With a lineup of journals to make your mouth water (oh, and writers too), and Megan co-helming, what more could you want from your Friday night at AWP?
Versal joins a six-strong lineup of gorgeousness for AWP's most beautiful evening, hands down. Hosted by Bateau, Burnside Review, Interrupture, Rose Metal Press, Slope Editions, and yours truly. The event is free and open to the public. Full bar! Food! Come! Readers include: John Gallaher, Brooklyn Copeland, Sean Lovelace, Chuck Carlise, Louise Mathias, Ryan Flaherty, Anna Moriarty Lev, Jane Lewty, Erin Costello, Nate Liederbach, Amaranth Borsuk, Trey Moody/Joshua Ware, John Jodzio, Kate Nuernberger and Brad Liening.
We are proud to present the following writers from the Versal family:
Erin Costello is a poet, digital artist, and web designer who holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2009 she founded SpringGun Press with Mark Rockswold: a print press for books of poetry, and a bi-annual online journal of poetry, flash fiction, and electronic literature. She has received awards for both her traditional and electronic writing and her work has been featured in various venues and publications. Originally from Northern California, she currently lives in Denver where she enjoys the incredible literary/art scene and works as an online marketer.
Jane Lewty is currently an assistant professor of English Literature and creative writing at the University of Amsterdam and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her academic essays can be found in several books and journals, namely A Companion to James Joyce (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and the forthcoming Oxford Companion to War and Literature (Oxford University Press, 2012). She is a co-editor of Broadcasting Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2009) and Pornotopias: Image, Apocalypse, Desire (Litteria Pragensia, 2010). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines; her first collection, Bravura Cool, will be published later this year by 1913 Press.
Nate Liederbach is the author of the story collection Doing a Bit of Bleeding and co-editor of the anthology Of a Monstrous Child. A PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah, Nate has recently assumed the role of Managing Editor for Western Humanities Review. His work has most recently appeared in Versal, Slab, Keyhole, Quarterly West, South Dakota Review, and Best New Poets 2011.
So we implemented some big/radical/scary changes ahead of our reading period for Versal 10, one of them being a submission fee. GASP.
You may remember us talking about this quite a bit back in the fall (and you can jump over here to read some of that).
Now that our reading period has closed, we can look at the numbers to assess how those changes affected our submission numbers as well as to what extent they helped our financial goal to become more self-sustainable. I promised that I'd be open about the results and post some numbers, so here they are in all their glory.
Overall, submissions were down 39%. Though in the opening days of the reading period we received three emails condemning our new fee, those three emails were the only three we received. And though it's impossible to pin down the exact cause of the lower submissions, we strongly suspect the lower numbers were due to Duotrope's no-fee policy: that it will not list journals that charge fees. The numbers support this hunch: we received a major boost during our Free Week in October, when Duotrope listed us as open, and another large deluge starting Friday, January 13 when Duotrope changed its listing policy (what brought about its change of heart?) and Versal was again listed as an open market.
Last fall I was having dinner with a few visiting writers, and our submission fee came up. One of the visiting writers, a poet from California, strongly opposed the practice and suggested that Versal print only fiction because (and I'm paraphrasing), "fiction writers are more likely to pay. Poets won't pay, they're out at Occupy Wall Street protesting this kind of crap." I was polite in my responses, but seething. I mean, really? I'm a poet, I support Occupy, and I also pay sub fees. Her black&white world made/makes me sad.
Now that we're through the four months of our reading period, I can say with confidence that the numbers prove her wrong. (We can talk another time about her conclusions on the inherent nature of poets vs. prose writers...Eeek.) We had almost two times the number of poetry submissions as prose, which is not abnormal for us, but what is notable is that the poets were more likely to pay the extra $1 for a matched contributor payment from Versal, preorder a copy of Versal 10, or buy a subscription. And not just by a small margin either. Poets were two times more likely to add the matching $1, almost four times more likely to preorder, and no single prose submission came with a subscription.
I'm not making judgments about the moral character of poets vs. prose writers, because that's stupid. But I want the numbers to speak back to that day last October in a way I could not then. I want them to say, look, poets are generous, they are not as precious as you paint them to be -- assuming of course that any sense of character can be gleaned from this at all, which is disputable and probably entirely wrong. But that's exactly the point. The whoo-ha around the lit world -- and among editors -- about the submission fee is really a bunch of whoo-ha, and we should stop making so many assumptions about our communities, stop casting lines in the sand between "types" of writers and editors and journals, stop assuming every writer is a vulnerable sheep facing (against) the editor-wolf, unable to make their own decisions, come to their own conclusions, "doing everything it takes" just for a publication credit. The power dynamic, if anything, is exactly the opposite. Times have changed, and yay.
