found out I had a year to live, I would leave Other Voices in a heartbeat. I would focus on other things: my kids, my own writing, reading the great novels I blew off in high school and college. Travel. If I found out I had a year--much less a month--left to live, I would never write another NEA grant or read another submission or train another intern again.

So: what the hell am I doing here?

Let me back up a minute. See, this one-year-to-live thing is on my mind a bit heavily right now, since my 73-year-old mother had a heart attack several days ago, and is currently in acute kidney failure. She went into the hospital last Tuesday for a knee replacement, but somehow all the things that can go wrong, in her case, did. Her epidural caused her blood pressure to plummet; her narcotic pain meds put her into an incoherent stupor. The low blood pressure deprived her heart of oxygen and she had a (small, the doctors stipulate) heart attack, and since she was unable to speak or really even wake up, plus was suffering from inexplicable paralysis of the right arm, there was concern that she'd also had a stroke. Therefore they rushed her off for a CT scan, injecting blue contrast dye into her body with haste, forgetting (or finding it unnecessary?) to first protect her kidneys with medication that would keep the dye from shutting them down. The blood pressure/blue dye combo proved too much, though, and shut down they've done. Her renal specialist optimistically insists that she has a "90 percent chance" of their starting to function again on their own, and thereby avoiding dialysis. Of course, there's that other 10 percent. And so we wait.

I was supposed to be in New York this week. Tonight, as a matter of fact, I was supposed to be reading from My Sister's Continent at Housing Works Used Bookstore and Cafe, with the oft-discussed-on-the-OV-blog Allison Amend, and 2-time-OVer Ian Chorao, author of the luminous and intense first novel Bruiser. My husband and three kids were all coming with me so we could catch up with friends; we were, in fact, waiting for the taxi to take us to O'Hare when I, having phoned my mom to say goodbye, found out that she had been unable to be revived since sometime the night before and was on her way to the ICU. No one had called me, or my 84-year-old, disabled father. I'd just seen her the day before, sitting up in her bed and plotting how to get them to prescribe physical therapy rehab for her despite her Medicare, rather than just sending her home as an invalid. Now she was headed to intensive care, and had I not called at just that moment, I might have been in New York before I learned what had happened.

As it was, we all piled in the car and went to the hospital. OV Managing Editor Kathy Kosmeja sat in the waiting room with my kids while David and I sat with my mother. Occasionally I came into the waiting room to nurse my son, then returning to my mother's room to hold her straw while she tried to take sips of water. Later that night, after David had taken the kids home, I stood next to her weirdly elevated hospital bed, spoon-feeding her bites of mashed potatoes while she tried, pretty unsuccessfully, to speak. When I finally left at the end of visiting hours, I felt hyper-aware of myself as I walked down the hospital corridor for the parking lot. I saw myself as if from a distance: here I was, a woman who, though still safely a few years from 40, might well be in the middle of life (my mother, after all, is not yet 80.) Behind me was my possibly dying mother, whose mouth I had wiped after her feeding. Ahead of me were my three children, at home, the youngest waiting to feed off my body when I returned. Here I was, in the one pocket of life in which I was the feeder: of the young, of the old. My childhood was behind me, in that irrevocable way (irrespective of age) that childhood dies when one has to begin parenting her parents. And my old age stretched out before me, a frightening spector in which I, too, might someday be in a hospital bed while my daughters encouraged me to open my mouth for a bite, urged me to take water, tried to decipher the jumble of thoughts and words trapped inside my head (in language, too, the elderly can become again like infants.) It was a desperate, depressing moment, the kind most of us spend lifetimes trying to avoid. It is bad enough to look at mortality--our own, our parents'--but another thing entirely to look at the weakness and pitiable ineptitude that often comes BEFORE that mortality takes its final toll. And so, here I was: a woman in the middle; still able-bodied and strong and healthy (well, reasonably so) and thriving. But it was fleeting. It was a moment in which one wants to run and keep running--escape the responsibilities that bind us and hold us in place, feeding our children and our parents. I wanted to be in my teens or 20's again, wondering who I'd go home with, drinking with no mind towards hangovers, driving my car too wildly and causing my prom date to spill his cocaine on the backseat of my car, watching out of the rearview mirror as he and my two best girlfriends dropped to their knees and started snorting the seat. Back then, everyone knew better than to expect anything of me.

But that was 20 years ago. Now, not only am I responsible for three kids--and my parents--but I have also, somehow, made my career out of "helping" other writers. For the past decade-plus, I have spent at least a half-time week dedicated to publishing others, procuring money to keep a magazine (and now press) going without taking any salary myself, taking time away from my own writing (and other aspects of my life) to read other writers' work, not to mention writing grants, planning events, sending acceptances, hiring interns, dealing with distributors . . . it is not, for the most part, a glamorous job. That thrill I feel when a story totally clicks--when I know I'm going to bring something into print--is heady and satisfying, yes, but in truth I have probably sacrificed numerous heady acceptance letters of my OWN by spending so much time sending them to others, instead of taking the time to concentrate on my own fiction. Often, Other Voices has felt like a liberating enterprise to me: I do not have a boss and am, of course, not driven to by a salary. I do what I believe in and care about, period. But . . . but . . . well, really, is that TRUE? I don't, for example, like writing grants. In fact, I hate it. No boss, no salary, could ever pursuade me to do it. I could--in that odd and inexplicable way of things; that way that comes with ownership and love and responsibility--only pursuade MYSELF.

Time is a strange and precious and fleeting and terrible thing. Founding Editor Lois Hauselman gave 20 years of her life to Other Voices, making the magazine what it is, nursing it and loving it into survival while so many other little mags around her folded yearly. Now, in her retirement years, she paints again, and hopes to write more, and travels to Japan--things she more-or-less relinquished for two decades in order to nurture other writers on a daily basis. With each choice we make, we chose AGAINST something else. And so I, like Lois before me, have found myself the mother of not one family but two--a family of 50 volunteers all over the country, and hundreds and hundreds of writers who have graced OV's pages, and thousands and thousands more who have tried and keep trying to break into print. I remember the day Lois came to my home and told me, worried but resolved, that she had decided to step down. She said, rather fatalistically, that she hoped I would keep things going without her--that she hoped others would emerge from the woodwork (as they have: first JoAnne Ruvoli, now Marina and Kathy) who would help me . . . but that if no one came, and if I could not keep things afloat, she was prepared, after all this time, to let it go. That she needed to do something else now, that she had given OV what she had to give. It was time to relinquish control.

This is what mothers do, I suppose, in the end: relinquish control, and hope for the best. Parenting is an exercise in letting go of hands, every bit as much as it is an exercise in feeding hungry mouths. JoAnne and I often spoke of the fact that our goal with OV was to enable it to survive us; that the magazine and press should never be dependent on a single editor for its existence. And so I often tell myself that if I don't make it 20 years like Lois did (I'm already halfway there!), things will go on without me--in fact, in quite a different way than in my actual family. I may be the only one who will hold my mother's straw or offer my son a breast, but I am not the only one who can run this literary ship. It is, in the best, most reassuring of ways, bigger than "me."

So why stay? Why, if life itself is so tenuous, and every week I spend here is a week I do not spend writing, is a trip I don't take, is time at the park my children may spend with their nanny rather than with me? Why not pack up the family and run off to tour Laos and Thailand and Cambodia? Why not hole myself up to write the Great American Novel (okay, I'm not likely to knock Beloved off that post, but still)? Why not go to China to help Half the Sky improve the lives of orphans? Why not take a Spanish immersion class and read Gabriel Garcia Marquez untranslated? There are so many choices, and when looked at through a pure filter, there are certain things we would do if we had only a day to live (hole up with our families), a month (probably bring that family on an exotic vacation), a year (write that next novel). But what about when the one year extends to two--to five--to fifteen--to fifty? There is--even if it is sad to admit it--only so much time one can spend smothering one's childrens' faces with kisses and declaring undying love for one's spouse. There is only so much time one can spend holed up in an office in that sweet mania that is writing a first draft of a novel. I have done my fair share of travel, probably more than my fair share, but usually, for most of us, the trip ends and it is time to come home.

