Versal Journal

Mythbusting the submission fee, part 1

2012-01-17T00:16:00.008+01:00

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.

Submit that work.

2012-01-07T20:10:00.004+01:00

Submit today!

Deadline: January 15

Show us what you've got

2012-01-04T19:51:00.004+01:00

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.

Or if you're like me and you get enough email every day, follow us on Twitter or fan us on the Bookface.

So what's the big freakin' news this month?

You only have 12 days left to submit your work to Versal 10.

That is all.

More Thoughts on Editing

2011-12-27T15:14:00.002+01:00

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.

Journals we love, aka gift ideas

2011-12-21T12:33:00.009+01:00

Here's my one holiday-themed post. Ever.

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.

Remember Journal Porn?

The list is alphabetized.

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.

Versal is the best literary journal in English coming out of Europe.

2011-11-21T13:08:00.007+01:00

That's what Penelope Fletcher, founder and owner of The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris, says anyway.

Finally getting around to posting some pics from our trip and reading at IVY Writers. Thanks to our friend and fellow editor, poet and critic Jennifer K. Dick and contributor Rufo Quintavalle for organizing an excellent evening.

Megan, Jane and Anna

Jen introduces the evening

Jane

Kate

Anna

Megan

Rufo

Lars Palm

Hey editors! We saw this when we were in DC too!

Kate & Tonnie

Shayna in the wool room (Plight, Joseph Beuys)

Megan, Shayna and Anna in the Infinity Room, Yayoi Kusama

Our 2011 Pushcart nominations

2011-11-15T11:27:00.004+01:00

Last night, Robert, Sarah, Shayna and I met (on Skype) to choose our nominations from Versal 9 for the 37th Pushcart edition.

Ahead of the meeting, we asked our editorial team for their thoughts, and we received back enthusiastic lists -- which ultimately amounted to nearly our entire table of contents. In other words, we all still love it all.

Having never actually had a piece from Versal chosen for a Pushcart Prize, and not entirely sure what "will make it", our nomination procedure is based on the simple goal to choose a selection of work that we feel is representative of the Versal reach. Therefore, we feel, not only do these pieces each rock buckets individually, but taken together they more or less (and admittedly, probably less), span the range of the work you'll find in our pages.

Congratulations to our nominees:

The Miracle of Mrs. Evelyn Howard, Russell Helms
The Freight, Jane Lewty
Demonstrum, Nate Liederbach
Where the water comes from and gets together with its friends, Tony Mancus
Winter Song, Jill Osier
The Reindeer Daughter, Suzanne Warren

If the good folks at Pushcart choose any of these for publication in the 2012 anthology, we'll know in April.

An open letter to my grumbling inbox

2011-11-09T12:07:00.007+01:00

Lately, my inbox has been full of grumbling. Of all kinds, mostly literary in nature of course since it's my inbox. I won't go into specifics because then I'd be grumbling, and this isn't a grumble-post. But it did all put me over the edge one night last week and I went over to Jane's and drank down a bottle of whiskey that Anna gave me and grumbled at Jane for awhile.

When grousing begets grousing, you know you gotta do something.

The grumble-cloud has since mostly cleared, and I am feeling hope for humanity again. So rather than reply individually to all the grumblings, all three weeks worth of it, I'd like to put forward this as an open letter to my grumbling inbox.

Laugh, people!

Post-Holing to the Flesh Temple

2011-11-03T22:15:00.001+01:00

~~Megan~~ Robert Glick gave a shout-out to Sidebrow literary magazine earlier today via the Versal Facebook Page. I'm contributing my own praise for the journal. Add to that some frothing enthusiasm for Derek White's Post-Holing To The Flesh Temple.

Surreal, hyper-textual loveliness.

Impressionist

2011-10-31T21:52:00.003+01:00

In earlier posts I made one, simple statement: I am not, in any way, an experienced editor.

And being a novice, I worried; what can I expect from the Versal submission and reading process?

I waited–as one waits for a message to appear from the looking glass of a magic eight-ball–for the submission manager to show me a sign.

Finally, it did, and when it did, it was sudden. The submissions poured into my inbox in a flood. It all came as a bit of a surprise, in fact. I was excited, of course, and opened the first story sitting patiently at the top of the reading list, and dove in with considerable aplomb (and a large cup of coffee).

Maybe it was the cavalier attitude I was employing–I don’t know–but halfway through reading the first story, the gravity of the whole ordeal stuck me. Here it was in my document editor: a piece of work someone sweated over. A piece of work that is, in a way, pleading for acceptance. A story that, maybe, deserves the drop of an ax. Work, in any case, that deserves all of my attention.

I sat back from my computer and stopped reading. It wasn’t that I hadn’t considered these notions: but it was reading the work that made all these what-if scenarios into a paralyzing reality.

––––––––––––––––––

In my own way, I am a lot like the writers who submit to our journal. We, the writers, trust an editor with our work. We submit, and we hope for the best. We rewrite when the rejections become too monumental to ignore.

This feeling of camaraderie I felt towards my fellow writer seemed to be the origin of the first problem I faced as an editor; I simply felt guilty sitting in front of my computer judging someone else’s writing.

How can I choose what is acceptable work to pass on to my fellow editors? What makes me an expert? How can I be a judge when I so often receive rejection after rejection? What if I made a mistake? What if the stories I rejected were the right ones?

–––––––––––––––––––

I read the 10 stories waiting in my inbox in one long sitting on the back porch of my friends house in Auburn NY.
Coffee was replaced by beer.
Lunch was replaced with dinner.

After the first reading, I was not able to reject a story. Not even one. I couldn’t convince myself that was the right thing to do.

In the beginning, I felt most comfortable reading; nothing more.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Editing for Versal isn’t about polishing a story. It is about curating.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I took the easy way out by rejecting the weakest stories up front–the ones needing hours of work, or when it was obvious that the author had not read the journal, and submitted work that was completely inappropriate. Soon I would have to make real decisions.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Yet, there are a lot of stories that seem, at first to fit with the journals aesthetic. The work seems challenging, uses language in a new way. But maybe it doesn’t fit. That is where choosing gets difficult: a gray area, where something in a story brings something new to the editors table and throws a monkey wrench into the works.

At some point in time, no matter what has happened with the journal historically, the pieces I will help choose are the future. There is a choice: a decision relying on taste.

The question, having confronted my initial reluctance to reject or accept, had evolved: What do I want to bring to the editors table?

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

I read the stories again. Twice. Three times.

Versal, being the journal that it is, receives some challenging work.

I understood the stories in a way. But not all of them.

And this was a bit of a struggle. I was frustrated that some of the stories seemed too difficult for me.

We have a second reader for this very reason, but due to reasons of pride, I hesitated sending the hardest stories on.

Robert, the head fiction editor for Versal, told me early on that, to be a good editor, I would have to to use my gut reaction, and embrace my lack of understanding sometimes. Send the story onto another editor if there were still lagging doubts–he said. In essence, swallow pride for the greater good of the journal.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Good work is in the details.

And many of the stories submitted to Versal are good.

When a final decision needs to be made, however, the piece with the most work put into it, where every piece falls into place, that’s the the story I’m going to choose.

In the first 20 odd submission I’ve read, I’ve found myself faltering over a twitchy piece of dialogue, a cliche or a poorly written sentence. That is when the decision is easy.

These little mistakes, more often than not, are enough to reject a piece.

A writer submitting to Versal, or any journal–and I include myself in this–needs to consider whether the story they’ve created has had enough work put into it, is a precious stone that should be put on display.

There are too many great writers who do put in the extra time and work. They proof read. They read the journal before submitting.

If we, as writers, are not doing this, are not taking this extra time when competing with the thousands of others out there submitting everyday, we’re competing with ourselves.

Literary Journal Contest

2011-10-11T23:25:00.003+02:00

Writer's Relief is running a contest to help support literary journals. If you buy a year long subscription to two journals (of your choice) and post the name of those journals in the comments sections of the blog post announcing the contest, you can earn a free subscription to another lit mag of your choice. Other have gotten in on the action and offered their own journals up for grabs, or gracious discounts if you are buying the journal to enter the contest. Check out the Writers Relief contest here and consider buying a subscription to our journal here.

NYC

2011-10-10T05:01:00.001+02:00

Bumming around NYC, looking for literary journals, and what did I find?

I found it at the wonderful McNally Jackson on Prince Street in Soho, NYC. Obviously I moved it to the front so everyone would scramble to buy it. Love,Daniel

St. Mark's Bookshop

2011-10-06T16:45:00.001+02:00

As a former NYC East Villager, I have a special place in my heart for the St. Mark's Bookshop. I spent many a long day perusing the store and its vast selection of literary magazines, art books and fiction. It is truly a gem, one of the best independent shops around: you could even argue it is an inspiration.

Unfortunately, like so many independent sellers, the St. Mark's Bookshop has seen a sharp decline in sales. Without a reduction in rent from the Cooper Union (the store's landlord), the St. Mark's Bookshop will have to close its doors.

A petition to the Cooper Union was created by the Cooper Square Committee to lower the rent. The required amount of signatures is close to being met. Please consider signing the petition here. And thanks in advance.

Literature Party AWP 2012

2011-10-05T16:10:00.001+02:00

The Versal crew will be in Chicago for the AWP 2012 conference with our very own table. There are so many events, but it looks as though the Literature Party supporting young, Chicagoan authors, should be very exciting. Check it out.

Oh, silly artists. Or, on the use of "plums" in response to a 3-hour art editor's meeting.

2011-10-04T14:34:00.006+02:00

The above is what happens when Versal's art editors get together to discuss the future of art in Versal.

Table-top installation utilizing fruit, medicine, ceramic bowl and nuts compliments of art editor Reed van Brunschot.

why 3000?

2011-09-25T04:35:00.000+02:00

"do you know that more murders are committed at 92 degrees farenheit than any other temperature?
i read an article once.
lower temperatures, people are easy going.
over 92, it's too hot to move.
but just 92, people get irritable."
--- Siouxsie and the Banshees

Occasionally, we get a query asking why our prose word limit is 3,000 words. If you're not doing flash stuff, say, less than 1,500 words, who writes that short? The average short-story length, apparently, is about seventeen pages - maybe 6,000 words or so. And most journals cap their prose limit at 7,500 words or so - say twenty-five pages. So what's with the 3,000?

A few overlapping thoughts:

1. Practicalities: on a staff of dedicated volunteers, with a process whereby we read each story in its entirety, and we promise a quick turnaround time, with a limited page count devoted to prose, it makes sense to publish shorter stories. If we published longer stories, we'd have the following problems:
3 times fewer stories published
2-3 times for story turnaround (or similar turnaround times, but less attention paid to each story)
So this kind of word count ensures that your story is getting a complete, full reading and that we'll get back to you quickly.

2. History of the short story: Has the average length of the short story changed over time? Of course. Why? Economic concerns, attention spans, notions of what does or does not constitute a short story (read Lydia Davis' Varieties of Disturbance lately?) all affect the general length of stories. Yes, it's much harder to get a 7,500 word story published now than it was ten years ago (though of course there were fewer journals then, too). Is 3,000 a kind of liminal space between flash fiction and "traditional" short story? Most definitely. That's where the fun is.

3. Possibility Space and Constraint: In that vein, I encourage people to think about how "traditional" notions of the short story must be deformed when writing shorter forms. It's very, very difficult to write a character and plot driven short story in 3,000 words - there's just not enough time (an example of a really nice "traditional" story in that length might be Stacey Swann's Crib Biting (V8)). So what can you do? What new forms, what new concerns might open up for you? That's what interests us.

If you don't feel like writing short, that's great - I myself am often writing 30-page stories. So while I'm a proponent of short work, I'm not fanatic about it. I am, however, riven by fascination, by mutation, by defacement - and that's one of the things that short forms allow us.

Co-conspiratorially,

r-

Website's back! Now I'm off to Malta.

2011-09-23T22:38:00.005+02:00

Oh bless the shining stars. Today was, like, 2003. When websites really did go down for half a day.

If you tried to reach us today. We're sorry. Our web hosts went bonkers on a server.

Anyway, we're back.

And now: I'm off to Malta. Me and the lady are celebrating our one-year. Robert, Sarah and the rest of the Versal gang are going to hold down the fort while we're away. If anything weird happens (again), blame them.

Boring post: Website's down. Submit later!

2011-09-23T16:07:00.002+02:00

Hey guys, our website has been down for forever (well, for 7 hours now). Our hosts GreenGeeks are doing some server maintenance and it seems things got wonky. Whatever.

If you're trying to submit to Versal 10, just hang tight with us. I assume things will eventually work again. Or I'm going to go Pulp Fiction on GreenGeeks.

Versal's contributor payment matching scheme

2011-09-22T10:28:00.004+02:00

In case you missed it, from our guidelines:

NEW! We are now working towards paying our contributors. Funds collected from contributor payment donations will be matched by Versal and distributed equally among Versal 10's contributors. Contributors will also receive one gratis copy and the option to order additional copies at a discount.

and

All proceeds from the submission fee go towards production costs. The optional $1 added goes towards contributor payment, and will be matched dollar for dollar by Versal’s other fundraising activities.

Maybe it won't be much, at first, but it will be a start towards rectifying at least one inequality in our literary economy, at least where Versal is concerned.

Oh, Whiny Writers. Or, on the use of the word "Repugnant" in response to a $2.00 submission fee.

2011-09-18T08:57:00.021+02:00

I don't get worked up about a lot of things in life. And with the exception of ensuring we have a kick-ass cover artist and that the pages of Versal are full of engaging, involved and thought-provoking artwork, I really don't get worked up about a lot of the goings-on in Versal's wide-reaching and ever-increasing journal-sphere. I stay in the background because so much of the conversation surrounding Versal is still specific to the literary world, and while I love you writerly types, my business is all up in the artsy fartsy world.

But this whole friggin' to-do over our new $2.00 submission fee has my proverbial panties in a bunch. Let me just put my thoughts at this point out there plain and simple: seriously? Seriously guys? You guys are gonna get all up and angry and bent out of shape and spend half your lives bitching and blogging and writing nasty emails back and forth about a measly $2? You're going to call it "repugnant" and be sure to let us know you're deleting us from your database and are "disappointed" in our decision to charge?

Ok, hold on. I'll back up and stroke you all a little bit by saying I do, on one level, get it. I "get" several "issues" y'all may be having with the submission fee problem. I get, for instance, that:

a.) As a writer you likely submit your work to a gabillion journals every year (maybe every month?) and if we were all asking for $2.00 every time you submit...well, multiply that $2.00 by a gabillion and you get a decent little bucket of cash going out the door every month. Ok, fair enough. I have responses to that, and the following b.)s, c.)s, and d.)s below, but I'm really not interested in jumping that full-on to this bandwagon. Besides, it's all been explained and justified and defended here on this blog and on other blogs already by not only my wife, Versal's chief Editor Megan M. Garr, but several other brilliant editors and writerly types on other blogs and places where writerly-types keep tabs on these things. I digress. On with the b.)s, c.)s and d.)s...

b.) It's not just the "measly" $2.00 we're talking about, but the principle behind it. Journals don't (usually) pay writers so why should you writers pay us? What gall! This journal is charging you to submit your work, which if accepted we'll only then use to our own advantage to get the journal out there in the world! We should be paying you, and a hell of a lot more than a measly $2.00!

c.) We journals should feel blessed and lucky to receive your work and discover your brilliance spread and bourne across the page (all cheekiness aside, this is often true -- feeling lucky as a reviewer to discover some kick-ass work come up through the submission system). How dare we ask you to pay for sharing your brilliance?

d.) You as writers dunno what we're gonna do with your $2.00, and plenty of journals you've entrusted your $2.00 to in the past have sunk it back into a luscious little pint of Guinness or the like instead of putting it towards actual printing costs.

Ok, so there are a few of the a.)s, b.)s, c.)s and d.)s that I confess I do understand, on some level, might justify some (ahem, some) of the heated arguments and strong language being used around this topic on the interwebs and in my wife's inbox.

But now I go back to the wtf, seriously? part of this conversation. And the part where I want to scream at all you whining writers, "It's two f**ing dollars!". Maybe it's because I'm coming from the perspective of an artist, where I have almost always had to pay submission fees for getting my work out there in the world, under the noses of fellow art-appreciators to let it be sniffed out and scrutinized for its level of worthiness. Maybe it's because when I first started sending work out 12 years ago, I not only had to send (real live paper) checks for submission fees that were at least $2.00, if not more like $5.00, on top of paying postage for mailing an 8.5 x 11" envelope (what was that back then? $0.80 or so?), but I also had to dump loads of my oh-so-limited cash supply into the film, development and printing of multiple slides of my work, and pay postage for a SASE to include with my mailing in the event that (gasp!) I'd be rejected and the reviewers were willing to return the slides I'd just dumped my loads of hard-earned cash into. That was then. Now it's easier of course with digital cameras and files of digital artwork and so on, and with most submission process being handled online, eliminating the postage fees. But I still (almost) always get the fees -- $2.00 to $5.00 or so.

Suffice to say there's always been a cost to send my work out there as an artist. So when the question of whether or not we were going to charge this, in my mind, measly little $2.00 submission fee as a way to, first and foremost, help keep Versal afloat, I thought "Duh! Why haven't we done that before???" And then when my brilliant editor-wife showed me all the whoo-haa going on in the literary blogosphere about this subject, I just frankly got really friggin' annoyed with all these whiny writers and their whiny writer Egos and their whiny writer principles and their kind of really outdated writer thoughts and views on the way this whole literary journal system thing "should" work and their kind of really outdated ideas that journals charging submission fees are either vanity journals or a straight-up scam. And I'm thinking, "Seriously? All this fuss about $2.00? Don't they get it? Don't they get all the work it takes to put these little books together? Don't they get the printing costs?" Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that y'all used to have to pay for postage to send your work out, and $2.00 is not so different, really, from the $0.50 stamps you used to have to buy 5 or so years ago before online submissions dominated the "send your brilliance out there into the world for other people to review and fondle and decide to print up and spread all over the globe" space of the universe.

Ok. To your credit, writers, I'll say again: I get the why. I do. Especially in light of the whole BlazeVox whoo haa. Trust was broken. You felt used and you felt like someone pulled the wool over your eyes. Fair enough. Sound the alarms. Fight it out. Make yourselves and your opinions known and heard.

But, c'mon. Don't jump to the assumption that every literary journal is functioning the same way as the aforementioned (and might I add so overly referenced now to the point of being bullied in this conversation) BlazeVox or other less-than-transparent publications have behaved in the past.

We're trying our best over here in little A'dam and through the connective wires of the interwebs to be as transparent and honest with y'all as we possibly can about this new decision, this big change in Versal's life. We're about to be 10. This is a big year for us all.

I've known Megan for four years, and in those years I've watched her carry Versal around with her every minute of every day in her poet-activist-fighter's heart. I've watched her fight for Versal, love Versal, get angry about Versal, want to burn Versal down, want to build Versal up, want to keep Versal alive and thriving...but probably most importantly, I've watched her commit to the community and relationships that are Versal.