But anyway, I can talk about that some other time. What I want to talk about today is that the news for us is very good. What's more, the news for our contributors to Versal 10 is pretty damn cool. 220 writers and artists chose to add an additional $1 to their submission fee, which will be matched by Versal and the total funds divided equally among all contributors to the new issue. As we've stated elsewhere, this is our small but important step towards paying the people who make Versal great. Total donations from writers and artists: $220; total matched funds from Versal: $220; total funds to be equally divided among our contributors: $440.
We still have a lot of financials to look at, and I'm especially curious how we fare now compared to this time last year, but minus the $1 contributor donations, we made $1863.14 through our new system. On the surface this seems to strongly support our original case for changing our funding source from labor-intensive, pricey and long-running local workshops to sales related directly to the journal itself (in 2010, we made about €1300 from a full year's program of workshops in Amsterdam).
I'm also excited that we've already sold 36 copies of Versal 10!
There's obviously a lot of refinement to do on these calculations, and some solid assessments and projections to be made (I gave up math in 6th grade to join the drama club), but I am happy to report that, on the whole, the changes have been positive for us. And I would say for our community both here in Amsterdam and abroad.
Once we finish reading, I'll share what our team thought of the quality of the submissions compared to previous years. There's two theories running about the lit world, in terms of quality of submissions and fees. One is that quality goes up because those who send work are really familiar with the journal; the other is that quality goes down because those who send work are "desperate". I hope we'll debunk both of these simplifications…but stay tuned.
Our first newsletter of 2012 dropped today. If you like getting a monthly roundup about Versal in your inbox, sign up here.
Most months, we only send the one. Our newsletters will keep you posted on submission calls, special deals, events we're organizing (here in Amsterdam or elsewhere), and the latest greatest from our past and present contributors and editors.
Next time it's number ten. It’s a big year for our little independent journal.
As it stands, the fiction crew has completed two phone conferences this reading period as part of the selection process for Versal.
To repeat the caveat I’ve specified ad nauseam to every blog post I’ve written on this dear blog, this is my first go as an editor for the journal. Knowing the quality of the fiction selected for inclusion in previous issues, I figured rightly that the curating process would be a vigorous exercise.
What I couldn’t anticipate was the dynamics of the fiction team.
••••••••••••••••
First, let me explain how we choose the pieces that are debated at the roundtable.
Each editor is given a batch of ten stories to read. Editors usually do one of two things: reject the piece outright or send the piece to another editor if they like it, but want another opinion. If the second reader likes the piece they send it back to the original reader suggesting that everyone gets a chance to read the work. The third option, if a story completely blows the wool socks off the first reader, is to escalate the story to the entire fiction team for consideration.
Like the first reads, we work in batches of ten stories for the escalation roundtable. Since we are spread across the United States and Europe, we meet via phone conference on Skype.
The first phone conference for issue ten, and the first I ever participated in, was intimidating. I felt a certain amount of pressure to perform grandly. I wanted to be confident, stick to my guns, and sound intelligent; and all my fears were at odds with the need to be confident.
What I learned quickly was that there is no room at the Versal editing table for a solitary ego.
••••••••••••••••
During the Skype conversation the fiction team carefully combed over each piece discussing meaning, intentions of the author, characters and setting (if necessary). Etc. I was surprised to find that no one was dominating the conversation, nor was anyone particularly harsh about glaring errors in a piece. Weaknesses were even weighed against a piece's strengths, although, every editor desired a certain amount of perfection. There were times where a piece that was put to the roundtable wasn't suitable, even for the editor who sent it to the escalation in the first place. These pieces had merits that we discussed–it wouldn’t have made it to the roundtable if there wasn’t something that worked–but were ultimately dismissed. After three hours of discussing we had chosen, if I remember correctly, one piece for inclusion in the journal and several others we would read again at the next roundtable.
This wasn’t a mark of an indecisive team. We had strong pieces up for consideration and this made the selection process strenuous. The quality of the pieces we are receiving are extremely high. We feel extremely proud to be able to read such compelling work.
••••••••••••••••
In regards to the selections I was for or against, I usually had a rather strong opinion that I brought to the table, but on occasion, I was swayed during the discussion. If the piece was well argued, I sometimes found myself agreeing with the opposite camp, no matter how much it hurt my pride.
Again, pride and ego have no place in Versal.
Robert mentioned during our meeting something that I found incredibly compelling; no editor's opinion was completely ignored. At least one story that an editor chose for inclusion in the magazine was selected. So, whether or not the story I really wanted was selected for the journal (one in particular, which I felt I was defending alone, did not) at least one story I said yes to would be fit to see print.