Other Voices, for me, is what it means to have a larger home. It is a world outside myself and my own emotions or ambitions. It is not the only community to which I might contribute (arguably helping those orphans might be more noble, though I have to hope a woman willing to work her ass off without pay for a decade has some right not to feel guilty, even if she is not exactly saving lives), but it is, perhaps, the best use of my own particular talent ("skill set," my proudly geeky husband would say.) It is, like family, something that occasionally binds me, that requires of me certain things I am not terribly happy to provide (ah, those grants), but must do in order to keep the parts I love afloat. In the end, it is exactly because Other Voices SHOULD be able to survive me that makes it worthwhile. It is a matter of legacy, rather than a matter of Id. If I had a week or a year to live, I might abandon it wildly, running towards my own immediate gratification, but under the optimistic assumption that I am only approaching the mid-life point, it instead looms large as something noble and worthwhile, something I can build and then relinquish, that can survive without me, and therefore, perhaps, enable a part of me to survive.

Just now, I got off the phone with my mother, who is finally moving her arms well enough to answer her own phone, and lucid enough to have a conversation once she's done so, and learned that her renal functioning is starting to improve. Her doctor says he expects a full recovery. And so I am spared, for the moment at least, from entering that space of being a motherless mother--that space in which the older generation has disappeared and suddenly--surprise!--the older generation is YOU. I am promised, in this moment, future opportunities to take my mother for granted, to be rude to her in that way all daughters are despite our best intentions ("Are you really going to wear that necklace?"), to continue to deceive myself that time is an endless commodity, and my moment of feeding both my mother and my children was merely an abberation, rather than a stop on the road to my own Someday in a hospital bed.

And earlier today, my husband got a call from his parents. His mother is ill. She is younger than my mother by a decade, and has always been terribly, almost creepily healthy--she comes from a family like that. But suddenly there it is. Her illness, a bad one, worse than my mother's. The looming shadow of it, and what it will mean to our family. It approaches, just as my mother's close call recedes.

I will not quit Other Voices--not today. I am still reasonably young; still optomistic (and perhaps arrogant) enough, in that American way, to believe in legacy and cause. Still humble enough, I hope, to believe that nurturing other writing is as important--perhaps more so--than only nurturing my own. I will feel grateful not to have to feed my mother any longer, and grateful to have this opportunity to feed my children, to still be young enough to care for them rather than the other way around. I will try, simultaneously, to leave my nurturing stamp on the entity that is Other Voices and OV Books, and to ensure that it is an entity that can feed itself independent of me.

Right now, in New York, Allison Amend and Ian Chorao have just about left Housing Works and are probably having drinks with friends who showed up to hear them read. For me it would have been one of those rare opportunities where being a writer would not feel isolating, where I could instead enjoy a fleeting moment of feeling a bit glamorous: being in New York and reading from my first book. Instead I am here, writing alone in my home office about legacy and community--and age, and death. But strangely, I am exactly where I want to be.

Community Part II: What's Cash Got To Do With It?

Okay, so now that Dan Wickett has shared with you his inspiring ideas on community building, I'm afraid I need to come along and discuss some of the difficulties. Namely: cash. Or more specifically: how does a nonprofit literary publisher find a community that is willing and able to support its existence so that it can continue to grow? How, also, does financial solvency play a role in a press' ability to nurture its community of writers, readers and staff?

Recently, I was asked to read at the 2nd Story Festival here in Chicago. For those of you who tune in regularly, you'll recall that the theme was "Love" and that the format is mainly improvisational and comedic. In my case, the theme was "dark S/M" and the format was "reading off the page and not looking up." But my own inappropriateness for the occasion aside, 2nd Story is what one might call an uncannily successful literary series. The house is always packed with nearly 100 people, who buy tickets in advance. Wineries donate wine for tastings; the venue--a lovely wine bar--donates the space. Tickets sell for $10 a pop. In other words, money is made on this series. People come and drink, which makes money for the venue. The theater company that sponsors the festival is able to use ticket money towards their activities, etc. Audience members get drunk and have some laughs (um, unless I'm the one reading). Everyone is happy. This is community-building at its most successful.

But 2nd Story is, in the end, a bit closer to stand-up comedy or theater than it is to literature, and I'm afraid that may be the secret to their success. Because ask anyone in the literary world--at least outside of New York, where publishing is actually taken for glamorous and writers, at least a handful of very successful writers, are treated like celebrities--and they will tell you that this kind of raucous packed house is rare at a literary event--as is actually making money! Not too long ago, I attended a well-publicized reading by Simon & Schuster author Lisa Glatt. Lisa had written two books that were reviewed by the New York Times; she had a corporate publicist; Chicago media had listed and touted the event. Yet when I showed up, there were only three other people in the room. Not long afterwards, I went to hear Sam Brumbaugh read from his novel Goodbye, Goodness at Quimby's bookstore--Sam's reading had been chosen as a Time Out Chicago pick and talked up in the Chicago Reader. The event was arranged by the fiction editor of Bridge Magazine, a local publication. Yet when I showed up with a friend, we were the ONLY people in the audience other than the guy who'd arranged the evening. I should add that neither of these events took place in the middle of an infamous Chicago snowstorm: the climate was warm and hospitable. Both writers are talented and had received more press than usual for newish writers. Moreover, both events were free. So where the hell WAS everybody?

Chicago is a wonderful city. I've lived in or near quite a few: Madison, London, Amsterdam, Boston--and when it comes to most things (restaurants, theater, visual arts, museums, dance), Chicago can hold its cultural own against anyone, possibly excepting New York or Paris (which have their own drawbacks, like smugness and heavy sauces.) Chicago, of course, also boasts such luminaries as Nelson Algren and Earnest Hemingway, and is thought of as a city rich in literary history. Unfortunately, Algren and Hemingway have been dead a long time, and other than a couple of very small indies (OV Books among them), there is no (fiction) book publishing community in Chicago to speak of. And without an industry--with all those signature "industry" things, like money and hot parties--it has proven a challenge to find a cohesive literary community in a city otherwise so rich in arts and culture. Yes, Chicago has several creative writing graduate programs, and the students in those programs know one another and form their own communities--but there is not much inter-mixing between the schools, and once that writerly population moves beyond graduate school (and their 20's), they become harder to identify and target as a group. As a result, the literary community in Chicago--at least the identifiable one--tends to possess many of the same attributes as graduate students in any field: they are young, they are often not permanent Chicago residents, and they are . . . well . . . poor.

Here in Chicago, being a struggling writer has an honorable tradition. If there is a school of writing here, it is probably Working Class Writing, which is a major distinguisher in the Chicago style vs. the dominant New York style (as the latter tends to be associated more with privilege and intellectualism, though of course there are many notable exceptions.) But that there is no cohesive publishing industry, that Chicago writers are not by and large a moneyed lot, and that writers here in general tend to disperse as they enter their 30s and beyond, are unfortunate facts that collude to make it difficult to find people to SUPPORT the literary arts here in this city and, I would venture, many other cities nationally outside of New York and perhaps Los Angeles.