And that's I guess where I want to end. After all my venting to and about you whining writers, can I ask you to think seriously about your relationship with a literary journal? Think of it like a friend. Like someone you support, and who supports you back. Like someone who, when he or she invites you over for dinner, you'd bring a $7.00 bottle of wine for and/or a bouquet of flowers, because that fosters a system of mutual appreciation and support for the contributions you're both making in that relationship. While that subtle little monetary expectation is usually never spoken, it is in a way an agreement that could be similar to the literary journal's submission fee -- I as your friend who would like your company for dinner will pay $30.00 or so for dinner for both of us, for creating a space we can both enjoy and a space where we can both appreciate one another's talents, and you as a guest may also pay a small amount by bringing a bottle of wine or flowers to add to the atmosphere, and to contribute to our exchange as friends.

Versal can't keep going the way we were -- just barely funding our printing costs through journal sales, local workshops, and by dipping into the (not-so-deep) pockets of our (all strictly volunteer) editors to make sure the next one goes through...to make sure this thing we love and we know a lot of you out there in the world love too, can keep going. And we also can't keep going, and I'm speaking generally now about the journal to writer/creative relationship, with this expectation that the journal is there to serve you, the creative, and that we (the ones making you and a bunch of other creatives the $30.00 dinner, creating the nice atmosphere, and sending that atmosphere out there in the world for other people to enjoy) are just to continue functioning off of non-existing magic money trees.

You see, this thing between you -- you writer or you artist or you creative person functioning in some beautiful in-between space -- and Versal is a partnership. It's a relationship. We aren't here to screw you over. We aren't here to throw your hard-earned $2.00 to the Amsterdam (ahem) blow. We're here to take your creative contribution to our table seriously, to consider its placement in our little book, and to include you if it makes sense in this "dinner conversation" called Versal. We're asking for mutual respect. We're asking you to step beyond the reactionary space where you find a measly $2.00 submission fee "repugnant" and consider why your friend, Versal, who we hope you mutually respect, might be asking for you to bring along that bottle of wine. If the mutual respect is not there, well...I suppose you can go on then with your whining. I don't know that whining makes much sense at this dinner party.

So, that's my soap box. Partially through the lens of an artist who has always had to reach into her pockets to get her work out there. Partially as a person who just thinks it's stupid to be whining about $2.00 (even though now I'm also a person at least bitching about $2.00). Partially as the partner of the editor whose inbox is starting to fill up with whiny writer complaints. But mostly just as me, Shayna Schapp, Versal's art editor, who got worked up enough about some of y'alls response to a request for $2.00 to speak up.

Versal's rejection letters, or a close look at our process of enthusiasm

2011-09-14T18:50:00.003+02:00

Have you seen this great new wiki of rejection letters?

What a resource, for writers and editors alike.

How so for editors? Because this provides an overview of what we're all saying. How we're talking to our communities. And I don't think any of us take the rejection letter lightly, but some ways we have languaged rejections may become outdated over time. Speaking as a writer who has been receiving rejection letters since 1997, I haven't noticed a significant change in the way they read. That's almost 15 years. Certainly something could change by now? With this resource, we can start to share what works and what doesn't, start to identify "best practice" letters, start a dialogue about how we communicate with each other.

But that's a big project. For now, I've just been using the resource to help us here at Versal to improve our practices. So in the run-up to Versal 10's reading period, a few of our editors and I read through all of them and made a list of the ones we like.

["Like" being a big bucket obviously. It might be that one letter has a respectful, kind closing note, but the rest of it is dismissive. Or another has a nice way of thanking the submitter. Often it just comes down to tone, I think. And of course personal preference. In general, our team seems drawn to those letters that assume that the submitter is a three-dimensional human being who knows what they're doing. Unfortunately I felt that a lot of the letters had a demeaning or patronizing undertone, harking back to a now (I would argue) outdated perception of the relationship between writer and editor. Anyway.]

So we rewrote our letters. I assume at some point these will get posted up on the Wiki (an old one is there now), but in the interest of all things holy here they are in all their glory.

We have three "template" letters and one blank one that we can write from scratch.

The first "tier" (to use the language of the wiki) letter is sent to folks whose work is read by 1-2 editors. This letter indicates that we feel the work is not yet strong enough for continued consideration. Clearly this judgment is subjective, but all such judgments are, and like all journals we must make a distinction between what work is really "ready" for serious consideration for our journal and what work has too many weaknesses.

The second and third tier letters are sent to folks whose work is read by 2-3 editors (at our "second read" level). The letters encourage the writer/artist to submit again next time because there's something about the work we are drawn to, or strengths in the writing or artistic style we see developing over more time. It can thus include a personal message to elaborate on our reading of it (essentially this could be considered the "third tier"). This work is discussed between editors at length, via our system and possibly over drinks in a bar in Amsterdam or elsewhere.

The fourth tier letter is sent to folks whose work made it to our editorial round table. This means that it was "escalated" up to everyone in a particular editorial team (poetry, prose or art), considered by each team member individually, then discussed during a team meeting. Sometimes it takes us two meetings to come to a decision about a piece. In any case, we read the piece or parts of it aloud (or, in the case of the art team, beam it onto a big or high-res screen), those who "sent it up" talk about their reading of the piece, and Robert, Shayna or I lead a discussion around it until we come to a decision.

I'm not the final round. I don't have veto power, nor does Robert or Shayna. But it's not consensus we aim for, either. And we don't see our editorial table as jury duty. Rather, we work to listen to each others' enthusiasm or frustrations, we seek to educate ourselves on a piece's inner workings, we try to impart whatever knowledge we have about the piece to our fellow editors. It's a giving, thoughtful, excited process.

And though most intently seen during our round tables, it is one that filters through every level of our reading.

We look forward to seeing your work.

Books worth rererereading

2011-09-12T04:28:00.003+02:00

While I'm devoting the fall to reading books by friends and colleagues, I had the amazing opportunity to go back in time to read various "canons" for my PhD exams. Here's a few books I've loved and re-loved after my reading - books which, I suspect, tell us much of what we need to know about literature.

Frankenstein - not just a story about a monster (really, every story is a story about monsters). If Don Quixote and Madame Bovary are in part about bad readers, Frankenstein is about a bad writer - one who can't accept that his (/her) hybrid birth has a life of its own. I love the double-frame, and how the juicy center of the novel is fully inhabited by the monster's tale.

Middlemarch - Eliot reads the brains, manners, and actions of her characters better (and more ironically) than anyone. The book is a compendium of people, artifacts, digressions that far exceed any one character's journey.

Moby Dick - talk about digression! As Ahab, I was "dismasted" after reading MD or, The Whale. A journey of language, a journey of a ship. Messing with the adventure novel, MD meanders through etymologies and symbologies of cetological goodness as much as it tells a tragedy of crew itself coffined by the whale. I will forever be haunted by Orson Welles as Father Mapple in the (not very good) movie version...

Ulysses - is not really hard to read. Of course, there are a few chapters that are difficult, but it's by no means impenetrable. It has so much sound, so much texture. Beautiful, beautiful. Really, if you're scared by the thought of reading it, don't be (yes, Finnegan's Wake is still super scary).

Lolita - my sin, my soul. A book that seduces you with artifice to out-and overlook Humbert's nymphette-mania. Everything is glorious - how HH's "scepter of my passion" later devolves into a "bitter tumor of my passion."

The Art Lover - Carole Maso's elegy is charming and haunting and ultimately a breathtaking reclamation of self in the face of grief. My favorite writer in a sort of post-Duras lineage, who seamlessly merges deep emotional longing and formal sophistication.

Infinite Jest - yes, it's gigantic. And yes, it's the hippest. But it's also the most wondrous synthesis of brilliance and humor and pathos I've read in forever. I'm super-looking forward to the Decembrists' video recreating the Eschaton scene.

and for you theory-heads out there, Blanchot, Blanchot, Blanchot.

Evangelist in readerosity,

r-

Faking it.

2011-09-10T01:40:00.000+02:00

I expressed last week during a dinner party that -although excited about editing for the first time- I was extremely nervous I would be faking it all the way through.

Megan, Versal head honcho, smiled at me and said that 'we all did' at some point. She assured me that I would feel better once I got a chance to speak with Robert, the head fiction editor.

I had spoken to Robert once before through Skype about the editing process. During that chat we set a date to talk about 'literature' (quotes my own) some weeks ahead. That was meant to be about a month ago. The follow up meeting was postponed several times, Robert being in the midst of PhD exams and my needing to postpone our chat due to work overload.

Although I knew we'd get to it at some point, this did little to change the overwhelming feeling that I felt stuck in some strange limbo: I knew I was to be an editor, but I did not know what was expected of me or how I would accomplish the job. So, this anxiety led me to mention my potential fake-ness to Megan.

Robert got in touch on Monday, once his exams were complete. Since Robert did not know my experience or analytical 'skills' (again, those quotes are my own) he chose two pieces from Versal 9 to look over: A Year and Demonstrum.

I have to admit, I was a bit nervous.

We chatted a bit about my current travels in the states before moving on to business.

Robert asked several provacative and open ended questions to determine how I approached a piece. If you haven't read A Year or Demonstrum, the pieces do a good job of negating anything that is put forward. They leave the reader unhinged, caught in the grips of vertigo. Some times I felt I knew the answer, or a good enough interpretation and answered quickly. Sometimes I was left without an answer. Either way I felt excited, like I might be doing OK.

Then Robert asked me whether I would choose the two pieces for a second read. With confidence I said yes. He asked why. I said meekly, I don't know.

I was caught. There it was. A fake. A FAKE!

But Robert smiled (we had video chat on). He went on to explain that –sometimes–a certain amount of ambiguity exists in the choosing process. And that's OK. Sometimes the fiction we appreciate most around here at Versal are the ambiguous fictions, the ones that tranverse borders. The mysterious ones that use tropes as tools, that negate our notions of what fiction should be, that shoots all we know about writing out of a cannon into a million different pieces and puts it together with a TA-DA. The ones that you get a gut feeling about.

At the moment I'm reading a book called complications by Atul Gawande, given to me by a friend. You might know it: one of those New York Times Bestseller works that end up on the coffee table as a talking point. But this one is different. It is a short book about the trials and tribulations of being a modern surgean; essentially about the complications arising from being a human performing duties in a profession where robot like precision and miracles are expected.

A large portion of the book talks about learning on the job. That surgeons who go through years and years of training are eventually untethered and have to learn a great deal about cutting into live human beings. A scary thought.

Surgeons faking on the job. Learning as they go. Cutting up things that were never meant to be cut.

Going Dutch

2011-09-07T20:52:00.000+02:00

So it seems that the capitalist system is failing small press publishing in America.

Though I'm no economist, the economics of this look pretty straightforward to me. The literary economy is saturated with presses and journals. The consumers in this economy are consuming what they reasonably can. But the revenue is spread so thin that, in general, no press or journal can survive without external cash injections from grants or credit cards.

In the wake of BlazeVOX-gate, lots is coming out about small press publishing. For the first day or so I think I really did read almost every comment, because I'm really interested in what good can come out of this discussion, for writers and publishers alike. I've admittedly fallen behind on my reading but have a bazillion tabs open in Firefox.

The following list is a generalized distillation of some of what's rising to the surface (at least of what I've seen so far):

A general consensus that we (writers and publishers) value transparency where (at least) money is involved (and I think we may be starting to admit that money is always involved, even if it's in an "intangible" form like doing one's own book promotion)

Professionalism is a pretty good default to stand by

A general consensus that there are not enough consumers for the number of presses and journals (or that the level of consumption itself is too low)

There are people who believe that the right of publication should be free, and people who believe in shared economic models (for lack of a better term)

There are people who believe art and money cannot or should not coexist, and people who believe that they can (or at least have to)

Many publishers are experimenting with new business models, or considering them

We all at least seem to agree that we wish things were different, or easier, or both

A few months ago I asked on this very blog how we, writers, could improve our participation in the literary economy. I am a writer and an editor, so I include myself in this question. I have thought about this a lot over the past few months; the BlazeVOX discussion has, if anything, helped my vocabulary along so I can grapple with it better.

In a nutshell, answering this question starts with me just being me. In other words, what do I do and what more can I do? (Now I feel like Johannes and the hippie.)

I asked myself what my consumption is in the literary economy (what I take out of it, so to speak. I'll leave out what I put in to the economy for now). In brief, it is, in no particular order:
- Supporting KickStarter campaigns of presses and journals I like
- Subscribing to my favorite literary mags
- Subscribing to one or two "seasons" of presses I love
- Buying a literary journal I haven't seen before but want to submit to
- Buying extra copies of journals in which my work is published
- Registering for AWP
- Buying about a suitcase full of small press books at AWP
- Purchasing gifts for friends and family from small presses and online bookstores like Powell's
- Writing checks for contest fees (which isn't easy, because I really do forget how to write a check)

So let's say all of us are doing roundabout the above. But that's clearly not enough to sustain all those presses and journals out there that we love. What else can we do?

When I saw that 1913 a journal of forms was actually open for submissions, I rushed over to its website. I freakin' love 1913. I saw it has a small reading fee. I didn't hesitate. If anything, I thought, hell, there's no chance my poetry is going to be accepted by 1913 but I'll throw this journal $3 so other people will be and can be and so that 1913 can be a journal.

And that's when it hit me.

I'M A SOCIALIST.

Blame it on Holland. Blame it on my hippie parents or my Montessori preschool. Blame it on my feminism or big Catholic family or the fact that I'm short. Or gay.

I believe in the basic tenants of socialism because I believe in sharing. And I'm starting to see the literary economy like I see my healthcare coverage in Holland:

I pay €135 a month for premium healthcare coverage. On top of that I pay (highish) taxes for healthcare based on my income each year, and a max €175 co-pay (for the whole year). I don't see additional bills once I've hit the yearly co-pay max. And here's the kickers: I have a chronic illness. I take medication daily and see doctors and have blood tests regularly. I also go to a physical therapist once a month for preventative care so that I don't injure myself climbing. Massages are covered. Dentist trips are covered. Hell, until recently, vitamins were covered. Oh yeah, EVERYONE IN HOLLAND IS COVERED.

It ain't perfect, but I don't pay out of pocket for an emergency ambulance ride either.

Imagine we all took a socialist attitude towards publishing, but one of course that didn't rely on "outside" government support. What if we said to ourselves, sure, I'll pay this $3 reading fee or this $20 contest fee or I'll share the costs of my book's publication so that not only I can continue to enjoy the privilege of print but others can as well.

I don't mean to demean the seriousness of our human right to healthcare, but it serves as a good example of where my head's going. It's going away from the economic model I was taught growing up (me! me! me!) to the one I've learned to love in my adopted home (all! all! all!). Johannes Goransson brought up the problematized "Author" in his post and I'd like to take that a step further and complicate the MY WORK IS GREAT AND YOU ARE PRIVILEGED IF YOU GET TO PUBLISH IT idea as being the major contribution any of us make to the world of literature.

Clearly I'm simplifying things. But I hope I'm at least making my point. If we all agree we're committed to seeing writing in print, esp. non-mainstream writing that is not part of the normal capitalist Amazon economy, then does it not follow that we all join in the economics to make that happen? And thus change our minds a bit on what that looks like? The world has changed drastically since I was taught to detest submission fees and vanity presses. Can we not change as well?

I also just want to point out one more thing. In my final post about the help Versal got from some €3000/day strategy consultants, I mentioned that one of the first ideas the consultants had was to charge a fee for submissions. Keep in mind these guys have no idea what's going on over there in the American literary world. They purposefully didn't come into the meeting with much background because we all wanted to see what would come out of the brainstorm if we had a blank page. And the idea came up almost immediately, because they felt that the fee would be a good "channel" to increase writers' participation in the literary economics.

How very socialist of them.

Like correctly spelled words in sentences.

2011-09-05T22:24:00.000+02:00

The latest fray in literary America, which like most I am watching from afar, has me thinking a lot about best practices in publishing.

If you haven't been keeping up, start here, where writer Brett Ortler shares his recent but seemingly conditional acceptance from BlazeVOX. Then head over to HTMLGiant, which picked up the story rather quickly and where, true to form, the comments threads exploded. There are some heated responses out there, too. And last but not least, BlazeVOX's own Geoffrey Gatza responds here.

I'm following the fray closely because I am interested in what is between the lines of this discussion. There's actually quite a lot between the lines but I'm focusing on where it touches issues of business models and (business) practices, transparency, the changing relationships in the literary economy, what we "should" do, how we're/it's all changing, and the much-discussed "future of publishing".

These are each big discussions in and of themselves, which is probably in part why Mr. Ortler's blog catalyzed such a huge debate.

If you've been following our own blog over the last month, you'll know we're struggling with these very issues. Trying to find and implement a new business model for our journal has been an exciting but scary road, and I've tried to share as much about that road as I can, and will continue to do so. And foremost on my mind has been how to continue to be the honest, transparent and respectful journal that we started as and have grown more into. Which is why I'm thinking so much about best practices.

What are best practices? Wiki has a pretty good summary on them. In short, they are generally accepted things that work. For example, we could study what kinds of rejection letters are the "best" using certain criteria. Once you define what is "best", you can determine what practices will lead to it. So in the case of the rejection letter, we might define "best" as being respectful, non-demeaning, encouraging but honest. We could harness indicators like repeat submissions to determine how effective a letter is at its intended goal (some letters, e.g., may want to discourage a writer from sending work to the journal in the future, while others may want to encourage a writer to try again). The practice of writing such letters will have to do with things like the quality of the writing, the diction of its vocabulary, the signature (i.e. signed by an editor or by "The Editors"), the time lapse between submission and rejection, etc. Hard to imagine, maybe, but these things are actually measurable...

It wasn't too long ago that a situation in publishing led to the establishment of a best practice. Foetry's whistle blowing and the subsequent attention that bad contest practices got prompted CLMP to develop a contest code of ethics, which many contests now employ.

This latest eruption has underscored a lot of things, but for me as Versal's editor while Versal undergoes a change, I am interested in some of the best practices for small publishers that are coming to light. Like:

1. Grammatically correct and well-structured correspondence
2. Transparent business models
3. Transparent and upfront publishing terms

In a way these seem very obvious, and almost stupid to write down. But I think a letter that I write to someone who has entrusted me with her work should be well-written and not have spelling errors. I've spent nearly 10 years now with Versal thinking about these things, and assuming I was just a total nerd, and in an early instance having to argue with a fellow (now gone) Versal editor about why he should write emails that had complete sentences, and feeling then like I just was too uptight and generally not cool while his slightly manic emails were "cool" because they were "natural".

But this post isn't because I feel vindicated now by the crowd. It's because I want to continue (here and elsewhere) talking with writers and editors and everyone interested in what we can all do to make this better. And sometimes the best place to start is somewhere really simple. Like correctly spelled words in sentences.

Feel free to share what you think are "best practices" in small publishing down there in the comments. And also other thoughts. Already this big debate is starting to move "forward". Part of that can be about how in this major transitional time for publishers, we can be "best" at what we're doing.

A summary of advice, part 3

2011-08-23T11:00:00.004+02:00

So by now, hopefully, I've explained the crossroads where Versal finds itself and I've listed several directions the consultants thought we could go. In this final post, I'll list those ideas that we are considering - and I'm sure, for those of you still reading, this may cause some debate. Please be kind, I think comment flame wars are lame.