The democratic selection process creates a sort of tension within the team which prevents us from getting comfortable. We have to be on our toes, ready to defend our position, and be equally ready to let some of the fights go if. If we were to all get along and become comfortable, we might also find ourselves getting lazy. This would most likely result in us producing a boring, unpalatable journal.
Knowing that I could influence the position by being myself was a satisfying and welcoming release.
There are a crap-ton of lists out right now and they make my eyes burn. Best of's, top tens and whatnot. And gift ideas for writers that involve things I would personally never use. But maybe I'm just scroogey.
But then I was thinking, what's great is things that gift both ways. You know, when you go to your favorite local boutique and get some rare artisan jewelry from a local artist, and your girlfriend is like so happy that you thought to buy her something girly instead of getting her a new external harddrive, and your local boutique is thrilled to stay in business one more day.
So here's the only list I'll make this year. Ten journals to subscribe to or buy, as a gift for yourself or for a literary loved one. Obviously I'd love you to subscribe to Versal, too, but we're not the only self-supported journal of awesomeness out there. And obviously I love a lot of journals, but I'm keeping this list to those that are self-supported (as far as I can tell), are not university funded (as far as I can tell), and which you may not have heard about yet. Because it's important that the love be spread, and spread widely.
Also, please don't mistake these blurbs for blurbs. Or reviews. They're just things I'm thinking outloud, which is mostly nonsense.
1913 a journal of forms: It's no secret that Versal is a big fan of 1913. If two journals should get married, it should be these two. Different personalities, maybe, but Paula Abdul knows what I'm talking about (and so do you, Doller!).
Artifice: I first came across Artifice at AWP Denver because they had a table right across from us. You could buy one of two versions of their first edition: black or white. It made me think of the Dutch raves at the Heineken Music Hall.
A Tale of Three Cities: Brand new, still steaming off the press, this journal of work coming out of the grand European trifecta (Paris-London-Berlin) will make you feel like you're on the overnight from NYC. You might see Greenland. I haven't gotten my hands on an actual copy yet, but I suspect its literary innards will rock your socks off.
Bateau: Get a full year of this press's makings, including their annual lit mag, which I just love to hold. I'll just say it's almost a fetish.
Caketrain: This journal may have the old school size and shape, but its covers and internal design - not to mention the work! - prove anything but the traditional. Their latest #9 is just out, too, and has work by, well, me in it.
Her Royal Majesty: Some things are just really pretty. This little journal out of Paris (originally Halifax) is an exciting, newish project that is sure to go places. "Go places". What a euphemism. In other words, it's neat.
Jubilat: A wide array of beautiful, well displayed poetry. You will probably cry when you read an issue, and that's ok, because it'll be there to comfort you when you're done.
The Lumberyard Magazine: The folks behind this journal are up to a lot, and winning awards while they're at it, and we think you'll love how they get a little freaky with the page.
Tarpaulin Sky: Hurricane Irene has put this press on serious hold, and a lot of its inhouse stock was lost to floods. SPD has a lot of their titles, but if you're looking for back issues of their awesome lit mag, pop Christian a mail. He probably knows where you can find it.
Tuesday: An Art Project: This unbound, letterpressed journal of poems, photographs and prints is published biannually thanks to the genius of Jennifer S. Flescher. Journal as object as art? Yes.
Happy holidays, everyone, from all of us here at Versal.
With a lineup of journals to make your mouth water (oh, and writers too), and Megan co-helming, what more could you want from your Friday night at AWP?
lo is a poet, digital artist, and web designer who holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2009 she founded SpringGun Press with Mark Rockswold: a print press for books of poetry, and a bi-annual online journal of poetry, flash fiction, and electronic literature. She has received awards for both her traditional and electronic writing and her work has been featured in various venues and publications. Originally from Northern California, she currently lives in Denver where she enjoys the incredible literary/art scene and works as an online marketer.
Jane Lewty is currently an assistant professor of English Literature and creative writing at the University of Amsterdam and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her academic essays can be found in several books and journals, namely A Companion to James Joyce (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and the forthcoming Oxford Companion to War and Literature (Oxford University Press, 2012). She is a co-editor of Broadcasting Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2009) and Pornotopias: Image, Apocalypse, Desire (Litteria Pragensia, 2010). Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines; her first collection, Bravura Cool, will be published later this year by 1913 Press.
Nate Liederbach is the author of the story collection Doing a Bit of Bleeding and co-editor of the anthology Of a Monstrous Child. A PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah, Nate has recently assumed the role of Managing Editor for Western Humanities Review. His work has most recently appeared in Versal, Slab, Keyhole, Quarterly West, South Dakota Review, and Best New Poets 2011.
Here's my one holiday-themed post. Ever.
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