OV Books/Other Voices magazine struggles with this truth now as, in our 22nd year of the magazine, we have moved beyond the (usual) efforts to simply SURVIVE and into a period in which we are endeavoring to GROW. Survival, to be sure, was not always easy. We depend, as do most magazines and presses, on grants (which sometimes don't pan out) and individual donors, the vast majority of whom donate $100 or less per year. We do not have any kind of institutional support other than the donation of our office space by the University of IL-Chicago, nor do we have any "patrons" in the classic sense: one or two individuals who fund our operations with one fell swoop by writing a fat annual check. We are an operation that pulls itself together piece by piece: $1,000 grant by $50 contribution, one check at a time. Our subscriptions support part of our endeavors, but would never alone afford us the opportunity to grow in such ways as launching our book press, much less paying writers more competetive fees or paying staff anything at all.

And so we, like most such presses, are constantly wracking our brains about fundraising. When we launched OV Books with the publication of SIMPLIFY in September 2005, we decided to hold a big bash to alert the local arts scene to our existence, and hopefully to raise some money towards things like Tod Goldberg's book tour and ads for the book. A volunteer party planner came onboard to help with arrangements, and we managed to get the Chicago Cultural Center to waive their usual room fee and got ourselves a gorgeous, dome-ceilinged room with marble floors that comfortably would house 150 people. We paid for Tod Goldberg and Pam Houston to fly to Chicago to read at the event, and our party planner got us a special deal on catering and a nonprofit rate to buy wine at a local liquor store. Then the OV editors and interns started pounding the pavement to gather up items from local businesses for our silent auction: we ended up with everything from original paintings to signed books to restaurant and spa gift certificates to week-long stays at stunning vacation homes. In short, it was a far cry from the usual plastic-cup-of-beer, open mic readings I usually threw when I first came on as an editor in the mid 1990's.

But even with all the donations, costs wracked up. We had to pay a cleaning and security fee at the Cultural Center, and it ended up costing more than some (less swank) rooms would have cost to rent. Our party planner, unbeknownst to me (thinking she was doing us a favor) rented linens that ended up costing an ungodly $400! Catering was cheaper than usual but not cheap. Houston and Goldberg both had complicated travel arrangements that didn't entail round-trip tickets, as they were going straight on to other gigs after Chicago and couldn't fly home in-between. Even nonprofit-rated wine isn't as cheap as selling beer tickets. Oh, and of course after all this pomp and circumstance, we needed to send out printed invitations. Etcetera. By the time it was all said and done, we'd dropped nearly a few grand on the party. But we weren't very worried. At $30 per ticket ($15 for students) our event was so much cheaper than comparable fundraising events (silent auctions, posh downtown locations, catered dishes) that we were sure literature lovers would come in droves and we'd soon make back all we'd spent and more.

Enter reality. About a week before the event, my friend Lisa Stolley called me on the phone and asked if she had to pay to get in. She was, after all, my FRIEND, and had once worked at Other Voices, and therefore assumed she'd be coming free. Well . . . on closer inspection, it did make sense, didn't it? She'd volunteered her time at the magazine, so were we right to charge her admission? No, of course she could come free, I said. No problem. A couple days later, our Assistant Editor mentioned that several other staff members and former staff members had assumed they were coming for free. Then our party planner pointed out to me that members of the media needed to be let in without paying. Then one of my former professors told Lisa Stolley to tell me that none of his creative writing students were coming to the event because "you don't usually have to pay for readings." When I pointed out that these students would think nothing of spending 15 bucks out at a cafe or bar, and that at our event they would likewise get food and booze, but also readings and a silent auction and the knowledge that they were supporting a literary cause, this did little to sway his students. In fact, the night of the party, only three people I can recall attending were students. Despite widely publicizing the student discount, $15 was still apparently viewed as too steep a price to support literature in Chicago.

Let me be clear: there are people in Chicago with money, who like to support causes and go to parties. Our party planner knew plenty of them, since this is the circle in which she works. However, while many of them would turn out in droves to support "literacy" (for kids), few seemed interested in turning out to support "literature" (as in, things they might actually have to READ.) The Chicago "social scene," in terms of the kinds of people who go to big-ticket parties, is not full of avid readers, it would appear--and those who do dig books do so more on the Oprah's book club scale, not on the edgy-indie-press scale. It's a pretty mainstream scene. (The women still wear a lot of pantyhose and black pumps.) This Gold Coast-y facet of Chicago is a conservative one, very much at odds with the otherwise working class and hipster vibes of the writing programs or neighborhoods like the East Village and Pilsen and Andersonville, where people, you know, read plenty of books . . . but don't like to pay for stuff. We seemed to be facing a dichotomy where, like a literary thriller with a fast-paced plot but highbrow prose, we just weren't tapping into a coherent, unified "audience." We had found ourselves with an unmarketable product.

In the final analysis, the party was attended by about 60 people. Only about 10-20 more people than usually attend OV readings that offer none of the perks we arranged for our launch party, and receive none of the press. Because in fact, local media had responded very favorably to the launching of OV Books, and our party had been touted in Time Out Chicago, the Chicago Reader, and on 848 on WBEZ. Yet still, the turn-out, especially once all the freebies were taken into account, did not even come close to covering what we had spent on the evening. Only through the silent auction did we make back our costs . . . but because attendance was rather low, competition for items wasn't what we'd anticipated and prices at the auction remained pretty low too. People got good deals and were happy, which made us happy. But after all was said and done, we'd made back what we spent on the party, and perhaps about $100 extra to spare--in exchange for months and months of preparation. We were left shaking our heads at one another and saying, Next time we're going back to open mics in the basement of a bar.

I've had many months since the OV Books Launch party to contemplate the various aspects of that evening, and in retrospect I'm glad we threw the party. The media attention we received would have been hard to attain without a big bash associated with our launch, and that attention proved valuable in other ways than financial. I'm also just glad that those people who DID support us and turn out were able to get such great deals on the auction, and that we were able to throw a party for Goldberg, who deserved it. Attendance was large enough to still be plenty of fun, but small enough to be intimate and special. It was a great night, even if we didn't make money. We celebrated ourselves and were celebrated by our close friends, and sometimes that's more than enough.

But it still begs the question: how DO we successfully raise money? Now, 8 months after SIMPLIFY's release, as we still await payment from our distributor, we're very likely to be left having to go to press with our second title BEFORE having received payment for our first. With this system in place, how are we to meet our goal of bumping up to 3 titles annually over the next few years? How, after discovering that our distributor, who was going to include "marketing," didn't actually "market," do we hire a publicist to supplement our own PR efforts and increase our titles' chances of success? How do we afford author book tours so that our writers can have opportunities to network and spread the word just like writers at the big corporate houses, if on a more modest scale?

Even these concerns come from a prospective of privilege, since Other Voices is a very old, comparatively solvent literary magazine with a (modest but consistent) bit of savings in the bank that's enabled us to grow. On the other hand, I belong to an Editors listserv sponsored by CLMP, and one of the most frequent refrains on the listserv is that writers who submit to magazines don't actually SUBSCRIBE to any magazines, and that many magazines fold annually--or barely scrape by--because subscriptions are so low. Why, these editors moan, don't more people subscribe? The answer is probably complicated. For starters, most writing programs have dozens of lit mags available in a central office, where students can peruse or borrow them, and therefore have little need to subscribe themselves. On a more complicated level, while each writer may submit the same story to 10 or even 20 magazines, s/he may only subscribe to 1 or 2 magazines, and so submissions will always radically outnumber subscriptions. And of course, literary magazines are not widely carried by bookstores, and when they are they are usually hidden away in some obscure corner near totally-unrelated magazines, so many mainstream readers remain unaware that such magazines even exist, much less the variety of choices out there. Unless one meets the fate of POETRY and some benefactor wills an unfathomable amount of money to the ongoing support of a publication, most magazines remain ghettoized in the issue-by-issue financial scraping that renders them unable to even pay their writers, much less launch book presses or throw grand galas far beyond our means.