Ideas we're considering

1. Expanding sales/reach into the broader arts community
Versal, as most of you know, is "more" than "just" a literary journal, and it's been that way since we started in 2002. It's a veritable object, an artistic archive, a coffee table book, if you will. In the last few years, our editorial reach into the arts community has expanded considerably. Translating that into copy sales is a good next step. For example, we recently joined the shelves at the Stedelijk Museum here in Amsterdam.

2. Professionalize
This may seem like a somewhat vague step, but with the consultants' help we could give form to a Versal that is not run like a non-profit, but like an enterprise. Sounds scary, I know. But I can see some advantages: a bank start-up loan, for example, might allow us to rent office space, get a few of us on a payroll, and help us inch towards economies of scale if we want. One potential element of professionalization would be if members of the editorial team become shareholders - essentially buying Versal and realizing later financial return from the investment. I could definitely see this model working for a brand new journal, where each editor joins in with an investment of funds, and once the journal reaches profitability the editors get "paid".

3. Leverage our contact moments
"Contact moments" is industry speak for the times when Versal comes in contact with a person. Each of these moments is a sales opportunity. For example, we could leverage pre-ordering during the submission process by asking folks if they would buy the issue, whether published or not. A non-binding agreement, of course, but an indication for us of how many buyers we may get from our submitters, and a nudge to those who send us work that supporting the journal may be a good thing.

4. Charge for submissions
Corollary to #3 is to charge a small fee for submissions. This idea came up pretty quickly in the brainstorm, as the consultants felt it was more than reasonable to ask a few bucks for the time we invest in work review. And a few bucks would be no more than the old SASE costs, especially the international ones. Since Versal's review process is editor-only (no interns, undergrads, or the like reviewing the "slush pile" - we read it all), and we give frequent personal feedback, there's added value to sending your work to Versal. Plus, if you're accepted, your work will never have looked so damn good. The consultants were convinced a submission fee could help. I explained that there's a lot of controversy about this, and industry-disparagement of the practice (e.g. Duotrope does not list journals that charge for submissions), but I am pretty sure as both an editor and a writer that this is where things are going. The recent discussion on HTML Giant seems to agree. And personally, if I really want to get my work into a journal and it charges me $3, I think that's $3 well spent.

5. Engage our network
In 10 years, we've crossed paths in one way or another with hundreds of people. Writers and artists who have sent us work, people who have bought copies, editors we have exchanged copies with ... the list goes on and on and on. I would recommend to any new literary journal that it starts an Excel spreadsheet or database of some kind to keep track of all of its contacts. These people can be tapped for later sales (that sounds bad, but you know what I mean), sent questionnaires to gain insights into the market, asked to reach out to their networks, etc. We have probably a dozen different spreadsheets by now, so our systems in that sense are a total mess, but we could better leverage our contacts to boost sales - I'm sure of this.

6. Editors' better engage their networks
Here's an example. The strategy consultants are one of my clients (I am a freelance editor, writer and translator, working with Dutch companies to improve their English texts), and are 70-strong at their Amsterdam office. So I pitched Versal 9 to their account manager as the annual Christmas gift. We'll see if he bites. Another idea: those editors who teach in schools could teach Versal 9 - and the school pays for students' copies. It's not just about sending an email to our families, it's about tapping our professional networks too.

I hope this has been helpful, not only to other editors struggling with sustainable business models for their endeavors, but to writers out there who want more than a glimpse behind the curtain of the journal world. Though this post concludes my series on the advice we got from the strategy consultants, I will no doubt continue to share insights that we've had under their guidance, our thoughts on some of the potential directions we can go (like submission fees), and maybe a few pie charts.

The Manager

2011-08-22T18:06:00.010+02:00

The First in My Series of Behind the Scenes Action

A file transfer request landed in my fancy Words In Here email account.

It was from head editor Megan Garr, who found time between climbing and fighting off testosterone-filled idiots to send me something special:

A zip file, filled to the brim with videos explaining our purpose built submission manager.

I was receiving training materials because soon, strikingly soon, our submission manager opens.

Begin the flood.

Worry set in.

Those first couple weeks.

Reading day-in and day-out.

Raccoon circles under the eyes.

Coffee and coffee.

Stress.

But after watching the videos and familiarizing myself with the submission manager, the stress was quashed.

Our editorial team–although lacking interns–is deep enough to make the whole process workable.

How It's Done

The head editor for the team (poetry, or in my case fiction), picks out a random ten stories which she/he then sends to an editor.

Throughout the reading process each editor has a partner.

If at any point I or my partner are overwhelmed by too much backlog, or if a story is good but not our cup of tea, we can pass on. This prevents rejection due to matters of individual taste or over saturation.

If there is a story that impresses us we pass it on to a second reader with our personal notes on the piece attached. Why is this story good? How does it fit into the Versal canon?

The second editor agree, or disagrees. We chat about it. The story is either rejected or moved on to the next stage.

If the story passes the second reading the entire editorial team for that genre (poetry or fiction) reads the piece. If everyone likes it, the whole editorial team (poetry and fiction) discusses what to do next. Good enough for the magazine? Or a very personal rejection letter?

So very democratic.

Relief

I don't think we're reinventing the wheel here, but there's no need to. A well organized reading process not only keeps stress to a minimum, it also ensures the highest quality out of the journal.

September 15th, 2011. Here it comes.

"That boulder's so easy even a girl could do it"

2011-08-19T15:01:00.006+02:00

I've been bouldering for four and a half years now. I usually train three times a week at my local climbing gym, and the muscle strength in my arms grew so fast that in the first few years I was frequently grounded with weird finger injuries. But even then, after only two years, I was nudging a 7a in the famed Fontainebleau and playing with the burley, lengthy 6cs at the gym. And I can hold on to small edges in a way that'll make you cringe. When I'm there, I don't think about poetry or Versal or the lit world. Or anything else, really, besides being there. I don't compete, and don't want to, but bouldering is the only sport I've ever loved, I'm good at it but not an elite by far, and it confronts me with a range of challenges and fears, from the physical to the intellectual to the spiritual/emotional.

And that brings us to "That boulder's so easy even a girl could do it".

Last night during training, I was warming up on a fingery 6b. Rumor has it I'm one of the only ones in the gym to have topped it out because the last hold is such a small pinch that most guys can't hold on long enough. But it's shaped perfectly for my small hand, plus there's that finger strength.

My buddy Casper was showing some newer climbers a 6a nearby. I think these kids are exchange students; two of them speak Russian and two of them German, but they speak a broken English between them. They struggled on the boulder but one of them, the louder of the bunch, finally did it. When he jumped off, he said, "That boulder's so easy even a girl could do it."

Casper shot a look at me and then blew some air out of his nose. "Don't ever say that again," he said. Casper knew I'd attack the dude.

I was close enough to have heard but not close enough to have been a natural part of the conversation, but f*** that. I shouted across the bouldering cave, "What did you just say?"

The kid looked at me blankly. "What did you just say?" I repeated. He stammered. I didn't let up. "I can climb better than you any day," I said.

"I'm sure you can," he replied, but unconvinced.

"Yes," I said flatly. "I can."

One of his friends looked at me sympathetically. "He didn't mean it like that."

"That's bullshit," I replied.

The little troupe of boys got quiet. Casper and I started talking about a 7a we're both attempting, and the boys moved on to another part of the cave.

Boulders at my gym are burley and reachy, which means they're mostly all built by tall Dutch guys who like shouldery moves that will show off their muscles. The technical, subtle boulders that I love are rare there, and I plateaued at the 6b level for quite some time thanks to a combination of those reachy boulders and my own attitude that the boulders are "too reachy" and stupid anyway. But I finally read the famed 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes by Dave MacLeod, and I've been working the last two months to overcome my attitude problem. Just because guys dominate our gym doesn't mean I can't climb successfully there. Within a week or two I had ascended my first plastic 6c, and several more since.

Guys at my gym either ignore the girls who boulder, or spend a lot of time giving them advice. This advice usually comes in the form of a laugh when you fall off, and then them going to the wall and showing you the move. Keep in mind that a move between holds can be very different for a tall person. I'm 5'4", so my methods are often more technical and creative, whereas a tall guy can usually just reach up and go. Older men who are not very good climbers themselves seem to approach me sorrowfully when I'm working on a harder boulder, and they offer all kinds of "tips" with a patronizing smile. This has become more frequent since my hair has grown out (when I started climbing, I was Sinead O'Conner shaved). I've watched the exchange between guys there, and have noticed that the better guy climbers never seem to attract advice. People just leave them be.

Last night, I was the only girl bouldering. Well, my friend Fleur was there, but she's 8.5 months pregnant so she was staying on the flat walls and taking frequent breaks. I mean, 8.5 months pregnant and she's been at the gym every week at least once. That's hardcore. I'm not sure I would do it.

About a half hour after my exchange with the Russian kid, he came up to me. I thought he might try to apologize. Instead he said, "If you're so good, why don't you show me how to do this." He'd been working on a 6a in a roof.

"I'm not going to show you a thing," I said. "If you're so good, why don't you teach yourself."

"I'm not so good."

"No, you're not." Which was unfair of me to say, I realize, however true.

"But you're good."

"Yes, I am."

"So show me."

"I'm not going to show you anything." I was calm but stern. "Don't talk to me again, dude. I don't want to have anything to do with you."

His request was part-apology, part-challenge, and I was not going to yield. He left me alone the rest of the night, as did his friends, but I noticed they kept an eye on me. Out of suspicion or anger, I'm not sure. I don't really care. What I care about is that I'm confronted more often than I'd like in middle-class Europe with misogyny and unfounded male-domination, be in at climbing gym or in the poetry world.

I had planned to write about my experiences at the Prague Microfestival but never did. The organizers of the event are good people, even if they surround themselves and the festival with men who walk around acting entitled and superior. Several of the readings there were public displays of male masturbatory pride. One poet who will remain unnamed read an excerpt from some ridiculously long poem that was designed, we concluded later, just to piss off his audience. He read slowly and with a smirk on his face for 45 minutes, 2x longer than most other readers. The Amsterdam contingent was me and three other women, and luckily a few other women did sprinkle the program. But the contrast was stark and the masculinity of the event pervasive. We even made up a rap one night, after a few of those big Czech beers, called "Penis on the Table, Penis in Prague" – taken from an image Shayna gets whenever testosterone fills the room. As I described in my piece in A Megaphone, the Microfest is like most other events in the international community here on the continent -- male-dominated, and unapologetic about or purposefully unaware of it.

Last night's confrontation reminded me of a few things. One, that I had never written about my experience in Prague, out of fear that I would upset its organizers. Two, that speaking up isn't hard. Three, of that fantastic scene in Antonia's Line when the mother aims a shotgun at the man who raped her daughter. Four, that my feminism runs through me through-and-through, and is a part of every step I take in this world.

A summary of advice, part 2

2011-08-17T17:09:00.004+02:00

In my last post, I provided some background on our current "problem". The consultants got a one-pager that I go back to from time to time now; I like seeing the situation condensed into 190 words.

The 3+ hour long brainstorm yielded some insights specific to Versal, but many of them probably apply to most literary journals which run independent from an institution (or without some kind of external funding). I'll continue this series with the ideas we threw out, and move on in my next post to those which we're either considering or planning to implement.

The ideas we threw out (at least for now)

1. Increase retail price:
The consultants were convinced (and still are) that Versal's high quality production values far exceed the price we slap on the cover (€14.95 as of Versal 9). They're right that it's worth more than you pay for it. But it wasn't hard to benchmark the American literary journal community to find that Versal is at the higher range of cover prices out there. The average, from the sampling I took, is around $11.40.

2. Increase scale:
This follows the economies of scale theory that you may or may not be familiar with. Basically, the theory is that if a company increases the number of units produced, then the cost per unit decreases as fixed costs (production costs) become shared over a larger number of units. In Versal words, we would print, like, 2000 copies, the cost per copy would go down, and we would focus our efforts on hardcore, professional distribution. Why are we not doing this? Right now, I am the proud storage space for boxes of Versals new and old, and I have no desire to house whatever 2000 copies will look like. Until we get an office or a real distributor, scale increase isn't really an option. But for some journals, it could be.

3. Switch to POD:
For those of you who are familiar with the look and feel of Versal, it will be obvious why we're not doing this one. POD is standardized territory, and high quality POD is still territory being charted. Maybe this is where things will go one day, but for now, turning Versal into a POD book would be like me writing a romance novel. Or something like that.

4. Adjust wholesale pricing:
The consultants were appalled that most bookstores only take literary journals on consignment, and were additionally floored by the standard 60/40 split. They encouraged us to renegotiate all of our contracts with bookstores, an action I would very much like to take -- if I thought it had any way of going anywhere. Changing our own practices is one thing; changing industry practices like the consignment tradition and the heavy price tag just seem out of our current galaxy of influence. A situation I may look into harder in the future, but I want to focus my energies elsewhere for now. And our small distribution list is just that, small, so the impact of that much work would be minimal.

5. Initiate crowd review of submissions:
To be honest, we didn't really explore this idea in much detail because it didn't really address our major problems, and I wouldn't consider our editorial team a problem area on any level. I think the idea came during a discussion of engaging the greater community better, and thus leading, in theory, to more book sales. I think this could be an interesting MO for a journal, but it's not an experiment I want to conduct with Versal. You can call me on all kinds of old-school, old-boys, old-washed-up things for this, but you can't really, because I'm in my early 30s (started Versal when I was 23), I'm a woman (and a dyke at that, whoa), and I don't have an MFA. And I love my team and I love putting Versal together with them (c.f. Versal 9's editorial).

In my next installment, I'll share the ideas we like.

A summary of advice, part 1

2011-08-08T20:47:00.006+02:00

In my July 26 post I mentioned that we had the opportunity to sit down with several senior-level strategy consultants about the situation at Versal. Many have asked me what kind of advice we got, so here's part 1 of a summary of the 3+ hour brainstorm.

We came to them with a very basic question: "How can we keep going?" To understand the enormity of this question, you need to know a few things about Versal.

Versal started out as just a spoke in the wheel of "wordsinhere", a non-profit focused on supporting local, international writers. In fact, when I moved here in 2001, there was no literary community to speak of, so wordsinhere acted like a kind of instigator: a journal, local events, workshops, etc. etc. Everything you might expect from a literary community so that writers living here, who are not working in Dutch, can still find the support they need.

Completely volunteer-run, we survive on a circular, community business model: revenues from local programming pay the costs of the journal (i.e. printing and shipping), and of course whatever other costs we incur from programming. We have never had an office, so it has been through alliances with other local organizations (like Mezrab) and businesses (like The English Bookshop) that we have been able to offer writers "space" to meet, workshop, and read.

Over the last ten years, Amsterdam's international literary community has found its feet. It's no Paris or New York, but it's an active, supportive, conscious and connected community of writers. I love being here. And the community's foundations have also, in turn, given me the opportunity to focus more of my energies on Versal itself and on being its editor (or Queen Bee, as Robert calls me).

The problem? Postage costs go up each year, and soar each time another company buys the now privatized Dutch postal service (which has changed hands, and names, at least 5 times since I moved here in 2001). By regular mail, it costs us €10.45 to mail one copy of Versal to anywhere outside of the EU. We are lucky to have the offset printers we have, who pay attention to detail like we do yet charge us barely more than cost, but since the crisis the cost of paper has skyrocketed. And we found these rising costs hard to "pass on" to our community. Until Versal 9, a copy was only €10.00 anyway -- double that just to get it shipped to you?? Preposterous. And though our workshop programming has always been the cheapest in town, it seemed counter-intuitive to charge the same exorbitant rates as some of our "competitors" -- we, too, believe the old adage that writers are generally of the poorer ilk, and unless Margaret Atwood's the one standing at the front how could we charge €150 for an 8-hour fiction course?

Maybe the answers to the question above seems obvious to you -- maybe it has always been to us, too. But the consultants brought me more than face-to-face with my gut instincts. They also, as I mentioned before, gave me a sense of perspective. The literary economy, whatever it is, thinks much like I do -- not business-like, not economically. And that's ok, maybe, but it's a weird positioning if what you need to do, or want to do, at the end of the day, is sell copies.

In my next post, I'll share some of the brainstorm we had with the consultants.

Oh, and that's my bike in the middle of nowhere Holland. On the first of three sunny days this summer. It represents spokes and wheels and stuff.

A Call to the Writers

2011-07-28T11:33:00.017+02:00

Our head-honcho Megan started a bit of a fire with her post the other day. She made the not-so-shocking confession in her short essay that running a literary magazine at a profit is impossible -even financial suicide. The conversation has spilled over into other corners of the internets, even on HTML Giant.

There were many arguments raised by the HTML Giant post by Roxanne Gay of Pank, all which need to be answered in good time, but I want to focus on the importance of writers purchasing journals.

First, let’s get one thing straight. If every writer who submitted to Versal purchased a back copy, we would sell out quickly. Hell, we might even be able to get into the black.

In an ideal world, writers should purchase the journals they want their work in. But the reality is that many submitters have not purchased a copy and in most cases, have never read the journal at all.

But this comment is weighted. Writers are not wealthy people. To get published, sometimes you need to simultaneously submit to 20 journals just to get your work looked at. At 10 to 20 bucks a pop, this adds up. It’s probably damn near impossible to buy all those journals on the regular writer’s salary.

In reality, the writers submitting to 20 journals at a time are the serious ones who do buy a journal when they can. The best you can is good enough for sure.

But it is the new writers, the ones not quite established or working hard at their craft, that have to step up. Supporting journals has practical applications for the aspiring writer.

Something I've spoken about briefly on this blog is how engagement with the writing community as a whole is one of the essential components of being a good writer/editor. Although some engagement should be face-to-face -meeting editors and other writers at conferences, going to writer groups, etc- it is also important to engage with the literary journals that publish new writing.

Just as reading the "big" novelists helps shape your writing style during the formative years, reading journals helps refine abilities. Seeing so many variations of the writing craft -how writers engage with material, how they call upon historical stylistic norms and how they make their work subversive- is a learning experience (for any writer, young or old). If there are so many ways to engage with fiction, why feel obligated to adhere to the lessons of the "masters"?

Where do you fit in? How would you know without purchasing journals what is current? Maybe you don't fit in. Maybe you don't want to? These are the questions some journals can answer.

And if we refuse to buy the journals, then we can’t complain when the model needs to change. We, as the writing community, can’t persist in the same way. Governments in financial turmoil are not going to support leftist hobbies (one of the more infuriating comments from Dutch politician Geert Wilders this year).

Journals will never likely have the large following that magazines who also happen to public fiction might have, such as the New Yorker. We can’t expect it. Something has got to give.

I chortled a bit the first time I encountered submission fees. Do we, as writers, ever get paid?

We cry out when we see submission fees, but what is the problem really? Submission fees are are often less than actually buying the journal itself, and goes toward the publication of a journal that you, as the writer, has deemed worthy of having your piece published in. Some journals have even started PAYING their writers with this model, god forbid. Even better, some journals running contests with a entry fee give a journal away with entry. Can a submission model work in the same way?

But maybe part of the journal revolution can come from the writers, who suddenly, one day, all start buying the journals they want to survive. Even better, the writers start handing them out as gifts, shouting from the rooftops how good they are.

Not everyone has to read Jonthan Franzen.

