Part 1: You will take the cake
Many years ago, I asked someone to leave Versal’s editorial team.
The decision to do this was protracted and painful. He wanted Versal to go in one direction, a direction where he was not subject to the decisions of a team. He wanted to be The Editor, the man at the top, praised for his choices by other men-at-the-tops. These men were his heroes. They were the men whose poems he revered. The men who made decisions subject to no one—save their forefathers. The men whose decisions people talked about, wrote books about.
I stood between him and his mythology. I told him it should not work that way. I told him it would not work that way in Versal.
Our schism affected every aspect of Versal’s makings, and there were many arguments. More than that, there was screaming. He fought like me: brutal and unmoving. To protect the others on the team, I took the brunt of his rage and ego, and tried to keep the horizon of Versal in sight. It took me two years to choose Versal over our friendship, and in the end I did.
When I told him that his time with Versal was over, he said, “You will take the cake.”
It is now four years since that day and ten years since I and two other women started Versal in a bar in the Nieuwmarkt of Amsterdam. The story goes that we started it to bring a community together—to connect, even create, a more inclusive, multilingual and further-reaching literary community than the one Amsterdam already had. That story is true. What is also true is that we succeeded. Writers who move here now from some other geography don’t have to look far to find a literary home. Versal is turning ten this year, our tenth edition, and we are doing well. We even just won an award! But more importantly, and more to the point, we’re doing good work to question the models in literary publishing, wherever they come from, and to dare not just ask how things can be different but to try to change them, even if it means we stumble or upset people. Even if it means we sometimes lose friends.Roxane Gay’s piece on the matter of men and women in publishing pretty much sums it all up for me, and I join her call to get (back) down to work.
So yes. Yes, I will take the cake. In fact, I plan to spend Versal’s entire tenth year eating that cake. And I hope you’ll join me.
Posts
"But in all my ten years of editing Versal, only ONE woman has ever contacted me outright and asked me to publish her (cf. first quote at the start of this post). All of the others have been men. I don’t know them, they don’t know me, but they are sure of themselves and they tell me this. I don’t agree with the tactic of course — theirs is an extreme approach. But as I’ve grown into my role as Versal’s editor, as well as into my own poetry, I have cultured an ego enough to steel me through. Through what? Not rejection letters, that's not really a big deal. But standing on stage after the booming voices of men."
ReplyDeleteI have 4 brothers and like men. The obvious dislike you have of men is embarrassing and off putting and does not become you. Rare is the post where you manage to not have a dig at men. Yes, men know how to go for what they want. I would suggest that rather than criticizing an easy modern-day target: the male, women might add their screeching voices to the melee and go for what THEY want too. Or perhaps it's easier to just whine and use politik adjectives such as "booming".
The above posting of yours is cringeworthy in its transparency. How many willful and colored uses of the words "man" and "men" can you fit into one post? All this talk of inclusion is laughable when your very language is hostile to men in all aspects. This was not a person you ejected but very clearly and deliberately a MAN.
"He wanted to be The Editor, the man at the top, praised for his choices by other men-at-the-tops. These men were his heroes. They were the men whose poems he revered. The men who made decisions subject to no one—save their forefathers. The men whose decisions people talked about, wrote books about."
This passage tells its own story about what goes on in your mind. Men, man, fathers etc.
"To protect the others on the team, I took the brunt of his rage and ego, and tried to keep the horizon of Versal in sight."
This passage is hilarious. How very brave of you. I think you could have been honest though and admitted that it was in fact YOUR horizon and not Versal's horizon.
Telling that you choose to mention that it was yourself and 2 other women who started Versal. Versal is anything but inclusive.
I was moved to write this after reading one too many of your biased and bigoted posts. My mother sends me a subscription to Versal for my birthday every year but I will be asking her to cancel this tradition. I have been completely put off the journal.
Of course, you will not print this, but I have kept a copy to show anyone who would like to see it...
Sincerely,
Katherine
Katherine, I don't know you, or do I know you? Have I hurt you personally? What a mean comment! But, as they say, comments online these days tend to be mean, which is too bad.
ReplyDeleteMean and petty and sad. As a male working under Megan in the Versal hierarchy (which she insists means working "with" her) I can truthfully say that the opposite of all of Katherine's criticisms are the truth, and the clear proof of this is the variety and quality of the work included in Versal.
ReplyDeleteDear Katherine, if you have learned anything from reading and reacting to Megans posts and rants and reflections as she tries to expose the very gruelling ups and downs of the Versal editorial process as she and I must say many of the other editors feel it, it is that Megan is trying to be as inclusive as possible of men and women and that she also would not erase your comment because it displeases or hurts her--as I imagine this comment of yours must.
ReplyDeleteTo make digs at her such as "father" issues seems to me a pathetic thing to do. Mostly, though, it shows you are not paying attention to the right issue here--that is the issue of VERSAL, the publication itself.
As an editor and reader of Versal, it is evident to me that Megan is extremely inclusive as it comes to gender, theme, form, style etc of the writing and authors selected by a TEAM--in the best sense of the words. A TEAM because Megan tries to make sure every editor is heard and hears the others. She is someone who is quite talented at helping people be inclusive, which is bigger than her own issues, too.
This is particularly visible in the place it counts most --VERSAL!--The fact that you would want to stop receiving a publication full of really amazing work just because you dislike a reflection on this review-related blog tells me that you are ignoring what counts--the writing, the writers, the reading process of being put into contact via this magazine with amazing authors from all over the globe, men and women.