Community is a wonderful and tricky thing. Everyone in the writing community wants to benefit from the existence of literary magazines and presses. We all want our work published in these forums, and rejoice when agents and other editors read our work in them and solicit manuscripts, or when we receive Pushcart or other literary prizes. Yet most writers are also overburdened and underpaid, and have neither the time to read dozens of subscriptions to lit mags (I know I don't, and I receive many of them for FREE), nor the funds to write fat checks to support their few favorites. Magazines need to find support beyond just the writers we publish--beyond money-and-time-challenged graduate students and professors--and make our way out into the larger world of our cities to gain visibility, collaboration with other individuals and organizations, and financial solvency. Yet often the wider world seems disinterested in our existence, and even those who love us most are hesitant to put their money where their mouths are. And so editor turnover remains very high at journals, where eventually people need to move on and get "real" (read: paying) jobs; where volunteer readers have to push their obligations to a magazine to the back of a long list of other obligations that enable them to pay rent/mortgages. The NEA gives more and more funding to such things as anthologies about the Iraq war, and magazines fold, and small presses keep our lists very small, and those titles that do come out often do so without much fanfare, as there is no funding to take out ads or pay for a tour; as there is no dedicated PR person on an already overworked staff.

What is a literary press to do in the face of this dire scenario? Well, the future of marketing for such smaller publishers is, without a doubt, the internet: blogs and literary websites that get the word out without big costs. But in other ways, blogs may be dangerous to printed magazines--will even FEWER people subscribe to lit mags if it's so easy to just click onto any number of literary websites, including websites with samples stories from those magazines, and read whatever one wants instantly and at no cost? Former OV Assistant Editor JoAnne Ruvoli often told me, if not in so many words, that I was a bit of a cynical downer when it came to publishing, and so, before making the cause of literary community seem in any way hopeless, let me pull back and consider the facts. Despite all these obstacles, Other Voices DID manage to launch OV Books, and our first title went into a second printing even before its official release. Free web forums like Bookslut are doing great things to market independent fiction titles, including my own novel. Despite high editor turnover, and magazines that fold under the pressure, many, many magazines manage to continue to thrive--some for well over 20 or 30 years (here in Chicago StoryQuarterly, ACM, Triquarterly and OV are all old-timers in the biz.) The short story is also thriving aesthetically, even if not financially, and in the realm of history, I am not nearly such a cynical downer as to not believe that aesthetics--timeless ideas, memorable characters and truly gifted storytelling--mean more and survive longer than what makes a buck in the moment. The supporters of literary magazines and indie presses may be fairly small in numbers, but they are a dedicated lot. They work for free; they read voraciously; they write no matter how many form rejection slips they receive. We grumble, but we endure--and even grow, despite all odds.

Here, then, are 10 things we can all do to ensure this remains the case:
1) Subscribe to a literary magazine today. Try to choose a magazine that is NOT high profile and slick--one that cannot afford, currently, to pay its writers $500 or more per story. Your support will mean more and will more directly impact aspiring and emerging writers.
2) Go to readings, wherever you live. Most of them ARE free, as my former professor so aptly pointed out. Would you like to read to an audience of two people? Well then, save another writer from rabid humiliation today and go check out what's being published out there.
3) Buy independent press books. If your local bookstore doesn't carry many, go to the SPD (Small Press Distribution) website and buy directly off their site.
4) Give gift subscriptions to literary magazines as presents, for Christmas or graduation, etc.
5) Once a year, at the end of the year, if you are someone who can afford to make contributions to charities, don't forget your favorite literary magazine or press. Give what you can afford. Or make the donation in someone else's name and give THAT as a gift to a writer or literature lover in your life.
6) Stay connected to writers you knew in your 20's or in graduate school. Don't let communities fall apart. Form a writers group. (If you're not a writer, form a reading group and only read literary magazines and independent press books. Be the anti-Today Show or -Oprah's book club.)
7) Continue to send out your work to small magazines, if you write. Yes we like money, but the honor of receiving your work is the core thing that enables us to survive. Finding the best work out there to publish is why we exist. Remember us, including after you become successful and can also publish in bigger venues.
8) Don't be afraid to spend a bit of money for a literary event, if it is no more expensive than what you would easily spend for another form of entertainment. While we at OV probably won't repeat that "big gala" experiment for awhile, ha, other magazines or presses in your area may need your support!
9) Give your comments on blogs like the Litblog Co-Op, that exist to form and support community and dialogue. Don't read passively--let other members of the community know what you think!
10) Recommend books. The indie press community lives on word-of-mouth more than anything else. If you love a book, tell everyone you know about it! (Remember, Jessa Crispin started doing this, and now Bookslut pretty much rules the world.)

Okay, people. Go forth and form community. I may be a downer sometimes, but you can't keep the written word down.

A Community of One's Own

Over the next couple of weeks, Other Voices/OV Books will be running a series of essays about the concept of "community" within the often-isolating literary world. Here to kick off the series is Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network--an organization that is all about relationship building, no matter where you live!

The Importance of Community

Community is an aspect of literature that I think is often forgotten, or at least not developed enough. Perhaps this stems back to the idea that writing is a lonely, or solitary, adventure. Whatever the reason, to me, the lack of attempting to develop communities within the larger, possibly more vague, community of literature, is a serious mistake. Just think back to how often you’ve read that authors have a small group of people they bounce their ideas and early manuscripts off of. The thing is, I think there are many more options these days in the type of community you can develop.

Approximately six years ago, I began what can now be looked at as the foundation of the Emerging Writers Network. I started emailing book reviews to an email list. This list was small, 21 people, and not very focused, all family members, many of whom are not big readers. As this list began to grow, strictly through word of mouth, ideas began to form about what was happening. By the time, two years later, that I decided I needed a website to store these reviews, as well as allow newer additions to the list access to the older work (www.emergingwriters.net) it had become apparent to me that there was a great deal of give and take going between members of that email list and myself, and that an actual community of individuals was forming and developing. This is what led to the mission statement of the EWN:

“To develop a network consisting of emerging writers, established writers deserving of wider recognition and readers of literary books in order to increase the exposure of such writers to as many potential readers as possible.”

Over the past half-decade, this network has grown to nearly 1200 members, most of whom have actually requested to be included (as opposed to those poor initial family members). This community is made up of both authors and people who strictly consider themselves readers (such as myself). The bulk of the individuals within the community have not met each other. What happens though is I get their comments back to me. Members pass along my scribblings to others. I get suggestions of books to read, authors to interview, journals to subscribe to, and publishers to support. Through these actions, and regular email activity, a community has developed – while I still steer the direction of the ship, many other voices have helped me refine the path that we take. I’ve heard numerous stories of members meeting each other at readings or Book Festivals, of authors and journals getting in contact with each other, and in one case, an author and a publisher getting together and putting out a fantastic book.

While the email aspect is a bit more behind the scenes related, it is probably the easiest type of community to develop. Another type is the more visible online scenario of litblogs. While this was a fairly loose-knit community, frequently linking to each other, and commenting on each other’s posts, for a few years, it has recently seen some developments creating more formal communities. Take the Litblog Co-op for instance (www.lbc.typepad.com). A year ago, a group of 21 litbloggers united to give attention to a single title. The group (which, I’m a member of now) does this on a quarterly basis. While within this particular community, there is also a great deal of behind the scenes activity, there is also the very public attention and discussion taking place on the website as well.