Note: This post poses a lot of questions and half formed thoughts. No definitive arguments are made here. I want your thoughts on what writers can do to further support their favorite journals.

Why 1 to 100 was always going to fail

2011-07-26T16:13:00.007+02:00

Versal festival armband around a street sign in Prague.

I've come to the grim realization lately that out of all the Versals that leave this house/my hands/our stock/Amsterdam, only about 30% of those are actually sold. The remaining 70% go to all the expected places, free. Contributors, of course, receive a free copy. Review copies, swaps and editorial contacts make up a huge "promotional" percentage of gratis gratis. What's left, at least of issues 5, 6 and 7, are unopened cardboard boxes in my attic.

In other words, I am one crappy sales person.

A lot of editors I know and have spoken with over the years believe deep-down in the purity of this inventory spread. The work we collect must be in the world. In whatever way possible. We'll leave rogue copies on coffee counters. Slip one or two between politico blah blah at the chain bookstore. Swap copies with other editors as a sign of goodwill. Donate them en masse to fairs that raise money for literary organizations or otherwise. Sales run contrary to our bones. We were made to write, to edit, to appreciate. Not to hold it up and ask someone to buy.

This is all great if there's money coming from somewhere. Or if you're in just "in it for fun" at the copy shop. The first model, where money is coming in from some outside source, is a little like European socialism where government funds are (were) used to bolster less capitalist ventures, like healthcare or the arts. So I'm thinking of university journals, mostly. The second model is more like anarchy, squatting. A utopian vision of the world passed from hand to hand without commerce. [Side note: Here in the Netherlands the first is dying a violent death while the second is rising up with new force in the face of also violent government crackdown.] Anyway, for those of us in the middle, which can rely neither on a socialist model nor on the goodwill of celebrated poverty, we seem stuck in a constant feedback loop of frustration. Why? I think I'm starting to think that it's because we're trying to swim in the free (capitalist) market. We have to rely on the crowd for survival, but we're modeled after one of the two above. So we're confused.

Swimming around in the "marketplace" isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm learning. Everyday I watch fellow editors use the crowd networks of Twitter and Facebook and now + to try to promote their things. I'm developing my own rhythm with it too, trying to extract from vague "impressions" numbers what time of day is best to post about buying Versal, or when people really just want to be linked to some cool article that they'll then share and I'll see rise up again in my newsfeed. So we're already using the crowd, or trying to.

But what I'm really coming to understand is that I don't know how to sell to that crowd. The problem is clearly a lack of math. Not of math skills, but rather of math not coming anywhere near my understanding of reality. I think a lot of editors feel this way. And even most of the panels I see on it seem to be legions behind most marketing and sales know-how out there. For my journal to survive, though, I need to figure this out. Versal will not receive funding from the Dutch government or any of the arts funds here, especially not now. And we'd rather end the journal than turn it into a cheaper product or move it entirely online. If we're going to be in the middle, we had better figure out how to be the middle too.

The 1 to 100 by August 1 campaign was set up before most of these realizations started taking form. I had the hunch, I guess, but now I have pie charts. And, typical me, the campaign was set up to fail. I knew we would never reach 100 sales in just 3.5 weeks. That's preposterous.

And that's also really sad. Right?

Last Wednesday, we had the rare opportunity to sit down with 9 upper level strategy consultants to talk about Versal. They were appalled by some of the cliches we throw around every day. Like, writers are poor. Like, people submit to journals they've never read. Like, bookstores buy the journal at a 40% discount. Like, bookstores don't even buy it, they just take it on consignment.

I was floating after that meeting. I took a breath, got some perspective, confirmation that we navigate somewhat crazy waters here, that we model ourselves after the socialist university mags or the utopian zines but we're actually crashing against regular-old capitalist realities. So of course our survival has become rather freaktified and precarious.

But I'm not going to blame our community on this. It's not anyone else's fault that Versal's sales numbers aren't high enough to pay for Versal. My failure here is ok. I'm not upset about it. We've survived almost ten years on sheer willpower. TEN YEARS. I'm really proud of us, we have made something truly unique in the literary world, and we're going to keep making it. With the fantastic team of editors and volunteers who support us, and our beautiful local community and greater global community, we're going to sell this f***er. To quote Miss Scarlett in Clue, August 1 is just a red herring.

This post is messy and these thoughts more so, but I'd love to hear your ideas on this if you have them. What do you think your role is as a writer, in terms of the literary world's economy? What would you like to see happen (not just with Versal but with lit mags in general)? What measures has your journal taken to overcome some of these obstacles? etc. etc.

A History of Time

2011-07-21T09:43:00.005+02:00

I started out as an actor.

Yeah, one of those guys; working in New York City, bussing tables and going to auditions. A real A-type.

I studied acting in college, had some good instruction from some great teachers and moved to NYC. I auditioned into the Terry Schreiber Studio and spent some time there.

But NYC, as you probably know, is a hard place. I was a green kid from Ohio -still am- and the city ate me alive. I was evicted from an apartment, squatted a place or two, slept on a pile of clothes as a bed, etc. I was worn down and done with it in a short period of time.

I moved to London after that. Another hard city, but I landed on my feet. I kept on acting. I performed increasingly abstract pieces at the ICA, the Buxton Fringe Festival and the Shunt Vaults. And I started writing as well.

To be perfectly clear; although I was acting during my late teens to mid 20s, I was always writing. I can't really remember a time when I wasn't. I wrote Sci-Fi stories and comic book story lines as a kid, short stories as a teenager, even tried my hand at a terrible novel in my early 20s; but I started seriously when I moved to London.

I was interested in writing plays during the first part of my time in London.These were language heavy pieces that relied greatly on line breaks and rhythm. One play I wrote, if I remember correctly, was almost entirely done in dactylic hexameter. I don't know what drove me to do that. Insanity maybe.

During my third year in London I lost interest in theater. In turn I gave up on plays as well. I started writing bad short stories instead, and tried another scatter-brained novel (a story about a guy with synesthesia). But writing in this way stuck. And over time, I got better. I published a few things under a pseudonym and found my groove.

There was a time when getting involved with a literary magazine seemed like the last thing I would do. Or wanted to do. Most editors have an "in", right? It's all very incestuous -isn't that true?

Yes. In many instances it is. But luckily I found some regular people, working within the writing industry, in Amsterdam.

I grabbed on to the Words In Here community tight. When there was a new event, I was there. I introduced myself to everyone, tried my hardest to keep things professional and not have too many beers from the bar, and eventually, I found myself at the editors table. It wasn't work exactly, it was persistance.

I'm not a graduate from Yale. I don't have literary blood coursing through my veins. And I guess this is why I decided to share this history. It's common. Nothing really special.

An Introduction

2011-07-14T13:20:00.015+02:00

Faithful Versal readers,

I’m the new fiction editor for the journal.

I am also new to editing.

So, the trust put into me by the welcoming editorial personnel of Versal is immense.

I'm learning as I go. Faking it till I'm making it.

And maybe that is what you are doing.

I assume, as a reader of a fine literary journal such as ours, you may be a writer or an editor, chugging along, learning the tricks and mechanisms behind the world of publishing as you go.

This can be hard. Lonely. There seems to be a mystical aura surrounding publishing and the -rather cliquey- literary journal landscape; impenetrable without some sort of incantation or relic. It doesn't have to be that way. If only there were a way to make the publishing of a journal more transparent.

Well, I’ve been asked to write a series of posts that introduce to you devoted who read this very small patch of cyber space how it works behind the scenes of Versal. From here you will follow the step-by-step process; gearing up for the submission avalanche, the nail biting decisions, the putting together of the actual pages of the journal -all of it.

I find myself intimidated, but it makes sense.

Who better to narrate one year of the journal’s life cycle than an outsider suddenly allowed access?

So here I am. Editing this little introduction to death. Grinding my heels into the ground with the hope that the longer I wait, the less daunting the task will seem.

So let's get on with it.

There will be regular updates here outlining the work we’re doing on the journal, my feelings on the process and some of the work out there that inspires me.

In the spirit of collaboaration, feel free to comment or ask me questions through Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/versaljournal

Or on our Facebook Page:

http://www.facebook.com/versaljournal

My next post will be a bit about my history and how I’ve stumbled upon being a Versal fiction editor.

Sincerely,
Daniel Cecil

Versal 9 acquired by The Itinerant Poetry Library

2011-07-04T17:38:00.007+02:00

Back in 2009, The Itinerant Poetry Librarian (TIPL) came to Amsterdam and we donated a copy of Versal 7 to the library.

Since then, Versal 7 has accompanied Sara Wingate Gray on some of her travels. Here it is with Sara (wearing a space suit), during the art gallery Frankenart Mart's 'Space Station' themed show in May 2011 in San Francisco.

TIPL returned to the Netherlands this year for the Poetry International Rotterdam festival, so we were able to give the library a copy of Versal 9 (after successfully completing the rigorous acquisitions interview).

TIPL has moved on from the Netherlands now, but you can keep track of the whereabouts of the library (and perhaps that copy of Versal 9) via the librarian's Twitter feed.

Another voice

2011-06-19T18:08:00.009+02:00

Aside from reading heaps of poems for Versal during the submission period and trying to write poetry myself, I do a bit of teaching. A general writing course for the Royal Art Academy in the Hague, where I teach writing to very creative 3^rd year students and poetry master workshops in Amsterdam to some very talented local writers. I can’t complain and to be honest it’s great working amongst people for whom words are a priority.

My perfect little universe was rocked some months ago when Guster approached me about putting together and teaching (in Dutch) a poetry workshop series for elementary school kids though not just poetry but rap, ugh. Of course I was enthusiastic to do it, who can afford not to be and the next days were spent driving everyone crazy by trying to rap all I had to say.

I actually have taught poetry to young kids before at a school situated in the centre of town where the lesson was a smooth affair of metaphors and allusions. This other school was in a rougher neighbourhood as far as rough neighbourhoods go in Holland and the kids accordingly challenged every trick I threw at them. I had spent hours putting together a neat little curriculum, embedded with classic Dutch children’s poems hoping to pass them off as rap (I did tell them the truth latter). Though I had inward smile moments when the kids who felt Annie M. G. Schmid was too soft, still demanded that I glue her poem into their notebook, I basically had to abandon my lesson plan and guide their energy towards something written.

With in no time they got the hang of writing and did they have a lot to say! They made incredible leaps through language and rhyme, venting about the dangers in their streets, their families’ countries of origin, local and Middle East politics, peace in the world and of course crushes. I was overwhelmed with their continuous exuberance (I’m putting it mildly) but also with the quality of what they wrote. Even the shy kid in the group was listened to which induced that kid with a kind of glow and another inward smile moment for me.

During the last lesson as we sat around the table eating good-bye cookies and lemonade, one of the girls told me she hadn’t learned anything during my class and on the contrary felt she was the one teaching me. We had a good laugh, but in many ways she was right. All I did was open a door, point and they all entered, me at the rear. And yes she and the rest of the kids taught me about structure, control and voice all of which I plan to incorporate when the season starts up again in September.

Another first of many changes ahead

2011-06-14T02:30:00.002+02:00

Change is slow at a volunteer-run, non-profit, office-less place like Versal, but it happens nonetheless (particularly under duress). Today we switched mail clients to upgrade our newsletter - heck, to make it work in the first place. Haven't been getting mails from us lately? Yeah...We were sending them. But they just weren't going anywhere.

Behold the new list!

Here are some things I'm excited about right now

2011-06-06T09:29:00.004+02:00

The non-winter season in the Netherlands means more (sun)light. I'd call it spring if I felt like a summer were coming, but let's temper our expectations.

Light from 5am to 11pm or so is pretty cool.

And since there's more time, if time is the thing you get with (sun)light and/or the thing you get when you're not hunched over the production of a literary magazine, I'm reading again (yay!). Like, books from my shelves. And links tucked away on Instapaper.

So here are some things I'm excited about right now.

Super Arrow, how have I only just heard about this?
Caketrain chapbook contest (now all I have to do is write another chapbook)
things magazine, London represent!
I'm still excited by The Thing, except for the part where they published that Franco guy. Can someone tell me if his writing is actually any good?
This will come up later and somewhere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Astronaut
Shayna and I are off to Oerel later this month!
The Black Ocean 2012 sub is now on sale. Do it because it's that awesome.

There is one other thing I'm excited about that I can't reveal in public. Yet.

Who is left untouched by the world?

2011-05-19T14:04:00.005+02:00

The following is the text which I presented Saturday, May 14 at the "Poetry & Translocality" panel at the Prague Microfestival. A fantastic discussion between David Vichnar, Louis Armand, Alistair Noon, Donna Stonecipher, and myself followed.

When I first encountered the term translocality some four or five years ago, and Alistair's treatment of it in the final issue of Bordercrossing Berlin, I was immediately intrigued. Indeed, here is a word that enhances our vocabulary, our ability to describe something, and it does so morphologically. What's more, it does so openly.

In his 2009 essay, "Transculturality as a Perspective: Researching Media Cultures Comparatively", professor Andreas Hepp describes the word as follows:

"Locality emphasizes that…the local world does not cease to exist. Irrespective of how far the communicative connectivity of a locality goes, this does not prompt questions of whether a person is living his or her life primarily locally…As a physical human being, he or she must reside somewhere. "Trans," as a prefix, guides the focus from questions of locality…to questions of connectivity. If research is centered on translocality this emphasizes, on the one hand, that those questions pertaining to all that is local still matter, but that on the other hand today's locales are connected physically and communicatively to a very high degree. And that is the reason why the local does not cease to exist, but rather, changes."

The word itself asks us to be wide, to widen, to be open, flexible, dare I say inclusive. Upon reading Alistair's essay and a few of his reviews circa 2007 and 2008, I felt that our treatment of the word needed to open up, and I began writing on it myself. I thought this for several reasons:

The first of these is: There is a distinction between the translocal writer as a political/social circumstance (and pertaining to the writer's career) and translocal writing, where translocal is an adjective and perspective that can be used to understand a text—indeed, perhaps, the way a textual line is even crossed.

This distinction is important if the term is to be applied to its full potential. On the one hand, limiting translocality to an author's certain set of circumstances is instructive if we're talking about what a translocal writer faces when trying to get published in her home country, for example. But when using the term as a tool to help reveal and unravel text, as a kind of handle into the workings of a line, obviously translocality offers us much more beyond an author's personal narrative or even beyond our current temporal.

Over the course of 2008 and 2009, I worked with this idea in many ways, including in the opening editorials of Versal 7 and 8. In Versal 7's editorial, I wrote, "Up to now, most of the monologue I've seen about translocal literature is restricted to the relationship between author and his (yes, his) narrative text: observations of a street scene in Prague by a long-time foreign resident (the author)—the locality itself becoming protagonist to the poem. This either reduces the self-sufficiency of a piece alone on the page—i.e. it is the author's biography that makes a piece translocal or not--or it limits it to narrative surveillance. Certainly not all poetry is traceable to a particular mise en scene, nor is all prose a story. The very pivot of translocality would indicate that there are many, many kinds of localities, and we need not focus solely on where our (or the author's) feet are standing."

Which brings me to my next point. Up until about 2008, the vocabulary of translocality was applied almost exclusively to narrative—and to some degree lyric—poetry, and as mentioned to works by people "living abroad". This goes back to the early conflation of the writer and the writing.

Indeed it may be said that translocality is on a scale, easily exemplified by what Alistair calls the "holiday poem" but treated with more subtlety and complexity in a book like Christian Hawkey's Ventrakle or much of Paris-based poet Jennifer K. Dick's work. The "move" into long-term residence abroad can change your writing fundamentally, not just your subject matter or references. It can change your writing at the level of the line. But it is only one of many pathways towards translocal writing. Learning another language can have this effect. Access to the media of our contemporary world can have this effect. Being from a family of multiple cultures can have this effect. Take filmmaker Ish Klein's poetry, for example [here I read "Lithuanian Sunset" from her first collection].

This is not to say we should not be talking about any of this here, just that we should open the dialogue to the full breadth of its instructiveness. Looking at literary production in a place like Amsterdam or Prague--places of high concentration of tranlsocal writers—can tell us something about the mechanisms of translocality, but it is not everything.

"Sites of translocal activity—Amsterdam, Paris, Istanbul, and elsewhere—are not the privileged spaces of translocal literary production, but they are its breeding grounds. What our relocated writers can offer us, if not manifestos and hundreds of poems about foreign street markets, is insight into the inner workings of the translocal line that can then be applied everywhere. How do they invite (or force) interdependence between a string of vocabularies from two (or more) languages within a single stanza? How is the distance of a line of poetry crossed in a translocal sensibility? How is this distance ever crossed? Watch what these heavy carbon footprints are up to, and this nascent translocality concept could very well become a crucible for understanding literary production in general." [Versal 7 editorial]

Which brings me to my final point. The application of the term to cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and Prague has highlighted another issue: the prevalence of men in the local and translocal dialogue, at the readings, in the publications. For example, in Alistair's article in Bordercrossing Berlin, he names and quotes a handful of translocal male writers, yet he names only two women: Slyvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop. No living women writers are mentioned in the piece, much less as practitioners of or participators in translocality. The "numbers trouble" highlighted by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young in the Chicago Review in 2007 is no less of an issue in our translocal communities here in Europe, and certainly this state of affairs should not go uncriticized.

By being limited in how we talk about it—indeed, how we BEGIN the literary dialogue about it—we are putting translocality in the hands of a few, of a select. This is an oxymoron to the term, contrary to its very linguistic structure, and can lead to, for example, the omission of translocal women writers from literary history or literary criticism, the reduction of the field of inquiry from a translocal perspective, and even the rise of falsely-founded literary "movements" in its name. I'll end on a section from my editorial in Versal 8, which is a kind of call.

"The more geography and culture lose their grips on locality, the more the poles of discourse I’m used to holding become useless. And this is where translocality departs from dogmatic political, linguistic, or sociological artifices: it frustrates not only definition and literary explication but also the enclosures of manifesto and branding. We are all translocal, now. We can’t help but be. What is local and global in a given experience is becoming more and more difficult to discern. Who is left untouched by the world?"

Poems on vegetables

2011-05-18T00:49:00.005+02:00

Some of the great word-strings that get you here.

So beautiful it needs its own shelf.

2011-05-03T13:28:00.008+02:00

Breaking the radio silence with the lineup that makes 9

2011-04-25T10:07:00.004+02:00

While Versal is at the printer, I usually go on hiatus. This year, I jumped in my buddy's van and we drove to Fontainebleau, France for 10 days of bouldering. Armed with my new La Sportivas and the good night's sleep you can only get in a tent, the closest I got to poetry for a good week and nearly-half were the names of the lines I tried to repeat: Lévitation, Égoïste, La Grande Marche. This hiatus is a quiet, temporary time that I imagine many editors feel as they wait in the between of their hard work and its object.

A few days away from the launch party now and I'm back-back in Amsterdam, and, shhh, I have a copy of the new issue. It's gorgeous. For just a few more days, Versal is in the world but not in the world, waiting at my house for the party and the envelopes and the planes carrying them and the letters and the reviews and the postings and the tweets. A few days of quiet, just me and the journal, secret-like. A tree in the forest kind of thing. It's not yet.