This past year has also seen Bud Parr setting up, developing, and running the MetaxuCafe (www.metaxucafe.com), a much larger organization of litblogs. This community allows a reader quick access to highlights from a great number (in the hundreds) of litblogs all at once. I know every single time that I’ve visited the site, I’ve found another new blog or two to spend some time at. Such communities need an individual or two that are pretty devoted to setting them up, and making sure things keep rolling in the right direction.

Lastly, there is the physical community – people you actually find yourself getting together with on some sort of at least a fairly regular basis. While not everybody lives in such literary hotbeds as New York, or even Los Angeles or Chicago, I believe communities can be developed. Most areas have at least one or two colleges in the area, most of which have Creative Writing or English departments with posting boards to look for other writers or readers to meet up with. Same thing goes with the local Borders or Barnes & Noble or independent bookstore, where you often stumble into book club meetings.

Beyond that, I think if you just keep your eyes and ears open, things can develop and once the ball starts rolling, it truly does gather speed and size. I can only speak to what I’ve witnessed here in the Southeast Michigan area in the past year or so.

While it seems that there are so many different literary journals being published that you can’t help but live within an hour or so of one, I happen to live within ½ an hour of at least three independently published journals and three more university affiliated journals. One of the things that I’d done throughout 2005 was put together E-Panels of Literary Journal Editors, and so had come in contact with the editors of all six of these journals. Between those contacts, meeting Aaron Burch of Hobart and Keith Hood of Orchid at last year’s Ann Arbor Book Festival, and then having Dwayne Hayes of Absinthe: New European Writing invite me out to an issue release party, the beginnings of a local community began to expand a bit. These gentlemen were all already aware of each other from AWP and other events. Somewhere through that time span, Steven Gillis, author and founder of 826 Michigan, contacted me about my efforts with EWN and we met and had dinner together. About a month later, Kyle Minor of Frostproof Review, which had recently relocated from Florida up to Columbus, OH, made the trip up to Ann Arbor for a dinner as well. Add in Eastern Michigan University instructors (and wonderful authors) Jeff Parker and Stefan Kiesbye, and authors Elizabeth Ellen and Jessica Bomarito and you’ve got a group of people that have gotten together in various forms: for journal release parties, poker parties, get-togethers, book festivals, panels, book readings and just to go hang out at the bar.

Through these outings, I have been fortunate enough to learn about other journals, other presses, authors like Jason Ockert, Roy Kesey, Amy Sumerton, Jeff Parker and Stefan Kiesbye, and many others. I’ve learned more about translations and the wonderful world of non-North American writing. I’ve learned about literary journals. I’ve also witnessed journals helping each other out, and supporting each other. And as these are journals being paid for mostly out of pocket, I assume and believe that this camaraderie and support helps each of them continue with their efforts. Nearly every person listed above has also done something to support 826 Michigan – be it financial, teaching classes, getting the word out, having their own kids partake, etc. And the other thing is, this community keeps growing and developing slowly but surely.

In each of the above types, I’ve seen great benefits of being involved with the communities, and especially those that I was a part of helping develop. So, I’d heavily suggest those interested in literature look around and see what you can join up with or maybe even develop on your own.

Is Chick Lit the Culprit?

Recently, in most interviews I've given, the question keeps popping up as to whether women writers have an especially hard time publishing serious literary fiction that also takes risks with either content (graphic violence or sexuality) or style (formal innovation). This is a difficult question for me because, whether naively or accurately, I've always tried really hard to think of the literary world as one of the few in which sexism has become a less rampant problem. I'm not sure why I've clung to this belief--perhaps it's as simple as the fact that most agents and editors in the corporate publishing world ARE women, and therefore it's hard to believe the publishing industry could be a sexist industry. Perhaps it's because so much focus has existed in academia on moving beyond the Dead White Male club of canonized literature, and in graduate school women writers often dominated in contemporary American classes: Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, Mona Simpson. Maybe it is because the common wisdom--and statistics--tell us that women are the main consumers of books (if smoking is also increasingly the domain of women, so is reading--I'm not sure what this says about American culture.) Given all this, how can it be true that the book industry is prejudiced against women?

The truth is that it doesn't make sense--it doesn't, and yet there it is, a truth all the same. As Elizabeth Merrick points out, far far fewer women have short fiction published in top venues like the New Yorker; the New York Times Review of Books covers far fewer books by women than by men. And increasingly, any woman who writes a story or novel in which dating or relationships plays any role at all is accused of writing "chick lit." (Apparently prior to the rise of chick lit, no one ever wrote about love and relationships.) A friend in my writing group was recently pressured by her editor to retitle her linked short story collection so that it would SOUND more chick-lit-ish, even though it is, in fact, quite literary, because editors are concerned with selling books, and chick lit sells. Many smart, literary fiction writers who happen to be women bemoan this cultural development and have become self-declared enemies of chick lit--feminist bookstores here in Chicago hold panels to debate the validity of its existence and heavy-hitting writers like Cris Mazza and critics like Jessa Crispin turn out to have their say against this dumbing-down of women's writing. And a part of me agrees with them.

But another part of me wonders if chick lit can really be the problem. After all, male writers like John Grisham, Michael Crighton, Dan Brown, etc., dating back to my childhood when it was Sidney Sheldon, have been writing certain "types" of literature for decades without it threatening male literary fiction. Does the fact that the world loves a good Grisham court drama (that's what he writes, right?) mean that Brett Easton Ellis and Michael Chabon and John Updike are going to be encouraged to write courtroom thrillers, or that the publishing industry will convince itself that no one wants to read EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED anymore? Well, certainly (despite the success of the odd literary title like the former), more people DO read Grisham than read, say, Ian McEwan. So how come young (usually white) male literary writers continue to be all the rage in certain corners of the publishing industry? Why has no one declared that what men really do well is write thrillers and horror stories; why are there no panels on how Dan Brown has threatened literature by men the way Helen Fielding has apparently threatened literature by women?

It seems to me that the truth here has far less to do with books and more to do with the fact that, like it or not, women are still viewed as the "other" or "alternative" to the norm--that norm being men. Therefore, while men can be multiplicitous in their interests, talents and achievements, women continue to be herded like cattle into one small corner labeled "women's writing," and apparently with the rise of all Bridget Jones' followers, there is no longer much room in the corral for the followers of Margaret Atwood. If men can write books about war, family, work, love, murder, politics, sex, crime, conspiracy, etc., then women must CHOOSE what we write about, and if we are not choosing correctly or quickly enough then the publishing industry (remember, most of them are women) will choose for us. If book clubs like Oprah's have a penchant for plucky heroines who overcome great odds to triumph in the end, then that is what we should write. If the reading public has a predilection for chick lit, then any woman not writing chick lit is no longer "marketable".

This is a threat to literary fiction in general, to be sure. But it is an even greater threat to a certain type of literary fiction--the kind that, like Corrina Wycoff's (the author of the second OV Books collection) takes emotional risks with unpalatable, graphic material and dares to freak the reader the hell out. Because if women are still going to be "allowed" to write literary fiction (and it seems we are still being permitted to publish serious fiction, albeit in smaller and smaller numbers) then these books should be, dare I say, the literary equivalent of chick lit. They should be inspirational, at least at the end. They should feature a conventionally sympathetic heroine to whom the reader can relate (not a requirement, apparently, if you are a dude and have just handed your editor the manuscript of FIGHT CLUB.) The writing should be pretty, restrained and subtle. Less is more. Never mind that there was a time in which Kathy Acker (house mother of the more-is-more school of thought) was finding publication with large houses, only a decade or so ago--those days are over. New York has its eye constantly peeled for the next THE LOVELY BONES, in which something scary may happen, but our wounds are salved by a heaven that resembles summer camp, by grade school sweethearts who end up married, by a mother who leaves but comes back, and by a villain who's impaled by an icicle in the end. Enter a writer like Wycoff, where redemption is hard to come by and heroines never learn to love themselves (or even their own daughters) and doors start slamming pretty quickly.

Male writers can write about bastards, assholes and killers--even literary male writers. Think AMERICAN PSYCHO (albeit that book might have a harder time today than it did when first published, and if the writer weren't already famous he would probably have just found himself on a very short list of people to be investigated by the government.) Women writers . . . well, one of my professors in graduate school, Chris Messenger, used to say that women writers "write about pie." He was referring to a very specific scene in LOVE MEDICINE, and he was being ironic. But if women writers don't exactly write about pie, and maybe don't even write about women who know how to bake pie, then they are supposed to write about women who WISH they knew how to bake pie.

Pam Houston once said to me that the most a reader can ask from a book is that it shake her to the core. How many books by women thesedays are being allowed to adhere to that imperative? Surely there are women out there writing such books, but the industry is increasingly afraid to touch them. And the more books by men ARE allowed to unsettle, frighten, worry and challenge their readers, while women's books are supposed to calm, amuse or inspire them, the more literary fiction will become the domain of men--because literature, real literature, has always been emotionally challenging and fraught with risk. If we no longer permit women to give voice to risk, we are ghettoizing them, if not to the domain of chick lit then at least to the domain of pie.

I laughed my ass off at Bridget Jones' Diary when I read it in Amsterdam in 1998. I even sent it to a friend who reminded me of Bridget, and she loved it too. Now, I find myself feeling guilty. This was pre-Bush, pre-9/11; who could have guessed a cultural revolution was coming to the United States? I was under the mistaken impression that Kathy Acker and Helen Fielding could both exist--that the universe of fiction was big enough for them both. In the past 5 or 6 years, it seems I am being proven more and more wrong. I just wonder, by the time the cultural pendulum swings back, how many promising women writers of the next generation will already have been silenced.

OV Interview Series: Tod Goldberg

Okay, if you don’t know who Tod Goldberg is, you’ve probably wandered onto this blog by mistake. Because everyone who knows Other Voices knows that Tod is the author of the inaugural OV Books title, the collection SIMPLIFY, which absolutely rules and has yet to get a bad review anywhere that I know of. The likes of the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and Bookslut all agree that Tod is a seriously warped, seriously funny, seriously talented dude—but we at OV loved him first. We published the title story of the collection in my very first issue as Assistant Editor in 1997. Years later, in Chicago on a book tour, Tod took me (and current Managing Editor Kathy Kosmeja) out for really garlicy Italian food and lots of scotch in a “dope Lincoln” he’d rented for his trip; it was a very Goodfellas type of evening (albeit two of us were chicks, and I was hanging with a Pole and a Jew, but hey.) Not surprisingly, I was absolutely over the moon when Pam Houston chose Tod as the winner of the OV Books contest in 2004, and he recently joined the OV Books Board. Put simply, we at OV are never planning to let him out of our sight again—so here, for another dose of Tod, he joins our interview series . . .

OV: How would you describe the current publishing climate? What do you see as the role of the independent literary press today?

TG: Publishing is largely an upside down business where the authors who already have the largest fan base – and thus are fairly guaranteed a significant amount of sales on name alone – get the lion’s share of the advertising and publicity while those they are attempting to introduce to a new audience get very little, or none. If Ford decided not to advertise its newest cars, people would think they were trying to hide something, that the Edsel had been reincarnated and was fixed to attack the food supply. That being said, publishing can’t afford to be a speculative business anymore – it’s run by large conglomerates who operate at a bottom line and thus it makes sense to feed the audience what it already wants. It doesn’t mean it’s right ethically or morally or artistically, but what in the world is? The role of the independent press is hard to quantify, exactly: is it to fill the gaps that James Patterson and his fiction-vetting elves can’t slather prose into? Is it to highlight voices that mainstream publishing might ignore? Is it a quasi-panacea for the people who dress all in black and quote Beckett? I think it’s a little bit of all those things. Having my work published by both the conglomerates and the indies, what I can tell you is that both, at bottom, want to find the best work they can find. What they choose to do with it – or what they are financially able to do with it – is another story all together.

OV: Can you tell us how your fiction first broke into print, how you got your first book published, and what, if any, barriers you encountered en route to publication?

TG: How I got my first book published isn’t much of a story – my agent sent it out, it was rejected 24 times and on the 25th submission, Pocket Books/MTV got right with God and made me an offer – but my first story publication is something of an odyssey. The story, “Love Somebody,” was originally published in a literary journal called the Timber Creek Review and later went on to garner Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize, but before that, it was rejected 64 times. Because I’m the kind of guy who keeps this shit, I still have my little rejection notebook from that period and I can tell you that the New Yorker rejected it in one month. It took the Atlantic Monthly two weeks. Other Voices got back to me in seven weeks. ZYZZYVA said it sucked in three weeks. The Chariton Review rejected me in two months. Esquire, which still published fiction at the time, still has it under consideration and I think I have a pretty good shot with them. Same with GQ. The Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, Glimmer Train and every other conceivable literary journal doing business in 1996 all said “Love Somebody” was a horrendous piece of fiction defecated from the ass of a hack and that I should die on the alter of Richard Ford within about three months time. But #65 was the charm, man, and I haven’t looked back since, well, about five minutes ago.

OV: How do you juggle teaching with writing? Does teaching enrich your work, or is it simply essential to pay the bills?

TG: I really enjoy teaching (which says something from a committed C student) and love the interaction with my students and I do believe it enriches my work because I spend far more time really contemplating craft issues than ever before. That said, I’ve found that I really can’t teach more than one or two days a week and not have it have a negative effect on my own writing. I want to do a good job for my students and that means I have to commit the time to really evaluate their work and that means less time to write, which, in turn, makes me an angry and depressed fuck who might, on occasion, when overworked and underwritten, tell a student that their dialogue is reminiscent of a Chicago song. But I think teaching is part of the contract writers make with themselves, that what we learn, what we know, about writing doesn’t have to be proprietary information and to share that knowledge is, for lack of a better term, the right thing to do. Is teaching essential to paying the bills? Sometimes, sure, but for me it’s essential in a more karmic way, I guess: I’ve been blessed to learn under some great writers and the opportunity to give that back is something I cherish.

OV: Do you believe writing workshops are necessary to the development of a young writer?

TG: I don’t think you can write in a vacuum, so in that way, yes, I believe workshops help. I also think that instruction in creative writing can only improve the craft of most writers, if only to get them to strictly use the word “said” in dialogue and to excise adverbs from their lexicon, he ejaculated firmly. And I believe the criticism one receives in a strong workshop will enable them to better look at their own work in the future. That being said, workshops and writing groups can also become counter-productive after a time. Eventually, you have to stand on your own two feet, figure out what works and what doesn’t and become your own editor.

OV: What are your five favorite novels of all time?

TG:
1. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
3. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. And a six way tie between some short story collections and novels-in-stories and other novels: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Rock Springs by Richard Ford, A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving, The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters, The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips and You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon.

OV: What are your five favorite short stories?

TG: In no particular order:
1. “The Prophet From Jupiter” by Tony Earley
2. “Since My House Burned Down” by Mary Yukari Waters
3. “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford
4. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
5. And a ten way tie between: “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel, “Fitting Ends” by Dan Chaon, “The Rememberer” by Aimee Bender, “This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie, “First, Body” by Melanie Rae Thon, “Communist” by Richard Ford, “The Last Voyage” by Tom Filer, “People Like That Are The Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore and, most recently, a story I gave prize to in a contest and have used in classes lately, “A Slowly Darkening Sky” by Clarke Knowles.