So on behalf of our entire team, I'd like to celebrate this momentary stillness by releasing the full list of contributors who have made and will make Versal 9. You can join in by preordering a copy. It's easy and quick and you'll get a free back issue, and while you do it the only sound you'll hear is the click of the mouse.

Versal 9 is/will be:

Maureen Alsop
Louis Armand
Stace Budzko
Gary Joseph Cohen
Rob Cook
Yago Cura
DAS BANALE DING
Julia Forrest
Francene
Brandon Getz
Nene Giorgadze
Brady Gunnell
Heather Hartley
Russell Helms
Rochelle Hurt
Timothy Kercher
Stacy Kidd
Kaisu Koivisto
Douglas Korb
Jane Lewty
Nate Liederbach
Amy Mackelden
Tony Mancus
Isabella Mara
Kyle Mellen
Antoinette Nausikaä
Alice Notley
Jill Osier
John Parker
Dawn Pendergast
Carmen Petaccio
Romy Pocztaruk
Meg Reilly
Steven Salmoni
Maya Sarishvili
Travis David Smith
Anne Kathrine Sørup
Lucas Southworth
Dariel Suarez
Ayumi Suzuki
Katarzyna Szu Szugajew
Laura Tansley
Lizzi Thistlethwayte
Amy Touchette
Benjamin van Loon
Juliette Vivier
Brad Vogler
Jacqueline Vogtman
Rebecca Wallace
Suzanne Warren
Sara ten Westenend
Ken White
Nicole Wilson
Jane Wong
Elizabeth Zuba

Dear writers, friends, and family,

2011-03-18T15:54:00.002+01:00

This year and every year, we recommit ourselves to supporting a healthy community of writers in Amsterdam and beyond. Everything we do is done in the odd hours between our "day jobs", out of love for our fantastic city, the writers who live here, and the little literary journal we built from scratch.

With no external funding or kind philanthropist to back us up, we are able to do what we do through the small fees we charge for workshops and seminars, through the small margin of profit we receive from Versal sales, and through the generous support of those of you who give a little more by becoming a member. It's a simple business model that is not out for extras, only for just enough to sustain our acclaimed journal and our community activities in and around Amsterdam.

The times are hard on all of us, and with the Netherlands' changing political temperature the likelihood of funding has become zero to none. We're neither Dutch enough nor big enough to interest the few foundations left in the Netherlands.

So we need your help. Becoming a Local member is easy, and cheap. Your Eur 30 goes a long way for us, and you get a lot with it too. Discounts to our local programming, a back issue of Versal, and the new edition when it comes out in May. And if you join before April 1, you'll be entered to win free tickets to the Literary Death Match on April 28, which will officially launch Versal 9 into the world!

If you can't give that much, please consider a donation of an amount of your choosing; even Eur 5 is a lot for us, and is greatly appreciated. Or buy a copy of Versal, old or new, and stack your shelves a bit at the same time.

And if you're able to give a little more, think about becoming a Global member. You'll receive all of the benefits of the Local membership, but your name will also be listed among our supporters in the next issue of Versal. If you join before April 1, that means Versal 9!

Details about the memberships and donations can be found here.

I think it's amazing what we have managed to accomplish these last 9 years on a shoestring of a budget and with limited resources. And that is with many thanks to you, our local and global community. Help us continue our work to support writers. I hope you'll think about it.

Cheers,

Megan

Laying it down

2011-03-14T19:53:00.013+01:00

Megan, Sarah, Robert and Shayna spent the evening

getting everything in the right place for V9.

Jennifer went to Portland and found this.

2011-03-03T13:31:00.007+01:00

Thanks, Powell's Books!
Maybe this year we'll put a bird on it.

We're moving our site this week, so it might be wonky

2011-02-26T23:38:00.003+01:00

Our current site hosts are just plain weird, so we're moving our site to Green Geeks where we hope to ride into the cloudy green sunset.

In the run up, I somehow ended up here:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wordsinhere.com

The link looks so cool I can't help but post it entire.

Ah, memories.

How Versal's poetry team preps for a meeting

2011-02-23T14:33:00.001+01:00

Or, apparently I'm into posting pictures now.

Last meeting tonight! Get ready for it...

Directions to Journal Porn

2011-02-16T15:34:00.001+01:00

How to read – the politics of quality and multiple readings

2011-02-11T02:35:00.003+01:00

(NB: I love AWP, everyone there is awesome, and all the Versal editors had a superblast. Tot de volgende jaar in Chicago!)

When we talk about the notion of the “experiment” or the “innovative,” especially in fiction, where certain notions, such as plot or character, tend to be a bit more codified than the (perhaps) more open field of poetics, we often tend to think about works that subvert (I’m going to stop using scare quotes – assume that all terms are provisional) these concepts – concepts that we attempt to teach in the creative writing class. Think, here, about Beckett or Proust as classic examples of texts that subvert our understanding of plot – texts in which, as the Talking Heads describes heaven, nothing really ever happens. Or Patrik Ourednik’s Europeana, in which there aren’t really people as characters, or Vanessa Place’s Dies: A Sentence, which is an 117-page novel of a sentence, or anything by Kathy Acker, which combines writing and drawing, rewriting canonical (male) novels, multi-vocalizing and defacing them, lacing them with the abject.

My point here is not to diagram a history of textual non-conformities (which, if truth be told, would hearken back to The Odyssey), but to open a discussion of the writerly and readerly conventions we take for granted. If we understand ideology (I think this is Barthes here, and certainly not the Webster definition) as a set of artificial values that we mistakenly believe are timeless and universal, then we also must look at writing and reading as a set of conventions that we take for granted. We pretend, for example, that the psychological novel has always existed, though some of the novels that make up the core of the canon (air quotes, scare quotes) could care less about personal psychology – think Tom Jones, or even Austen and Dickens, where social structures dominate over psychic concerns.

It’s easy to see, when talking to a reader of popular fiction, some of these fundamental assumptions in action. By and large, readers (who is this reader?) look for round characters, they look for plot, they tend to (whatever this means) want to read books that don’t call attention to themselves as written; the book as window on the world. My father, who has submitted himself (often unwillingly) to all kinds of writerly muck-muck, is not alone when he associates aesthetic fluff and writerly self-awareness with unnatural and unnecessary artifice, pretentiousness, and elitism. Did I hear no end of it after giving him Rick Moody’s Purple America, a book whose first ten pages are an absolute tour de force.

One of the reasons I love working as the fiction editor of Versal is that, at semi-regular intervals, we, too, have to question our own assumptions. This year, through the type and quality of the work we read, we had to look at an unquestioned, fundamental underpinning to the selection process; that of pleasure and textual depth. The questions went something like this: is the quality of a piece DEPENDENT on deepening and increased enjoyment after multiple reads? Could we accept a piece that shined on first reading, but added little in subsequent readings?

It is, perhaps, a core assumption of the literary selection process (and the reading of literary fiction in general) that a piece “withstand” multiple readings. What adds to depth in a story? Subtle psychology (often through the choice of physical detail), the unpacking of metaphor, the where’s waldo of literary allusion, the puzzle-like assembly of how the parts of a complicated machine fit together.

Yet: as many theorists have argued (think Baudrillard here, for starters), our era is one in which depth is itself a fiction, and surface is everything. The age of the unlocked text, the deeper moral is gone, and in fact had never fulfilled its promise. There is and was no originary signifier. What was important, perhaps, coming back to Beckett and Pynchon and countless others, was not the fulfillment of meaning, but the journey towards an always invisible endgame. On a more practical level, do we (or any other literary journal) assume that readers would read each piece multiple times? Perhaps it is simply chutzpah or magical thinking to hope that readers would spend so much of their twittery time reading and re-reading.

Given hypermedia, ADHD, micro-clocks, crowdsourcing, zombie flash mobs, and porn movies based on the Transformers, is it a terrible mistake for us to judge work based on this very 19^th century notion of depth? Writing about Davis Schneiderman’s Drain, I noted that its very project is to undermine this notion of depth in meaning. His metaphors break as they are written; his signifiers contradict themselves. Characters are caricatures and the plot undoes itself. Yet the book, at least on first read, is an absolute joy, its language vibrant (and often disgusting) and playful and shimmering. Would we, out of habit, reject such a work?

I, for one, am not ready to give up on depth; my own writing would amount to little without depth as an end-point. At minimum, however, I want to recognize (and have readers recognize) that depth, too, is an artificial construction, time and context sensitive. Perhaps in this admission, we will further be able to open up ourselves to other modes of writing.

semi-respectfully,

±(r)-

AWP tattoos

2011-02-08T15:34:00.011+01:00

On Thursday night Sarah and I decided to push through our jetlag with a cocktail at the hotel bar where we had the pleasure of meeting Robb Todd, who, in addition to being a lovely and interesting person, had an amazing tattoo of an old-fashioned typewriter producing a line of poetry. During the rest of AWP I kept encountering writers with literary tattoos, which has led to a bit of a fetish.

"Duidingswoord van extreem mooie dingen"

2011-02-08T06:25:00.001+01:00

Sold out

2011-02-05T23:08:00.003+01:00

Dear lovely everyone,

Versal is sold out! so we packed up to get a beer.

Thank you for another awesome trip to the USA.

Love,
The editors

"Anna, I want to wrap myself up in your warm Russian fur."

2011-02-04T14:29:00.002+01:00

The best part of yesterday was yesterday.

Thank you to everyone for coming to our panel and our offsite. What amazing events, both of them. See what a little strategic flyering can do? I thought flyers were dead. But no. Though maybe next year we'll just print 1000 of them?

Usually when I organize something I'm too distracted to enjoy the thing I've organized. I'm just type-A that way. But yesterday was an incredible exception. After Journal Porn ended and the crowd mountain became just a crowd, we went to The Diner up the street and I had French Toast for (finally) dinner. I was jetlag-cold so Anna wrapped me up in her Russian fur coat, hmmmm. Then Shayna and I came back to the hotel and I went horizontal and slept like a baby.

Here's a picture of the panel yesterday. From left to right: Jen Woods from The Lumberyard Magazine, Matvei Yankelevich from 6x6, Sandra Doller from 1913 a journal of forms, Jodee Stanley from Ninth Letter, Shayna Schapp from Versal, and Travis Kurowski, our amazing moderator, from Luna Park Review.

As Travis said, "This is like being at a table with Spike Jonze and Sophia Coppola."

Hotel-room pow-wow

2011-02-03T05:46:00.020+01:00

Jennifer, Anna and I are sharing a hotel room at AWP. It's HUGE. About the size of a large Amsterdam apartment. So, after a delicious meal in the nearby Lebanese Taverna (crammed with other AWPers), we all gathered in our room tonight for a talk about the future of Versal. It's going to be big and bright, of course. To my knowledge, we have no photo documentation of this meeting, so just imagine nine beautiful people engaged in deep conversation about all the amazing things possible for our lit mag.

Convergence

2011-02-03T05:36:00.007+01:00

It's just fucking awesome.

Some of the coolest people on the planet make up the Versal team. You guys rock buckets.

Microblogs from AWP because we don't have time for else

2011-02-02T06:28:00.007+01:00

Overheard tonight over the second annual Tuesday night sushi Versal dinner somewhere in Washington D.C.: "Enter my bubble if you want to be sex free." Note this overhearing comes from and is by Versal editors.

We're here. Most of us, anyway. Here's a shot of Matt, Anna, and Robert tonight at an Irish pub.

Shayna and I endured a fairly bumpy ride between Ireland and Iceland (r/c). Go figure. Here's a dumb one of us between seatbelt constraints.

Does anyone else notice the incredibly high percentage of couches to floor space at the Marriott Wardman?

D8 / AWP / Washington, DC / USA

2011-01-29T14:34:00.008+01:00

By now, if you're like me, you've gotten lost in the crowd of emails, blogs, status updates, event invites, and tweets (ugh, that word sucks) about AWP. Toggling between your Facebook event page and AWP's own mega-scroll lists is enough to make a poet develop a socialite ego. Hell, the conference has even gone mainstream.

So for those of you with Versal on your AWP radar (herewith referred to as "AWPdar"), here's a nicely compartmentalized program from the Versal angle.

WEDNESDAY
Versal editors field trip and pow-wow. Nine of us will be in the same place at the same time. This is like when stars align. Some of us have never met (though one of us has met everyone, aka me). So we're taking ourselves out. See you on the other side.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY
Drop by our table at D8 for some yummy Dutch flavors and other goodies (no, we're not bringing weed). And we don't have merch. We can't afford it. Would you really wear a Versal t-shirt anyway? But we will be selling issues 5 through 8 and subscriptions at drop-bottom (is that how you say it?) rates. Look for the Dutch flag.

If you see the French flag, that's us too.

THURSDAY
If there's any day at the conference to go Versal, it's Thursday. The journal and its editors are freakin' all over the place.

9:00-10:15am
Tearing Your Heart Off Your Sleeve: The Problem of Pathos in Creative Nonfiction
with B.J. Hollars, Re’Lynn Hansen, Marcia Aldrich, Marion Wrenn, Katie Jean Shinkle
Virginia C Room, Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level
How can nonfiction writers avoid the pitfalls of sentimentality and nostalgia while directly addressing them in the work? Join editors from Black Warrior Review, Fourth Genre, South Loop, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Versal as they discuss the problem of pathos in nonfiction while offering concrete strategies for how best to approach emotionally driven topics. Panelists will also explore how traditional and experimental forms lend themselves to packing an emotive punch within the genre.

10:30-11:45am
Things That Go Bump When You Write: Monsters, Myths, and the Supernatural in Literary Fiction
with B.J. Hollars, Bryan Furuness, Hannah Tinti, Laura van den Berg, Scott Francis
Thurgood Marshall South Room, Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level
What do Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and ghosts all have in common? For one, over the past year, they’ve all managed to stomp, swim, and haunt their way onto the literary scene. Join writers as they discuss their experiences implementing supernatural elements into their fiction. Panelists will offer tips on how to add credibility to the incredible and humanity to the inhuman. They will also explore the evolving definitions of gothic and grotesque in the 21st century.

3:00-4:15pm
What’s Normal in Nonfiction?
with Steven Church, Debra Marquart, Ander Monson, Bonnie J. Rough, Bob Shacochis
Maryland Suite Room, Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level
Moderated by editors of the Normal School, the panel will feature a discussion of the polarizing questions concerning the ethics and aesthetics of nonfiction writing today. Is the nonfiction writer’s obligation to the art or to the subject? The audience? Can you conflate time, use composite or fictionalized characters, or borrow material from other sources without citing it? Panelists will consider what the role of the nonfiction writer is today and how that role is defined by ethical concerns for subject and audience, and/or aesthetic concerns for art, genre, form, and technique.

4:30-5:45pm
Beyond Times New Roman: The Literary Journal as Object
with Sandra Doller, Travis Kurowski, Shayna Schapp, Jodee Stanley, Jen Woods, Matvei Yankelevich
Nathan Hale room, Marriott Wardman Park
From curatorial art teams to the hand-bound letterpress, to pages upon which art and words are nearly indistinguishable, the literary journal is so much more than paper and font choice. Attention to design will turn a journal into an art object that sets it apart from the masses. Editors from five innovative journals share concrete strategies for incorporating art and design: getting submissions, working with an art editor, and how to redesign the literary journal from scratch. This is the panel we've put together our very own selves, and we're super excited about it.

7:00-11:30pm
A Pair of Teeth / Aperitif
IOTA Club & Cafe, 2832 Wilson Blvd.
Join Articles Press, Flying Guillotine, and SpringGun Press for an exciting evening of music and writing at IOTA Club & Cafe. With Joe Hall, J. Michael Martinez, A. Minetta Gould, Donald Dunbar, Matt Sadler, derrick mund, Sarah E Harris, Greenland, Laughing Man, Black Telephone.

7:30-?am
Journal Porn: Lit Mags You'd Sleep With
The Black Squirrel, 2427 18th Street NW
If you're super dexterous, you can catch Matt at the Apertif reading and still catch most of the amazing and incredibly wide-ranging line-up at Journal Porn, Versal's official offsite! We hope you'll come down to this (free!) fun-times offsite event with Versal, Trickhouse, Lumberyard Magazine, 6x6 and 1913 a journal of forms. With Lee Ann Brown, Katie Byrum, Julia Cohen, James Copeland, Brandon Downing (video storms!), Lucy Ives, Joanna Klink, Matthew Lippman, Sawako Nakayasu, Elizabeth Frankie Rollins. We've got the room all night so come hang out!

FRIDAY
6:30-9:30pm
Wide Night
Wonderland Ballroom, 1101 Kenyon St NW
Self-fulfilling plug: I'm reading at the Wide Night offsite with Pilot Books, who are publishing my chapbook later this year. Pilot's put the event together with other fantastic presses Bateau, Birds, LLC, Brave Men, Factory Hollow, Flying Guillotine, Immaculate Disciples, and Minutes. The current line-up includes Chris Martin, Lily Brown, Mark Horosky, Sasha Steensen, Emily Pettit, Dan Boehl, Sommer Browning, Jessica Young, Farrah Field, Guy Pettit, Kelin Loe, Alex Phillips, Luke Bloomfield, and Francesca Chabrier.

SATURDAY
Drop by the Versal table for last-day deals!

SUNDAY
Me and the missus are off to NYC for a week of R&R before heading back to Holland. See you next year in Chicago, jongens!

Journal Porn: Lit Mags You'd Sleep With

2011-01-07T10:49:00.005+01:00

Join us!

X again?

2010-12-29T10:49:00.005+01:00

Looks like Table X is returning to AWP, at least as an offsite...

The lineup has changed slightly this year, which makes me wonder how you get in, though like most things my gut says it's just friends and friends-of who have awesome presses.

I am seriously in love with most of the presses involved, but last year's "barricade" approach made my eyes roll. It's not clear yet if they'll cordon off at the bookfair in D.C. with trashbags or if the reading is just a convenient marketing throwback for recognition purposes. Because I love these presses so much and for other becauses, I'll get over it either way.

But still, seeing the event pop up in my newsfeed today brought up some questions which linger from Denver. Like, if Versal were asked "in" would I say yes? Should I applaud Table X for being explicit about in-crowd(edness)? Is it a "problem" that they have marked themselves "off" from the rest? Do I actually care? Or is the momentary throwback to the high school cafeteria just an annoying re-realization that this is how we congregate--posturing tall with our hands flat on our chests, pointing "me" and this is "us", hello to all of you.

Certainly they're not the first to do it at AWP, which like most of the world has its ins and outs and is, in and of itself, part of a larger machine that writers and presses may or can or do use to build their profiles. And even Versal is doing that, by being there in its own little unaffiliated way, and after just two years of attendance we've noticed a marked increase in submissions (and submission quality), sales, and subscriptions--so we'll keep going there. So that's another because, because we're all in this machine, in fact we make the machine, and it would be dishonest of me to condemn their efforts (though I think a little healthy criticism is ok)--which in the end are just ways to profile themselves and each other in a communal way.

In high school, I was an awkward and stressed out poet-slash-closet-lesbian who wore tie-dyes and fell in love with girls in the in-crowd. Now that that's all over, I apparently still have the habit of falling in love with things I perceive as in the in--which means I think I'm in the out, which is stupid.