OV: What is the most important book (fiction or non) that you’ve read in the past year?

TG: In fiction, Cruisers by Craig Nova and in nonfiction (though I actually read it two years ago, but keep picking it back up off of my shelf and looking at it again) And The Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney.

OV: If you could have dinner with any fiction writer, living or dead, who would it be and what is one question you would ask him or her?

TG: I’ve been disappointed by a lot of my heroes in the past – it turns out they are just regular people, which is endlessly upsetting – so I guess I’d be inclined to just have dinner with one of my fiction writing friends instead, so, I’ll pick Scott Phillips since he’s a pretty good cook (as is his wife Ann) and I’d probably ask him to tell me some juicy gossip, since he usually has lots of juicy gossip, or for Richard Russo’s phone number, since he actually has it, a fact I find very exciting.

OV: What are you working on now?

TG: A new novel, a new story, a new essay and a feature story on an actor named Taylor Handley who, apparently, was on The OC and is supposed to star in a TV show called Palm Springs and who I found myself inexplicably interviewing the other day for a lifestyle magazine.

OV: What is the worst thing a professor, agent, editor or reviewer has ever said about your fiction?

TG: The worst review I’ve ever received came via Publishers Weekly. They called my first novel “smarmy and self-congratulatory,” which was a mitzvah, since they could have just as easily walked over to my house and kicked me in the nuts.

A Break for Some General Announcements

My Sister's Continent was announced as a "Read This!" finalist by the Litblog Co-Op last week, and is going to be the subject of discussion on the LBC the entire week of May 8-12. I'll be guest-blogging on Wednesday, May 10, so if you're someone who has something good to say about my novel, come on by and say it, and if you're someone who has something crappy to say about my novel, May 10 would be a great time for you to, say, clean out your basement far away from an internet connection. The week of My Sister's Continent will also feature a podcast interview with me, unfortunately taped while I had the flu and a seriously evil case of laryngitis. I'm in the process right now of trying to convince Ed Champion to re-interview me (because, like most of us in the literary community, he just has such scads of free time to devote to doing things for which he will not be financially compensated), but in the event that he doesn't bite, you can tune in to hear me sounding like I'm in the final stages of testosterone therapy for gender reassignment.

For those in Chicago, check out the Nova Art Fair this weekend. New York's Open City magazine/press will be there Friday night, and then Cris (Mazza), Charles Blackstone and I take the stage on Saturday. All the literary events are at Ann Sather's, 929 W. Belmont Ave., uh, in case you want a side of Swedish meatballs with your fiction. Our event's from 5-7 PM: "New Fiction from the Midwest"

Oh, and finally: My performance anxiety about the 2nd Story reading on May 5 is now officially abated. Megan Stielstra insists that she is sincere that I do NOT need to get up and perform some impromptu, hilarious skit or whatever, but that I can just stand there and read from my book. Which I can do. Thanks, Megan! Now if I can only decipher the strangely elaborate system of how to order tickets for these 2nd Story events so that my husband and friends can actually get in the door, I'll be all set.

OV Interview Series: Elizabeth Merrick

I met Elizabeth Merrick through Jessa Crispin, at a party Jessa had for Elizabeth while Elizabeth was in from New York doing a stint at Ragdale. Elizabeth and I bonded over the dilemma of bringing the wrong shoes to Ragdale (read: anything not suitable for trekking through prairie mud), and I soon discovered that this woman has some wonderfully radical beliefs about independent publishing, and that she's putting her money where her mouth is by having founded Demimonde, a book press that published her own first novel, GIRLY. The founder and director of the Grace Reading Series, Elizabeth also keeps scary statistics on how the publishing industry treats literary fiction by women, starting with the ratio of women to men who publish short stories in the New Yorker (it's not pretty, people). Not only a rebel voice with Demimonde, Elizabeth is also working for change from within, currently editing a forthcoming Random House anthology called THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT. She lives in New York where she works as a writing coach and runs Elizabeth's Workshops , a popular writing school. Elizabeth took the time to answer questions in between bridesmaid duty out in the Pacific Northwest, and running off to a baptism on her home turf. (Ah, even women who are changing the literary world still get stuck in pastel dresses with puffy sleeves . . .)

OV: How would you describe the current publishing climate? What do you see as the role of the independent literary press today?

EM: Current publishing climate: little too much Applebee's, despite the hard work and best intentions of the amazing people who work there. The corporate pressure, the lack of readership, what's going on in our educational system now just make this such a tough business, and the people who work in mainstream publishing are doing their best. Independent literary press is crucial—every little bit we can do to maintain culture is at this point like the unicorn tapestries. Every thought that is a thought and not an ad, not a moment to crave plastic surgery or a role in a reality TV show or a mcmansion is crucial. It comes down to imagination verses self-loathing, every time, and the independent literary press pushes for imagination, so thank goodness for that.

OV: Can you tell us how your fiction first broke into print, how you got your first book published, and what, if any, barriers you encountered en route to publication?

EM: I published my first novel Girly myself. That is what I get for wondering, all those years, where the literary Sleater Kinneys were, while agents were telling me they loved my book but it wasn't commercial enough, etc etc. Be the change you want to see is all there is to it, and that can get a little bit exhausting, but it is exhilarating too. And after seeing so many writers struggle with their publishers, or feel so out of control of what happens to their books, I see how it’s cosmically perfect for me to own my first book completely and be in control of it. I’ve been reading a lot by and about Alan Moore and his struggles with not owning his early work and Tori Amos’s struggles with not owning her work when Atlantic tried to fuck her over, sit on her old albums, not promote anything new, and not let her leave. Studying the paths of these two on the road ahead of me has multiplied my gratitude for the way Girly played out for me (a path which I fought for so long). You want to maintain control without having to depend completely on your own resources, and this is a tricky balance. But doing it myself was amazing--I really understood then that the work stands on its own without anybody's imprimatur, and it’s a gift as a young writer to know that.

OV: How do you juggle teaching with writing? Does teaching enrich your work, or is it simply essential to pay the bills?

EM: I looooove teaching but I do it outside of an institution and I only teach adults who come to my little writing school that I started—no college kids, no sweating grad students. I get to do whatever I want and emphasize what really works rather than battle with certain English departments' academic discomfort with creativity. I am really not interested in being this heavy, line-editing teacher. My specialty is cultivating the beginning enthusiasm and teaching people how to protect their creativity and get it to blossom. People want that and I am more than happy to provide that. I get to be this happy, blissful, approving creature, with a bag of editorial tricks that work much better than the standard workshop-speak-crap. My students are heaven so I pretty much always have one class going and probably always will.

OV: Do you believe writing workshops are necessary to the development of a young writer?

EM: Yes, you need to take classes, at least to a certain point. And so many people want to be writers but only read David Sedaris or whatever's hip, which is probably good as far as getting a book deal goes but bad as far as a sustaining, interesting life and body of work goes—for that you need to be reading everything. For me I was just obsessed with reading the next and the next thing—I’m not sure everyone is about that. But you have to study—how did the author do that opening? That transition? I want that effect—why is that boring character suddenly not? A class can’t teach you all that—you have to put on your Sherlock hat on on your own.

OV: Can you describe the difference between writing short fiction and novels?

EM: For me, I really pretty much only write novels—I have to be out of the city, driving around, completely entering into another dimension, another world. To get the “place” of a piece of fiction it takes so much for me, consumes me, I can’t imagine doing that for just 10 pages, 20 pages. I’m in it for the big crazy hit of myth and wildness a novel gives you. There are of course stories that enter that wildness, but I can't write them, it takes me so long to get in and get out. I have written one story in my life that wasn't actually part of a novel in the end--it's about a hair extension someone finds on the pavement. It all comes back to the hair.