Anyway, blah blah blog. Here's some kids having a lightsaber fight in their school cafeteria:

Beyond Times New Roman: The Literary Journal as Object

2010-12-27T14:34:00.005+01:00

Join 1913 a journal of forms, 6x6, The Lumberyard Magazine, Ninth Letter, and Versal for this ridiculously beautiful AWP panel . . .

Thursday, February 3, 2011
4:30pm - 5:45pm
Nathan Hale room, Marriott Wardman Park
2660 Woodley Road NW
Washington, DC

From curatorial art teams to the hand-bound letterpress, to pages upon which art and words are nearly indistinguishable, the literary journal is so much more than paper and font choice. Attention to design will turn a journal into an art object that sets it apart from the masses. Editors from five innovative journals share concrete strategies for incorporating art and design: getting submissions, working with an art editor, and how to redesign the literary journal from scratch.

The literary journal as art object goes back at least to the Pre-Raphaelite The Germ, but the subtleties of art and design can be daunting to many literary editors. A journal that does not pay attention to good design practice lessens the pleasure of the reading experience and increases the perception that journals are mere vehicles for publication. This panel shows editors how to be sophisticated about art and design choices, and how it is possible without much added effort.

PARTICIPATING EDITORS & JOURNALS:
Sandra Doller, 1913 a journal of forms
Shayna Schapp, Versal
Jodee Stanley, Ninth Letter
Jen Woods, The Lumberyard Magazine
Matvei Yankelevich, 6x6

Travis Kurowski of Luna Park Review will moderate.

And stay tuned for news on our offsite event Thursday eve . . .

Congratulations to our 2010 Pushcart nominees!

2010-12-03T21:31:00.002+01:00

The Versal editorial team has nominated the following pieces from Versal 8 for the next Pushcart round (does anyone else lose track of the years?):

The Sociology of Containers, Stacy Elaine Dacheux
Here is a Photograph of the City, Colleen Hollister
Aleatory Prayer of Gold Bees, Karen An-hwei Lee
Jugni, Kuzhali Manickavel
Dominoes — Opening, Daniele Pantano
Yellow Picnic, Brandon Shimoda

Congratulations to all of our nominees!

A shameless, self-promotional note from Megan who thinks this is really cool so she's blogging about it

2010-12-01T13:05:00.005+01:00

The other week I received word that I had been selected as one of 50 "power Amsterdammers" by Time Out Amsterdam. This for my literary community work here, which has evolved since I moved to town in 2001. I haven't seen the write-up yet but I hope it's cool.

What's remarkable about this is just the recognition. Our organization has struggled for years with the cultural black hole we find ourselves in, which has forced us to develop self-sustaining activities as a result of the border tendencies in (cultural) funding. So in recognizing my work, Time Out is actually recognizing all of the people who have worked with me over the years to build a supportive, inclusive and accessible international literary community without the funding to do so. And it's recognizing too the importance of that community for the city as a whole.

Indeed, as Poets & Writers wrote in its last issue, Versal is the most visible manifestation of all of that community. If we had all of the money and time in the world, we would do so much more. But as it is, we are doing a lot with very little, and I am so proud of us for our achievements. I include not only my fellow editors, but also all of the writers in and around the Netherlands, who connect into the international community and help us build and sustain it. Whether you're working alone in your attic or biweekly in a writing group, whether you're trekking from The Hague to get to a reading in Amsterdam or submitting your work to Versal, you have helped make our literary community one that is, simply, community. We're not waving flags about ourselves or dead-dropping manifestos, we're simply writing and working to write, and working with each other to write. It pretty much rocks buckets.

And to think it all started with this little flyer in 2002:

Versus make for other

2010-11-26T15:47:00.004+01:00

Recent posts here, there and elsewhere have returned me to an old question. So many of us (you know, poets and whatnot) seem to assume that poetry's evolution is driven (solely) by reactionary forces. I think this is a sad (and it could be argued violent, misogynistic, etc. etc.) way of looking at things. But why is it so hard to explore the evolution of poetics as one pushed by generative forces? Albeit sometimes these forces are reactionary, but they are also active, intertextual, engagements in dialogue, etc. etc.

My concern is the tendency to place things in opposition to each other. So I'm blogging out these thoughts before I catch the metro home. It seemed too long for a status update.

Also, I'm wondering what you out there might have to say. And what texts you've read which engage this question.

Also, CPR has a nice piece up about "standards" in poetry, which touches on the work of an editor, which nicely parallels some of what I was blabbing about a few posts ago.

Can someone please forward this to Tom van de Voorde?

2010-11-15T19:57:00.004+01:00

It's Wallace Stevens Week!

And not one single mention yet of his true Dutch belongings. Tom, maybe you should send them your essay?

Knock, knock

2010-11-13T17:49:00.011+01:00

In a recent post on The Prague Post's blog, writer Stephan Delbos reviews the new poetry journal Full Metal Poem. He posits its solicitation-only policy as a more honest and non-elitist form of literary editing, and calls on other European journals to follow in its stead:

One hopes other editors throughout Europe will follow Full Metal Poem‘s lead in creating a journal which establishes a high literary and artistic standard without resorting to elitism.

As I am the editor of one of those European literary journals, I was being addressed--and accused of elitism.

Stephan and I have been in touch for some years, as he is part of a literary community in Prague similar to ours here in Amsterdam, and though we've never met in person I think he's doing good work and he seems like a good guy. In other words, I'd add him as a Facebook friend. So I emailed Stephan, asking him to expand his thesis, and if he wouldn't mind that I take up the subject on this here blog. He said sure. We both agreed it would be great to debate this over beers, but that building a public dialogue around the issue would probably be more valuable. Plus, I don't know when I'll be next in Prague.

Most journals solicit to some degree; some do not solicit at all; few solicit 100%.* The project of a solely-solicited journal is very different from the project of a journal which relies, at least in part, on the so-called slush pile. The solicited journal is a curatorial project--you might even say its synonym is the anthology. Setting out to spotlight a particular aesthetic, movement, or community, the solicited journal becomes a compendium of an editor's (explicit or implied) manifesto. As anthology, it can be a valuable addition to the literary landscape, acting as a magnifying glass to a particular filament of a literature. The literary journal which works with a slush pile, however, is that literary landscape's explorer--walking through it, mapping it, drawing its broad outlines or picking it out in parts. The editor of such a journal is no less driven by an aesthetic or even manifesto, but is probably also interested in the project as a learning process--uncovering new styles, voices, being challenged aesthetically.

Undoubtedly, the solicited journal--and solicitation in general--has the open-call journal to thank for doing the legwork. The solicited journal relies on the editors who do dig through the slush piles and--in many cases--kick-off the publishing careers of writers, writers who will later be stumbled upon by another editor and solicited. The open-call journals are where we start reading the work of new writers, where we follow their developments, where we grow to love them.

I'm not saying that the editor who does not solicit is a more valuable editor than the one who does--simply that they play different roles. And by no means am I arguing that the solely-solicited journal blemishes the literary landscape. On the contrary, its magnifying effect can be good for the community and its legacy. But I am taking issue with the assumption that a journal which only solicits is somehow less elitist and more honest than a journal which does not. It would simply be better to argue that the solicited journal puts its elitism out in the open so that "the rest of us" have no doubt of its motives. However, the contrary of the openly-elite solicited journal is not necessarily the masked-elitism of the open-call journal. Rather, the pivot of elitism comes down to something else entirely.

As I spoke about on the "Open for Submissions" panel at the last AWP, I firmly believe that a literary editor should have a vision for her journal. This starts with the editor herself. I suggested to the roomful of burgeoning editors that they ask themselves the age-old question: Do I play well with others? If you like working in a team, if you like your aesthetic boundaries pushed, if you like to explore, then build a press or journal with others. But if there's a specific kind of work that you set out to publish, if you're working from a manifesto or a particular aesthetic school, and more importantly if you don't want to bend to the editorial tastes of others, you're probably better off reviewing submissions alone--or soliciting.**

Simply put, a literary editor is, to my mind, a successful literary editor when she is visibly, publicly clear on what she is setting out to do and when she builds the editorial process of her publication accordingly. By success I mean what Stephan calls establishing a "high literary and artistic standard", but I also include it to mean an editor who is contributing to the continuous building of the literary community around us. If an editor can best do this by anthologizing a particular fragment of literary happenings, great. If an editor is fit for and up to the task of exploration, wonderful.

Stephan is equating an openness about editorial taste (i.e. pure solicitation) with aesthetic success, but I think that's faulty math. For one, are any of us at any point deluded into thinking that literary journals are not a matter of taste? If anything, the ripe literary conversation of the blogosphere has uncovered this once-yes-elite system to its bare bones. And I can't think of a single journal that actually tries to hide that it has a particular leaning--what would be the point? Journals, rather, seem to be polarizing for the sake of survival. Secondly, one could easily argue that the solicited journal is the most elitist form of literary editing, blockading the "rest" or "other" off from whatever a particular editor judges is good and worthy. Thirdly, the historical foundation of purely solicited journals is one that decidedly excludes women and "minority" poetries, resulting in a narrow anthologization of an aesthetic and thus ultimately limiting its "success". These (exclusions) are hard habits to break. Until recently (and still to an alarming degree), the literary journal was the sole purview of a (white) man who published his (male) friends and male writers he liked. This model is thankfully being broken down, and today groups like VIDA are keeping a watchful eye on the "numbers". The elitist male foundations of the literary canon are being rebuilt in a dialogue that has room for--in fact is founded on--diverse editorial taste and a community's openness about where those tastes diverge, intersect, and convene.

Elitism is in the motives. The editor who uses her publishing project to derisively barricade off some work from others versus the editor who opens doors (within and without) to the range of greatness. Editors of solicited and open-call journals can be either of these or somewhere in between, and our literary community certainly sees it all. In his recent Conflict of Interest series on Luna Park, Greg Weiss writes,

…the literary poetry market is no different than any other open market—actors with congruent or complementary interests form alliances. Copperman notes that “America’s finest venues…ignore the slushpile in favor of contacts.” While I agree, it strikes me that this will always be the case. In the same manner, the importance of aesthetic and prestige gatekeepers to print journals continues unabated in electronic journals. Gatekeepers can have the positive effect of creating a distinctive style, or the negative effect of inculcating a type of groupthink.

An editor has a choice. She can choose to stand watch at some iron gate that she fabricates or joins, or she can admit that for every writer and every editor, there is a small little gate. It is the editor's motive and the editorial process which forms around it which either guard the gate, break it down, or force it open.

Ultimately, the future of literary journals is not (I hope) that all of us editors rally around plots in the landscape and stake our claims. What a gross turf war that would be. Versal--and many other lit journals to boot--has proven that you can successfully publish both Marilyn Hacker and Selah Saterstrom--in other words, that editorial taste does not have to be (seen as) static or singular, and that you don't have to have a manifesto to build a valuable and beautiful collection of writing.

To be honest, I'm much more concerned by the literary journal which hides behind "open" calls by having white lists of writers it will actually consider--and has interns reject the rest--than by the literary journals like Full Metal Poem which demarcate a particular aesthetic through pure solicitation, or by those journals which, by virtue of our world's current inundation, remain open for submissions but cannot publish even the majority of what it receives, even if it wanted to. If we're going to worry about elitism in the literary publishing world, I would look to the white-list journal first before I knock on the doors of Europe's few and underfunded, projects-of-love literary journals and tell them they've "resorted to elitism" because their doors are open.

And on that note, I'll let Harriet Monroe show us out.

* First off, I could be wrong about this; I'm basing my "calculations" off of experiential evidence. Second, I'm not talking about editors publishing their friends. That's something else entirely. By "solicit" I'm referring to the practice of editors contacting writers they admire and would like to publish. Sometimes, sure, those writers are people we're friends with, but by and large they are writers we have never met and have read at the far distance of the page. I see the journals which rise out of a group of friends/like-minded writers to rather be the projects of a community--very often rallying around a manifesto--and for me that's a very different type of journal, and one that I don't address here.

** These are, of course, not the only approaches to the editorial process. You could, say, have a computer pick submissions at random, or, as a recent magazine has done, just lift stuff off the internet.

We ain't Ninth Letter (yet)

2010-11-10T11:10:00.003+01:00

Ninth Letter is the go-to journal for those of us busy with the place of art in literary journals and, for some, the future of the literary journal itself. I'd like to think of Ninth Letter as Versal's older, wiser and employed friend--years of experience, university affiliation, and the money to do art right.

Not that I think Versal is lacking in experience or failing (its) art--on the contrary, we're doing damn good for a journal that is entirely funded by proceeds from our community events and sales. But what we would give for the cash to have color plates wherever we wanted!

In the meantime, our newly appointed art editor Shayna Schapp has taken on the challenge of doing the best we can with what we have: two color plates, the cover plate, lots of potential b&w space, and people. Like the poetry and fiction teams, Shayna has formed a new group of art editors who will join her and Mirabai to curate the art in Versal via the roundtable model our poetry and fiction teams use. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to our new assistant art editors:

Hélène Webers (b. 1987, Maastricht, The Netherlands) is currently studying art history at the University of Amsterdam, with a special interest in modern and contemporary art, and completed Museology at the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam. Since 2008, she has worked as a curatorial assistant at the contemporary art institute SMART Project Space and CASZ (Contemporary Art Screen Zuidas), an urban screen arts initiative.

Dafna Ruppin is a PhD candidate in Media History at Utrecht University’s Research Institute for History and Culture. Born in Tel Aviv and currently based in Amsterdam, she has worked as a literary critic, journalist, editor and translator.

Reed van Brunschot is a Peruvian/Dutch visual artist merging video, performance & fine art. She has studied in the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is currently in Amsterdam at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie's audio visual program. Her work is a playful pop reaction to modern life.

Welcome, welcome.

Whip it.

2010-11-08T19:40:00.003+01:00

We here at Versal try to respond to all submissions within two months.

Some of you might have noticed that we're running a little behind, a fact which will no doubt make its way to Duotrope very soon and make me shed some wheepy tears.

See 'cause half of us were at my wedding in September so we didn't start reading until October and, well, yeah. But we are definitely on it! We are reading and loving your work. And we have purchased some whips and are using them to reach each other across the interwebs. The miracle, really, that is the interweb, that makes Versal possible.

Our apologies.

Thank you for your patience.

Sometimes we put on events

2010-11-06T14:27:00.006+01:00

I hope you Amdammers can join us on the 26th.

Visiting writer Louis Armand and newly-landed local Jane Lewty will be reading at The English Bookshop. Louis is an Australian writer and artist who lives in Prague. Jane just moved here from Iowa City, where she did that famous workshop we all hear about all the time.

I'm excited about this reading because I like Jane and Louis's her friend so I'll probably like him too, and their poetries are stellar, and in the dark cold of the end of November it'll be really nice to step away from all the Versal submissions I'm reading and hear something live. The reading will probably be the last one we put on this year, and then we'll all go into that December black hole of holidays and reemerge sometime in January a little weightier and exhausted. If you're wondering how else to beat the winter blues, I passed this on Lifehacker the other day.

Anyway, if you're in the lowlands,

Check our site
Or obviously our FB

Seriously, we used to do this event thing more often. In fact, we were so good at that we grew too big for our britches. Do you know how hard it is to produce a quality club event every month with zero budget? Nevermind, even writing that sentence was hard. You know what it's like.

I like the little ad hoc stuff we do now. It's way more low-main, and my attention span at the reading is wider/longer/higher.

(Some of our) editors in Nashville, TN

2010-11-04T17:19:00.011+01:00

From the photobooth at Megan & Shayna's wedding
on September 25, 2010:

First attempt.

Second attempt.

Third attempt.

Your local indie innovator

2010-11-01T16:08:00.008+01:00

I've just gotten word from Robert that Versal is listed among the indie innovators in the latest issue of Poets & Writers.

You can say what you want about P&W, but I've been reading it since I was a baby poet and I love it. And because the Dutch mail service sucks so much, I have my subscription sent to my parents in Nashville, TN and they mail my copies in care packages. So I haven't read the article yet, but Robert tells me it's good and we're next to Diagram.

Sometimes Mondays are worth starting with.

2010-10-13T20:55:00.004+02:00

The submission period for Versal 9 is open.

We're seeking artwork that is urgent, involved and unexpected.

Submit online today.

"My comment is bigger than your comment"

2010-07-30T15:36:00.002+02:00

I love it when poetic boxing matches erupt. It speaks to my argumentative bones. Which is why I admire Rebecca Wolff, even if I don't always agree with her (do any of us ever always agree with anyone? I'm getting a vague flashback to a Star Trek episode). Since I first started reading FENCE, I've enjoyed most her editorials that take on some element of some current discussion of poetics -- and I admit I have an underdeveloped fantasy that she and I were born under similar star formations.

When these boxing matches erupt, the poetic blogosphere becomes much more interesting. Comment sections are where the real shit happens (I read recently on Harriet's blog yet another call-out of Silliman's blog's too-often overly aggressive comment battles, which Spahr & Young also knocked in their 2007 Numbers Trouble...and yes there's a sense of irony in mentioning the latter, read below). Remember Foetry? That was awesome. It was like my own personalized gossip column. I wonder what it was like before the internet (I was born in '79, so...). Probably similar, just slower, and hell people still start journals and presses out of some irreverent response to some fault they find in whatever came before it/them. Letter presses flying about, essays in the mail, I'm sure it was an exciting time then too for the poetry-gawker. Did any fights erupt at AWP Denver? That was an expensive transatlantic plane ticket for me to have missed witnessing a poetry boxing match in person. But if something did occur of that ilk, I missed it; I was either drunk at the Mercury or asleep at the Robert Haas reading.

So the latest (or, not really, I'm coming at this one a bit late) is the clash between Rebecca Wolff and the folks of the 95 Cent Skool, specifically Joshua Clover & Juliana Spahr but presumably with rhetorical guns fired by others if I'm reading the signatures right (refer to Silliman parenthetical above).

Oh, don't worry, I'm not weighing in on this one really. I see positives and negatives on both "sides". I am saddened by but recognize the hopelessness implicit in the Skool's manifesto (which goes something like, "there's not a damn thing we can write that will get through to the world, so we're going to hang out together"), but I also feel that, like most manifestos, this one kind of implodes on itself, as Wolff points out. And reading the Skool's blog reminds me slightly of the Table X "barricade" in Denver and, well, I'm not old (is 31 old now? I can't really tell) but I never was really that cool, and I still believe in non-violence as a tool so I cringe at words like "barricade". Anyway, Versal was super far away from Table X, as the AWP Bookfair landscape goes. And just like in high school I wanted to eat on their side of the cafeteria but I also felt somewhat appalled. I however did visit Table X and, next to buying about $100 worth of books, had a nice chat with Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu, which reminded me that most of this stuff is a) for show and b) we're all just trying to sell poetry without becoming capitalist jackasses. Which means sometimes, as in the case of the 95 Cent Skool now, we come across a little more militant and exclusionary for our own good.

My point is: I would have loved to see Wolff's expletives flying through the air at the Rethinking Poetics conference. I hereby vow to find the live version(s) of heated poetics discourse at AWP D.C. Since I don't live in the States and am not, nor have been, in a program there, I don't know who likes who or who has slept with who or who hates who or who's in what "school" or has been kicked out of what "school", so my focus remains on finding, simply, great work for Versal and knowing at least where the epicenters of the discourse are so that if I ever move back to the States I can carry on a conversation with one of those "who's" and make new friends. And here, I suppose, is the crux of my interest: knowing what you're talking about over there makes me feel, for whatever split second, a little less foreign to/in my homeland.

Dear Tom van de Voorde, and Dear Amsterdam, Dear the Netherlands,

2010-06-21T10:34:00.007+02:00

Last week, a few of us trotted down to Rotterdam for the Poetry International Festival, an annual to-do of (usually) great poets from around the world. This year, the festival highlighted American poets and poetry, and so we had the opportunity to listen to Katherine Coles, CK Williams, Christian Hawkey, Michael Palmer, Katia Kapovich (billed as an "American transplant" or some such other),

and...Wallace Stevens.

Here's the text from the English version of "Wallace Stevens: last Dutchman of America":

"A few decades after Peter Stuyvesant, the famous immigrant from Friesland who founded New York, another Dutchman, a certain Michiel Stevens, boarded ship to sail to the new world. What happened to him after that is anyone’s guess. All we know is that he married a certain Ryertie Mol, sired a few children, and in a jiffy a century and a half had passed. Apparently he didn’t leave much of a mark on history. Nonetheless, his legacy was invaluable, if only for the fact that he contributed his DNA to the grandson of the grandson of his grandson: Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), a well-to-do gentleman and solicitor for an insurance company, who earned enough money to maintain a couple of expensive hobbies."

From the rationale of ancestry follows, somehow, and very much in both the Dutch and English versions of this text, a kind of Dutch claim on (or colonization of, if you will) a major American poet. The text goes on to describe Stevens' impact on literature, which apparently would have been "completely different" without him.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy Stevens' work. But I was rather dumbfounded by the exaggeration of an ancestry. I mean, hell, America is what it is because of a lot of horrible colonization. The majority of us are not from there, if you go back far enough. Using the logic of this text, the Dutch could likely lay claim to most of our nation, thanks to their exploratory philandering.

(And for the sake of hammering my goofy point home, the text from the Dutch version in the festival program actually begins:

"Peter Stuyvesant is not the only Dutchman who earns a star on the American flag."

Insert appropriate expletive here. Never mind that the stars represent states, not people.)

I have seen this subsumption of American-ness occur before. When Obama was elected President, an article came out in the Dutch press which claimed that he is part-Dutch, and through this or that verbal maneuvering, by the end of the piece the Netherlands was given credit for his progressive politicking. Then there was that whole weirdness that was NY400 (i.e. New York is the coolest city in the world because the Dutch founded it). Is subsuming each other just something we do? I grant that since I live in Amsterdam, I may just be able to see this from one side; the intense love/hate relationship that the Dutch have with America likely does not help my general refusal to suffer fools.

So sociological/psychological wonderings aside: Tom van de Voorde's less-than-scholarly article on Wallace Stevens simply has an unnecessary starting point. You don't need to claim Stevens as Dutch before you argue his importance to Dutch literature. Nor do you need to do so in order to market him to the festival audience. Van de Voorde's piece obstructs any "real" engagement with his work, especially for those in the audience who may have come across him for the first time. Stevens--as most poets, as most people--stands on his own feet without claims to place or place's claims on him.

Must we locate something before we can find even the will to engage with it?

Place today

2010-06-07T17:35:00.004+02:00

In the last few weeks, I've had the pleasure (god, who says that. And how else do you say that.) of meeting both Peter Gizzi and John Hennessy--in fact, it's been a year so far of little glimpses into what it would be like if I ever sucked it up and moved back to America, and subsequently into an MFA program because what else would I do--glimpses into that meeting thing that happens in the world's company of poets (and writers) and that so rarely happens here. Thanks, mostly, to those four weird days in Denver at AWP. But next week I might just run down CK Williams in Rotterdam, for the heck of it, but not literally run down of course.

Peter (and I think I am safely on a first-name basis with him because we have a secret handshake now) read at Perdu from, among other things, The Outernationale. I don't have a copy of the book yet because I'm broke, so I haven't seen the poems on the page, but the title piece is, if memory serves, variously interrupted by strings of suffixes which both stress and calm. Peter also read "Vincent, Homesick For The Land Of Pictures", which he said he had not before read aloud, but which was (and I don't really know how else to put it right now, and this word is either misspelled or does not exist) utterly transportative; for a moment I remember feeling as though I were in church (in a good way)--an experience I also recently had at a Jonsi show,

so maybe really it's just me, and maybe I should go to church?

If you have read Peter's work then you may nod when I say that his attention to place (perhaps especially in The Outernationale) piqued my interest immediately--and John, similarly, is busy with it, though in different ways. In particular, John's the Poetry Editor of Amherst College's new and upcoming journal The Common, which aims to publish work that "[embodies] particular times and places both real and imagined: art powerful enough to reach from there to here."

Sound familiar?

I am excited by these recent crossings with these poets, who are busy with questions similar to my own, and I hope AWP accepts our cool panel idea on the subject, too.

Versal is BOOM

2010-05-15T19:55:00.003+02:00

or, notes from the Versal hoedown at my house today...

Since we don't have an office, everything goes down in our houses. Editorial meetings, mailouts, brainstorming sessions. Today we spent like 800 euros shipping copies of Versal around the world. Not like we have 800 euros but whatever, there's no cheap way to get them anywhere.

Jennifer and Anna are struggling over a little blurb about Versal as I type this. Shayna's surfing. Robert's trying to figure out how to get us a website that isn't built in frames. Sarah and Terri have left now but were variously here doing various things.

Is exciting better than vital
How do you pronounce "mileau" or "Eyjafjallajökull"
The loveboat
Online feedback forms
Peter Gizzi
You stay there
Do the
Why buy a copy of Versal
Maybe you need headlights

Versal 8 is here!

2010-05-10T13:26:00.003+02:00

We are very excited to announce the arrival of Versal 8, our largest and most daring issue to date.

With new work from widely celebrated poets Chung Ho-seung, Laura Mullen and Brandon Shimoda, prose writers Kuzhali Manickavel and Selah Saterstrom, artists Michael Genovese and Kerri Rosenstein, and many many more.

Your support, buying a copy or a subscription, will help keep our little journal alive&well. We hope you'll consider:

www.wordsinhere.com/orderversal.html

Birthday wishes

2010-05-09T02:49:00.006+02:00

I’ve just finished a visit with my 74-year old father and on leaving, had the curious feeling that I won’t see him again. This, coupled with being on the eve of the launch of Versal’s 8th issue (in fact the party in Amsterdam is probably just finishing up) I’m feeling retrospective.

Versal began in 2002, the same year the “war on terror” was launched. Now, I wasn’t there for the production of the first three issues of Versal, but I was in Europe in 2002. Seen from the lens of an ‘American’ in Europe, I watched as the US seemed to go crazy about weapons of mass destruction, European ‘obstinacy’ in the UN in relation to invading Iraq to pre-emptively strike a sovereign nation that, it turns out, didn’t have such weapons. Anger in the US was particularly strong towards France, with fries being renamed and wine being poured in gutters as protest.

Does all this have a point? Yes, indirectly. It shows the context in which Versal came to be in Amsterdam. It shows the place in which wordsinhere began a little literary journal to highlight work from around the world. Translocal Americans living outside the US, it felt to me at the time, weren’t infected with the insanity that seemed to spread over the US. For example, groups of people burned albums of the Dixie Chicks, a country western band, for speaking out against the tide of fear and war in which the US seemed enshrouded. It reminded me of what I’ve heard about McCarthyism in the US of the 1950s, or living in Germany or Italy during the second world war. Or the ultra-nationalism in the Balkans during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Examples are legion.

If a population goes crazy—for whatever reason—who is there to stand up for reason? If a government one day declares that two plus two equals five, and has primed people in the country through fear or coercion to believe it and silence those who say it equals four, where do the voices go that express two plus two equals four?

I’d like to think that voices of people who are outside the pockets of insanity could provide that voice of reason. Could provide, at the least, a plurality of viewpoints during periods of widespread hysteria and fear. I’d like to think that Versal is such a place: that in providing a forum for story, poetry and artwork from contributors around the world, it shows us the reader that—in this world at least—there are a multiplicity of voices, that hegemony bred from ignorance and fear need not dictate to the world.

Hmm, perhaps this entry doesn’t have a point after all. Perhaps I’m just musing about death and life, decay and birth, and celebrating eight years of Versal as well. Happy birthday, Versal.

Read poetry. Eat your vegetables.

2010-05-06T11:42:00.002+02:00

Come drink Bloody Marys with us this Saturday!

Date: Saturday, May 8
Place: Nachttheater Sugar Factory; Lijnbaansgracht 238, Amsterdam
Time: 20.00; doors open 19:00
Entrance: 5 eur
Language: English
Info: versal.wordsinhere.com

On Saturday, May 8, Versal will release its eighth edition, and we would love for you to be there.

Versal 8 is the largest issue of the journal to date. With widely celebrated poets like Chung Ho-seung, Laura Mullen and Brandon Shimoda, prose writers Kuzhali Manickavel and Selah Saterstrom, and artists Michael Genovese and Kerri Rosenstein, this issue once again breaks linguistic, national, and cultural borders to bring together the wide range of artistry happening in our contemporary milieu. Copies of the new edition, plus past issues, will be on sale courtesy of The English Bookshop.

With:
Anna Arov (RUS/CAN)
Controllar (NL)
June Melby (USA)
Sarah Ream (UK)
DJ SawSeeSon (AUS/FR)
Mia You (USA)

And for the first time ever:
THE LOCAL MIC OPEN MIC

You get 2 minutes to strut your literary stuff. All forms of poetry and prose welcome. Sign up at the door. The winner will be chosen by the audience, and will receive a free drink and copy of Versal, past or present!

Not in NL? You can preorder now and get free shipping!
www.wordsinhere.com/orderversal.html

Only two days left to preorder Versal 8 and take advantage of our FREE SHIPPING offer. Just click on the link below to get your very own copy of Versal's biggest and best edition yet.

Another short poem written on an airplane during turbulence

2010-05-01T01:07:00.002+02:00

A man with a saw
is never good. At best,
he is making a coffin.

Update from the other side of Eyjafjallajökull

2010-04-19T14:55:00.006+02:00

Our flights are canceling like dominoes and it's not clear when any of us will get back. Luckily, at least so far, none of us are stuck in airports. But Europe never seemed so big, and so much for a small world and all that. Boat?

No complaints, it could be way worse. As long as I'm Stateside, might as well enjoy the benefits of good bagels and Hulu.

Versal 8 Launch Party

2010-04-14T01:58:00.003+02:00

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
Amsterdam is home to a vibrant literary world. On Saturday, 8 May, that world comes together to launch Versal's latest issue, the internationally-acclaimed annual print journal from our very own canals.

Versal started in 2002 as part of the broader "wordsinhere" project to create a literary community in Amsterdam which reached out to its international residents. Until 2007, wordsinhere produced one of Amsterdam's most successful literary evenings, The Open Stanza. It now focuses its non-profit and volunteer efforts on publishing Versal and organizing a broad program of writing workshops with local and visiting, published authors. wordsinhere also runs a bimonthly literary evening in Utrecht called Salon des Mots. Versal has received international praise for the quality of its writings and sense of design.

Versal 8, which will be officially released at the launch party on 8 May, is the largest issue of the journal to date. With widely celebrated poets like Chung Ho-seung, Laura Mullen and Brandon Shimoda, prose writers Kuzhali Manickavel and Selah Saterstrom, and artists Michael Genovese and Kerri Rosenstein, this issue once again breaks linguistic, national, and cultural borders to bring together the wide range of artistry happening in our contemporary milieu.

The launch party will celebrate not only the release of Versal 8 but also the vitality of the local, international literary community. The program includes American spoken word artist and writer June Melby (www.junemelby.com), who is joining us all the way from the States, local band Controllar (www.myspace.com/controllar), and DJs to boogie to.

And this year, Versal is opening up the stage for the "Local Mic Open Mic". Local writers are invited to sign up at the door for an open mic session during the night's festivities. Each writer is given 2 minutes to read a selection of their own work, and afterward the audience will be asked to choose its favorite. The winning writer will receive a free drink and one copy of a Versal, past or present.

Date: Saturday, 8 May
Place: Nachttheater Sugar Factory; Lijnbaansgracht 238, Amsterdam
Time: 20.00; doors open 19.00
Language: English
Entrance: 5 euros (ticket sales at the door)
Info: http://versal.wordsinhere.com

Versal is published annually by wordsinhere, and is available at local bookstores like the Athenaeum and The English Bookshop, as well as online at www.wordsinhere.com. wordsinhere is a community-focused literary organization.

Meeting you in the thick of it

2010-04-12T21:51:00.004+02:00

A Monday recovery in Nashville, TN in the solace of my parents' acreage, still slightly reeling from the madness of three-plus days in the Denver AWP wormhole. I don't think I got more than a few hours' sleep at any given time, nor did I apparently manage to eat an actual meal, but the local stouts kept the carbs coming and clearly energy itself came from elsewhere. What an odd, odd place, AWP.

And because of that oddity or madness or, we barely had a chance to "blog" or "update", our Facebook pages and the Versal fan page going still as we went from place to place, person to person, table to table, book to book, reading to reading, to. And I can barely distinguish the days from each other, so telling you all about it now seems a failed exercise. If you have been to AWP, then you know how it is and won't want to read (more) about it; if you have never been, then a blog outlining the raucous timeline likely comes across as indulgent.

I didn't go with an agenda; I didn't have an AWP technique in hand. I barely kept to the vague schedule I'd laid out for myself. I didn't give my chapbook manuscript to anyone, I didn't meet anyone famous, and I didn't sleep with them either. I also did not dance at the dance party, though I did check it out and giggle for awhile. But I will say this, to anyone (you) out there. Meeting you, if I did, was the best part. For those days, Versal was not far away. Versal was right there, in the thick of it, meeting you: old friends, contributors, fellow editors, new writers. Something jumped in me every time you came up to the table and said, "Hey, you guys are great!" or whatever it is that you said that told me that you knew of our little project before I even gave you my spiel.

On Sunday, the Versal editors dispersed to various North American regions, all taking a few more days or weeks on the continent before heading back to Europe. Now I'm on my parents' porch in Tennessee, mulling over plans for the Versal 8 launch party (May 8!) and my girlfriend's 30th birthday. And also, now, it's spring, and as always, it is weird and wonderful.

2010-04-07T00:53:00.002+02:00

hmm...that wasn't so hard...

Gearing up for the AWP conference

2010-04-07T00:42:00.003+02:00

It’s 2010 and blogging is not something I’ve done before. Oh, I’ve been writing off and on – first keeping a journal and then writing fiction – for twenty or so years, but not blogging. So when my friends and colleagues at Versal asked me to contribute to the Versal blog and shepherd it for awhile, I agreed. It’s twentyten and I’ll try something new.

I work on Versal as one of the fiction editors, live most to half of each year in Amsterdam; the other three to six months I live in a warm, sunny climate – currently that is Burbank, CA USA. Somewhere on the Versal/wordsinhere website there’s a bio about me.

...ok, for the past few weeks I’ve had a case of blushing blog – unable to write much more than a couple pages because the argument I wanted to make here wasn’t clear, and I felt that just typing a bunch of random stuff wouldn’t work. Blogging doesn’t seem to be a thesis, however, and I suppose I should just get over the need for the argument to feel fully formed and get this up.

For now, I'll leave off the topic I had begun (another way to give me more time to flesh it out), to talk about the AWP conference, which starts tomorrow. Versal is going to be there, big time, with about six of its editors ranging about the grounds in Downtown Denver. It's going to be a hootenanny, and there will be more to say as it gets under way. For now, I hope to see you all there--either in the flesh or by video/energy feed.

Versal rough guide to AWP 2010

2010-03-29T14:45:00.005+02:00

To start, here are three things that Versal has organized for AWP: a table, a reading, and a borrel (aka the three essentials).

And if you want to hear me speak about starting Versal, check out Poets&Writers Magazine's panel on Friday: Open for Submissions (see event listing below for details).

Versal at the Bookfair
Versal has a table in the Bookfair, table M3. Please drop by, we can't wait to meet you!

Orbiting Salt: A Quarterly West/Western Humanities Review/Versal/Barrelhouse Reading
Thursday, April 8 4:30-5:45pm
Room 111, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
This reading features writers recently published in Quarterly West, Western Humanities Review, Barrelhouse, and Versal. Spanning the traditional and the experimental, the regional and the global, it celebrates the diverse and powerful work of four journals with editors currently studying creative writing at the University of Utah.
Check out the event on Facebook, and RSVP.

Versal borrel: Going Dutch in Denver
You are all invited to the Versal borrel on Saturday, April 10 from 5:30-7:30pm at the Strata Bar in the Hyatt. It's a completely informal borrel (Dutch for "drinks"), open to contributors past and present, subscribers, and friends of Versal.
Check out the event on Facebook, and RSVP.

Our past and present contributors also sent us info on panels, tables and the like. I've listed these below, along with some panels you'll find us on. Info's been taken off the AWP site so apologies for any errors, panelist changes or omissions.