OV: What are your five favorite novels of all time?

EM: Paradise, Toni Morrison. Immortality, Milan Kundera. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner. Tracks, Louise Erdrich (but really all of her books), one of Alan Moore's but I’m not sure which book yet, I can't decide.

OV: What are your five favorite short stories?

EM: "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," Flannery O"Connor. "Meneseteung" Alice Munro. "The Dead" James Joyce. "Saint Marie," Louise Erdrich. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" Joyce Carol Oates.

OV: What is the most important book (fiction or non) that you’ve read in the past year?

EM: Eat, Pray, Love. I have witnessed firsthand the shocking reluctance of the literary establishment to let in the spiritual, the sensual, the sexual, and Elizabeth Gilbert is this genius at opening the door very politely and then writing the hell out of whatever she’s onto. I love her writing, the integrity and the humor to her. This book so intelligently, exquisitely brings this content of women’s lives into the realm of respectable adults, takes it out of the self help aisle. Simliarly to how Malcolm Gladwell translates obvious functions of intuition to atheistic white people who traditionally cling to a trust in the rational alone, Elizabeth Gilbert brings in the so-new-as-to-be-unspoken truths of womens lives—these little investigations we’re all making just to remain functional on planet Bush 35 years after the feminist revolution—and makes a lovely introduction of this material to the rational world of literary readers.This book is important because it brings what has been happening on the edges into the mainstream--she is very very good at this and I am so grateful because I suck at it but I think it's probably the most important thing books can do right now. I’m in love with her a little bit. Plus she actually enjoys meditiating, which has me alternately in awe of and jealous of. Plus I want to go to Bali and Italy and stop being so freaking overworked all the time.

OV: If you could have dinner with any fiction writer, living or dead, who would it be and what is one question you would ask him or her?

EM: I would ask Toni Morrison: what do you think we should do now? (In my little fantasy, she talks for 3 hours. I remember everything).

OV: What are you working on now?

EM:The Random House anthology This Is Not Chick Lit is finishing up for an August 2006 release. Beyond that, I’m working on essays, and a book of nonfiction about sex and spirituality. Plus something super top secret I can't talk about (even though I really want to)

OV: What is the worst thing a professor, agent, editor or reviewer has ever said about your fiction?

EM: The best-worst was Kirkus called Girly a bunch of “trashy travails” which is so Ab Fab that I only wish I could live up to it. It's fun to say as you're going through your day--thinking of your wait in line for a coffee or your cab ride as a Trashy Travail. Like--oooooh! so trashy! I felt like I had to Botox-up, pack four bottles of Stoli in a carry-on and go visit Patsy in Morrocco immediately. It came the same week that Library Journal called Girly post-feminist experimental fiction and basically too hard to understand for the average reader. These two combined makes it sound way more Kathy Acker than it is, but neither really bothered me. I write so much through the lens of myth and from a base of Helene Cixous’s idea of ecriture feminine that whatever complaints don't bug me—I’m thinking about it through another lens anyway. You stick around long enough and the real malice doesn’t come from critics—which is the scary part.If these kinds of critical jabs are bothering a writer, it's probably a sign to ratchet it up and take bigger risks, really terrify yourself by putting yourself on the line somehow, cause then you'll be so used to people telling you you're doing something wrong that something as minor as a bad review won't even register.

OV Interview Series: Lisa Glatt

Lisa Glatt is one of Other Voices’ favorite writers. Not only did we publish the title chapter of her novel, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That, but this is a woman who also, years before Carrie Bradshaw dated a cute-but-kinky politician, wrote a story about a chick whose lover wanted her to pee on him, and was told by her (then) agent that the story could not go into her collection because it was too risqué. Happily, Lisa is no stranger to the risqué, and her poetry collections (Shelter is one of our favorite books of poems) are erotic and sad and death-obsessed and vitally alive all at once. Plus, her husband (the excellent poet) David Hernandez has designed three of our covers! She’s also a writer we’ve enjoyed seeing move into “mainstream” publishing (her novel, as well as her collection The Apple’s Bruise, came out from Simon & Schuster) so that the widest readership possible can discover what we already know: Lisa Glatt rocks!

OV: How do you juggle teaching with writing? Does teaching enrich your work, or is it simply essential to pay the bills?

LG: I like being out in the world and being social. Most of my students are great fun with interesting ideas about, not only writing, but life. I do look forward to the summer and time off, though, when I’m able to concentrate on my own work. At times, juggling—not just teaching, but life itself—is difficult and frustrating. I have found though that jobs or family obligations are usually not the main thing that detracts from my writing time. I need to blame myself for those moments and hours in front of the computer when I’m too hard on myself, editing before I even begin, doubting each peck of each fingertip.

OV: Do you believe writing workshops are necessary to the development of a young writer? (If not, what are other ways you recommend young writers expand their craft?)

LG: First off, a new writer or a person who wants to be a writer, should love to read. If he or she doesn't love to read, then she needs to ask herself, why am I doing this or why do I want to do this? I've watched many of my Sunday workshop students go from interested novices to talented writers with book-length manuscripts on the way—so for those writers the workshop has been instrumental. Much of it may be community and support, but I do know that honest criticism from a person or people who really want to see your writing improve is incredibly valuable, for those who are open to it, for those who want it.

OV: Can you describe the difference between writing short fiction and novels?

LG: The novel, I believe, is a more forgiving form. If we're willing to make the 300+ page time commitment to the writer, if we believe her voice that much, then we're often willing to forgive or ignore wrong moves, which I think are inevitable in most novels, even very good ones. Stories are read by fewer people, but need to be nearly perfect, each word or move backed up by what the story finally becomes. I've been reading lots of older stories for a class I’m teaching: Kafka's metamorphosis and Tolstoy’s the death of Ivan Ilych to name a couple, and, by today's standards, those two stories are incredibly long. As brilliant as they are, I feel that same sort of flexibility in myself when reading them. When I’m reading a short story written by someone today, I’m not so flexible. I'm scrutinizing every word and turn before deciding if I love it. So, to answer your question, I’m very aware of my own standards when writing stories and when working on my own novel. I'm finishing my second novel now The Nakeds and I’m trying to be forgiving with myself but it's difficult.

OV: What are your five favorite novels of all time?

LG: It changes all the time. I love what I love most at the moment I’m loving it, so it's going to be a contemporary list that is bound to change by the time this is posted.

But here goes:

1. We Need to Talk About Kevin
2. The Sleeping Father
3. Angels
4. How the Light Gets In
5. Good Morning Midnight

OV: What are your five favorite short stories?

LG: Again, changing all the time, but right now:

1. Jodi Angel's "Portions"
2. Charles d'Ambrosio's "The Screenwriter"
3. Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing"
4. Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People"
5. Junot Diaz's "How to Date a Black Girl, Brown Girl, White Girl, or Halfie"

OV: What is the most important book (fiction or non) that you've read in the past year?

LG: I really enjoyed Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

OV: If you could have dinner with any fiction writer, living or dead, who would it be and what is one question you would ask him or her?

LG: I'd like to have dinner with Cheryl Strayed or Jodi Angel, two writers that I know and admire. I'd ask them what they're working on now and how they feel about their projects. Then I’d moan and groan a bit about The Nakeds and see if they have any advice about how to deal with my own doubts...

OV: What are you working on now?

LG: My second novel The Nakeds. I'm in the last stages and will have it finished by mid summer, I'm thinking.

OV: What is the worst thing a professor, agent, editor or reviewer has ever said about your fiction?

LG: I don't know, really. Sorry. I know that's meant to be a "fun one" but I try to let that shit go and move on. If I had a good quote for you, I’d still be feeling the miserable pinch. ;-)