WEDNESDAY

Hsahta/Omnidawn reading
Wednesday, April 7 7-10pm
The Magnolia Hotel Ballroom, 17th & Stout
With Versal contributors Ben Doller, Noah Eli Gordon

Diode Poetry Journal / Makeout Creek reading
Wednesday, April 7 7pm
Jones Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 1101 13th Street
With Versal contributors Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Cynthia Lotze

THURSDAY

The Long and Short of it: The Evolving Shapes of Creative Nonfiction
Thursday, April 8 9-10:15am
Room 110, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal assistant fiction editor B.J. Hollars

Sarabande Book Signing
Thursday, April 8 1-2pm
Bookfair
With Versal contributor Karen An-hwei Lee

Goodbye to All That: Coming of Age in the Personal Essay
Thursday, April 8 3-4:15pm
Room 201, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Nicole Walker

Queering Desire: Queer Poets' Aesthetic Libidos
Thursday, April 8 4:30-5:45pm
Room 110, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Maureen Seaton

Rare Breed: A Reading with the Black Goat Poets
Thursday, April 8 4:30-5:45pm
Room 201, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Amatoritsero Ede

Writing in More than one Language: Significance, Opportunities, Challenges, and Audiences
Thursday, April 8 4:30-5:45pm
Room 207, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal assistant poetry editor Jennifer K. Dick

Colorado Writers Reading
Thursday, April 8 5:30-7:30pm
Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St.
With Versal contributor Noah Eli Gordon

Prairie Schooner "Baby Boomer" reading
Thursday, April 8 5:30-7:30pm
Common Grounds Downtown Coffee, 1550 17th St.
With Versal contributor Maureen Seaton

Wild Lives, Raucous Pens
Thursday, April 8 8-9:30pm
Adirondacks Room, The Tivoli at Auraria Campus
With Versal contributor Simmons B. Buntin

FRIDAY

Thin Air Book Signing: This Noisy Egg by Nicole Walker
Thursday, April 8
Bookfair
With Versal contributor Nicole Walker

Beyond the "First Compliment, then Criticize" Method: Teaching Students How To Be Better Workshoppers
Friday, April 9 1:30-2:45pm
Room 207, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal fiction editor Robert Glick, Versal contributors Kathryn Cowles, Rachel Marston and Alissa Nutting

Immigrant Poetry: Aesthetics of Displacement
Friday, April 9 3-4:15pm
Room 110, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Uche Nduka

University of Denver Faculty Fiction Reading
Friday, April 9 3-4:15pm
Room 201, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Selah Saterstrom

Open For Submissions: Starting Your Own Literary Magazine or Small Press
Friday, April 9 4:30-5:45pm
Room 109, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal editor Megan M. Garr

Colorado's Innovative Writers Past and Present
Friday, April 9 4:30-5:45pm
Rooms 301, 302, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Noah Eli Gordon

Astrophil Press Off Site Party
Friday, April 9 7pm
7 South Broadway (Hi-Dive)
With Versal contributors Selah Saterstrom and Sandy Florian

SATURDAY

Tupelo Book Signing
Saturday, April 10 11:30-12:30am
Bookfair
With Versal contributor Karen An-hwei Lee

Tupelo Press 10th Anniversary Poetry Reading
Saturday, April 10 3-4:15pm
Room 207, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributors Karen An-hwei Lee and Joshua Marie Wilkinson

A Chorus of Hauntings: Giving Breath to Ghosts
Saturday, April 10 3-4:15pm
Rooms 301, 302, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level
With Versal contributor Brandon Shimoda

Poets in the World: Building Diverse Communities through Independent Poetry Centers, Blogs, and Radio
Saturday, April 10 3-4:15pm
Granite Room, Hyatt Regency Denver, 3rd Floor
With Versal contributor Barbara Jane Reyes

FENCE & 1913: Off-Site Salon
Saturday, April 10 5-7pm
Mario's Double Daughter's Salotto, 1632 Market Street
With Versal contributor Ben Doller

Reading and Book Party for the Starting Today Anthology
Saturday, April 10 6pm
Paris on the Platte Cafe, 1553 Platte Street
With Versal contributor Joshua Marie Wilkinson

A Reading Hosted by Apostrophe Books with Action Books, Black Ocean Press, Slope Editions and Tarpaulin Sky Press
Saturday, April 10 7pm
Plus Gallery, 2501 Larimer Street
With Versal contributors Joe Hall and Julie Doxsee
(includes release of Joe's first book Pigafeta is My Wife)

A big March news reel

2010-03-16T09:37:00.007+01:00

First, I'm excited to announce that Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé's interview with me has just been released on Luna Park Review. Desmond made the interview really interesting by posing questions around his own narrative of his return to Singapore. I enjoyed engaging with him in these questions, and hope you enjoy reading it.

Next up: a rundown of some books to put on your wish lists. Versal assistant poetry editor and past contributor Matthew Sadler just found out that his first collection, The Much Love Sad Dawg Trio, is coming out with March Street Press. Versal 5 contributor Joe Hall is getting ready for his upcoming launch at AWP of his first book Pigafeta is My Wife. Versal 8 contributor Neil de la Flor also has his first book of poetry coming out, Almost Dorothy, which won the 2009 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. He and fellow Versal 8 contributor Maureen Seaton just won the Sentence Book Award for their manuscript, Sinead O'Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds, forthcoming from Firewheel Editions in 2011. Versal 6 contributor Derek Henderson and co-author Derek Pollard have their book Inconsequentia coming out with BlazeVox this week. And another one that's just hit the shelves is Versal 8 contributor Kevin McLellan's chapbook Round Trip, a collaborative series with numerous women poets. All titles to add to your collections!

There's plenty of activity on the journal and anthology fronts as well. Versal editor Megan M. Garr has new work coming out in The St. Petersburg Review, Tuesday: An Art Journal and Sand out of Berlin. She and assistant fiction editor BJ Hollars were both finalists in the 2009 Black Lawrence River Chapbook Competition. Fiction editor Robert Glick has a story forthcoming in Fourteen Hills and a poem in Blue Earth Review. Assistant poetry editor Jennifer K. Dick has poetry, translations, reviews, and articles published or forthcoming in numerous publications: Tears in the Fence, Trans-, Ekleksographia, Big City Lit, Lungfull! Magazine, Voi(es)x (an anthology), New Pony: a horse less anthology and Action, Yes! And Matt has a short story coming out in this summer's Indiana Review. Versal 6 contributor Dawn Lonsinger was a recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize this year, and has poems forthcoming in Post Road, Sycamore Review, Southeast Review, Cave Wall, Barn Owl Review, and in the anthologies A Generation Defining Itself: In Our Own Words and I.O.U.--New Writing On Money. Versal 7 contributor Lehua M. Taitano has stories coming out in The Anthology of Indigenous Writers from Micronesia and The Fiction at Work Bi-Annual Report, a Green Lantern Press Anthology. Her essay "Reticulation" is forthcoming from dislocate journal, and was the winner of The Contaminated Essay Contest, judged by Lia Purpura. Lehua is also the University of Montana's Merriam-Frontier 2010 winner, with her chapbook appalachiapacific coming out this summer. And Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, also from Versal 7, has work forthcoming in Blackbird, Breadcrumb Scabs, Copper Nickel, Ganymede, Pank, and Spilt Milk. His sequence “When Dada Rewrote Koans” was selected by Mary Jo Bang as one of six finalists in the Noemi Press Poetry Chapbook Award.

In other news, 2010 looks to be a busy year for Versal 5 contributor Helen Burke. She's reading poetry and exhibiting art at the upcoming Scarborough Literature Festival, and also reading at the Leeds Literature and Manchester Festivals. You can also see her later this year at the Viennese evening of poetry and music at Schubertiad in Suffolk and the Whitby Folk Festival. Helen is currently preparing a new collection of poems and writing a play, as well as being mentored by the BBC for radio plays. Versal 6 contributor Mark Wisniewski tells us that he recently finished a novel, Straightaway, in which the main character in his Best American Short Stories 2008 piece dishes out some no-bull truths about desperate crime, betrayal, and genuine love in the Bronx. Mark also has a new agent, Seth Fishman at Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.

And if you're in Berkeley, CA: Versal 8 contributor Dan Thomas-Glass is launching the 4th issue of his journal With + Stand this Sunday, with readings from Lisa Robertson, Stephanie Young, Anne Lesley Selcer, Melissa Mack, Brian Ang and more. Check out the journal's blog for complete details.

If you're looking for online reading material, check our Versal 1 contributor Amatoritsero Ede's Maple Tree Literary Supplement. And upcoming Versal 8 contributor Karen An-Hwei Lee has a brand new blog!

Finally, if you want a taste of Versal 8's cover, check out artist Kerri Rosenstein's installation in the Trickhouse backroom.

Congratulations to everyone. Though we're not sure how many people will read every word of this little (?) news reel, it's super exciting to see such great work happening on so many levels, with so many folks who have filled Versal's pages since 2003.

Inside Eight

2010-03-15T13:13:00.005+01:00

Admit it. You, we, all of us, when we pick a lit journal off the shelves, the first thing we normally do (sometimes the only thing we do) is scan the list of names in the TOC or on the back cover (or front cover in the odd case).

Versal Eight's not here yet, of course, so you can't inspect its pickings. But you can have some early scanning fun with this: the list of contributors to Versal Eight, coming in May. What this means is, when the issue's all done and printed and hanging out on some bookstore shelf, you can skip over the scanning and right on to the buying (cough, cough).

Congratulations to everyone:

Carlos Barbarito
Simmons B. Buntin
John Carroll
Chung Ho-seung
Stacy Elaine Dacheux
Neil de la Flor
Michael Genovese
June Glasson
Siân B. Griffiths
Sabrina Harri
Kim Holleman
Colleen Hollister
Bruce Humphries
Laurie Junkins
Lotte Klaver
Deanna Lee
Karen An-hwei Lee
Evi Lemberger
Paul Lisson
Norman Lock
Sarah-Jane Lynagh
Kuzhali Manickavel
Kevin McLellan
Amy McNamara
June Melby
Laura Mullen
Elizabeth O'Brien
Daniele Pantano
Carlos Pardo
Alex Piperno
Amy Purifoy Piazza
Carol Radsprecher
Jadon Rempel
Kerri Rosenstein
Selah Saterstrom
Maureen Seaton
Gregory Sherl
Brandon Shimoda
Brenda Sieczkowski
Kristine Snodgrass
Audri Sousa
Bianca Stewart
Lucas Stoessel
Stacey Swann
Dan Thomas-Glass
Bouke Verwijs
Siobhán Webb
Samuel Day Wharton
Mia You
Elizabeth Zuba

Nota bene

2010-03-06T18:35:00.002+01:00

Versal Eight is being constructed amidst liters of mint&cinnamon tea, with episodes of The Universe on in the background.

It's that time of year when I dig a deep and quiet hole to "finish" Versal.

I think Robert has joined me, if his poem (below) can serve as evidence of protracted (status quo?) jet lag.

Cheesy Poem Gone Awry

2010-03-05T17:47:00.004+01:00

A cat's paw
is a miracle
provided that
it is attached
to a cat

Versal 7's Rufo Quintavalle editing nthposition

2010-02-13T12:30:00.002+01:00

Todd Swift, nthposition's poetry editor since 2002, is taking a break to complete his doctoral research. Paris-based poet Rufo Quintavalle, from Versal 7, is now acting poetry editor.

New work is posted every month; if you want to submit then write to him at rquintav AT gmail DOT com. Send up to six poems embedded in the body of an email. No attachments please! We accept all styles of poetry. For more information see nthposition.com or browse in the extensive archive.

Site's back up

2010-02-01T11:48:00.001+01:00

...as you were...

Main site down;

2010-01-30T20:29:00.002+01:00

Our main site (http://www.wordsinhere.com) went down overnight. Our hosts are alerted to the problem and we're moving towards getting back online.

In the meantime, you can read through our blog archives to pass the time.

Contributor news: Jane Monk in The Times

2010-01-25T14:13:00.007+01:00

Jane Monk, a contributor to Versal 6, has been featured in an article about The Times' mentorship scheme. Over the last year, Jane, who is writing Manwife, an historical novel, has been mentored by novelist Adele Parks.

Keep the contributor news coming! Email us on versaljournalATwordsinhereDOTcom with updates about prizes, publications, readings and so on.

"I'm holding on too tight. I've lost the edge."

2010-01-21T14:53:00.003+01:00

I admit it. I love Top Gun. There's so much wrong with it, I know this. But I saw it as a kid, completely fell in love with Tom Cruise and/or Meg Ryan, and I get a kick out of the soundtrack.

I thought of Cougar's lines yesterday when I received an email from a fellow Amsterdam writer who runs workshops in town. Over the years I've tried to build a circular network with her, to no avail. She refuses to have anything to do with us. The only time she ever did was when we created "lit goodie bags" for the now (sadly) extinct Amsterdam Literary Festival. We offered every organizer in the community a chance to add something to the bag, so she jumped right in.

With our renewed initiatives to keep the local literary community here strong and healthy, I thought it would be a good time to try her again. I emailed her asking if she might consider adding a link to our site, and threw in a note about the great community we share and how we can work together to keep it alive and well. About a week later, I got her reply (yesterday):

Dear Megan,

Sorry, but I don't list other workshops on my site; and the only links are to writing experiences that I've had personally or non-profit writing organisations.

Hope to see you soon.

All best,
Jane Doe

Seriously? When did wordsinhere become "other workshops"? I know she knows better. That's when I thought of Cougar. She's holding on so tightly to what she perceives as her own square centimeters of this literary community. And it's a shame, because community doesn't work like that, at least not how I read it. Writers should be able to move around as they like, and should be given the information to do so. It's not an "us and them" thing, at least it shouldn't be.

It reminds me of one of the first meetings I had with another literary organization when wordsinhere was first getting off the ground back in 2002. I contacted the Dutch organization that promotes translation (into and from Dutch) and had a coffee with its director. I told him about our plans to start an international literary stage (the now-extinct Open Stanza, which ran from 2002-2007), and he looked at me with great confusion and said something like, "I don't understand why you want to meet with me about this. We work with writers to translate their texts. You're an American. I don't see the correlation between what you're doing and what we're doing."

Seriously?

In my reply to Jane Doe, I pointed out that wordsinhere is non-profit but I wished her success with her work. Then I mentioned that at last weekend's literary borrel - a free event which we organized for anyone who wanted to come, to meet other writers and find out about some of the offerings in town - a woman came up to me and asked me if Jane Doe was there. The woman had heard about her workshops and wanted to know more. I told this woman that Jane Doe knew about the event, but I wasn't sure if she was coming.

In my reply to Jane Doe's dismissal, I wrote, "At our last literary borrel someone asked if you were there. It's a shame there isn't more connectedness in this community, you may have been able to garner some more clients."

Yeah, I have my limits.

[Cut to Meg Ryan and Goose, great balls of fire.]

Versal submissions period closing today!

2010-01-15T16:38:00.004+01:00

A final reminder to submit work for Versal 8 before we close for submissions today. You can read our guidelines and submit via our online submissions manager here. Thanks to everyone who has submitted work so far.

And a reminder for those of you based in the Netherlands: we're celebrating the new year and Versal's new membership scheme and events programme tomorrow in the English Bookshop at Lauriergracht 71 in Amsterdam from 4 pm. Free entrance - do drop by!

HERE: HP-09-07-009

2010-01-14T09:16:00.008+01:00

Although the ice-skating season is well underway in the frozen Netherlands, Versal is being read in warmer climes by South African Liesl Jobson and her friends. They took a HERE copy of Versal 7 with them to St James' Beach in Cape Town to re-read during a Christmas Day picnic. Thank you for the photos, Liesl.

Happy 2010! You can now join the Versal community, officially

2010-01-04T12:08:00.004+01:00

For the last several months, we've been reevaluating our work in the NL literary community. Taking a look at our workshop offering, our relationship with local writers, and how we can continue to support this great community while still publishing the literary journal that has put this city on the international literary map.

What has resulted is not only a completely revamped literary programming aimed to keep you writing and inspired. To help better connect you with other local writers, we've developed the 2010 LOCAL Versal membership. You'll get freebies (VIP entrance to the Versal launch!) and discounts to all wordsinhere/Versal programming. And anyone who becomes a LOCAL member before March 1 gets a copy of Versal 7 thrown into the deal!

There's also the GLOBAL Versal membership, for anyone, anywhere. GLOBAL members get a 2 year subscription to Versal while directly supporting a journal and community that you love.

Both membership types are great gifts for your writerly friends and family, too.

Visit our Membership pages for complete details and to sign up!

And for those locals out there, we hope you'll join us on January 16 at The English Bookshop for a celebratory New Year's borrel.

Join your fellow poets & writers for a celebratory New Year's borrel on Saturday, January 16. Bring your writing group and friends down and meet others. Versal's editorial team will provide drinks and will be on hand to answer questions about your literary life in Amsterdam in 2010. What workshops, groups and clinics are on offer? What other things can a writer expect this year?

You'll also have the chance to sign up for workshops and buy your entry tickets for writing groups and clinics. The Borrel will also be a great chance to purchase your 2010 LOCAL membership to benefit from fantastic discounts and freebies.

Saturday, January 16
Starting at 16.00
The English Bookshop
Lauriergracht 71, Amsterdam
Free entrance

Matt Sadler in the latest Salt River Review

2009-12-17T22:38:00.002+01:00

I'm thrilled to share the news that one of our newest poetry editors, Matt Sadler, has new work in the Winter 2009 edition of The Salt River Review.

Have a read, and congratulations Matt!

Pushcart nominations

2009-12-05T12:14:00.004+01:00

I am very pleased to announce our Pushcart nominations from Versal 7:

Jessica Young - “Autosomal Dominant”
Rufo Quintavalle - “Ball Bearings”
Mark Bilbrey - “The Dog of the National Register of Historic Places”
Sawako Nakayasu - “5.28.2003” from “Texture Notes”
Lehua M. Taitano - “Suit”

Congratulations to the nominees! If you don't have a copy of Versal 7, you can get one here.

Trans-

2009-11-23T17:57:00.002+01:00

Last month marked my eighth year in the Netherlands, a number I never expected to reach. It also marked the seventh year since a small handful of writers and I put our heads together to come up with what you now see here, Versal et al.

Just back from a trip to the States and still feeling the whir of jetlag; the sensation that I'm straddling the Atlantic is slightly more keen than normal, and the months of scribbled notes I have made to myself on translocality -- upon confrontations with art, late-night drinks with friends in bars, after people ask me "so what kind of Work does Versal publish?" (caps intended) -- seem rather daunting. I'm trying to work something out, and I promised Robert, sort of, that I would work it out on the blog. But I'm a reviser, see, and hesitant -- wary -- of absolutes. If you read my editorial in Versal 7, then you can probably guess that my work to define translocality is rather, in many ways, to undefine it.

But. Last weekend, Crossing Border put on a "minisymposium" on the "correlation between (literary) magazines and literary publishers", pivoting around the (in)famous McSweeney's and its various projects, with a few Dutch publishers thrown into the mix. I ended up not being able to make it down to The Hague in time, but regardless I feel the need to say something about the fact that Versal was not asked to join the local contingent of speakers at this event. To take a card from McSweeney's deck, we're a cool group of Gen X-cusp-Yers, and Versal is no Dutch eyesore.

The symposium's focus on the relationship between literary journals and publishers, and seemingly on how "paper" as a medium is the great savior of print (a recent Eggers theme), would have benefited from Versal's translocal perspective. Here is, perhaps, where I've lost you (if I didn't lose you already because you thought this was going to turn into a bitter rant). Here is also where all my little scribbles become a great daunting pile. But stay with me for a few more paragraphs; this isn't a five-paragraph essay. That Versal was not asked to join the program underscores the question the symposium seems to have started with, about the relationship between publishers and journals -- which is layered something like: between literary publishers and writers, between readers and printed matter, between the computer screen and paper, between global and local. One could say that it's all the same "between", just seen from different perspectives. And that between is the (growing) black hole that translocal writers fall into, or the crack we fall between, pick your metaphor/onomatopoeia.

What happens to the translocal writer, exactly? For many professions, longer-term work abroad is considered a CV must-have at any level, but writers who live more permanently abroad are better off, in many cases, going back home. From a logistic standpoint, an emerging translocal writer may face the following challenges:

1. Disengagement from his/her home literary community (e.g. loosening networks, lack of "being in touch" with "what's going on")
2. Limited engagement with his/her "new" literary community
3. Rejection from journals in either community due to the work's foreignness
4. Hesitation from "home" publishers who tend to prefer local (i.e. residential) writers who can give lots of readings, etc. to sell books

This symposium was an exciting event to hit the Netherlands, whether you like McSweeney's or not. If any of you were there, I'd love to hear about it. So here, finally, is my hypothesis: I believe that translocality is instructional, that translocal writing, e.g., can be a way of understanding literary production and craft in general. Journals like Versal are that greatly-needed bridge between national literary cultures, the spanning scaffolds that will enable literary publishers to notice the ever-increasing number of writers who are taking part (like so many others) in this global world. Using "the hell out of the medium" as McSweeney's asserts oversimplifies the answer to the great digital question of our literary age (i.e. how is the publishing community going to survive it). It's not just about making paper carry its weight. Part of the answer also lies in the traverse between the local and the global, and finding the writers who are working there.