From the Editor

After six years, I've stepped back from my Editor-in-Chief role with Bacopa Literary Review, and recently found my responses to an interview with a student of one of our former contributors:

How did you arrive at your job as editor-in-chief of a literary review? Was it something you always wanted to do, or did you come into it by chance? If you had planned to become an editor, why did you want to go into that field? 

I did not plan to be editor-in-chief of a literary review. I have a PhD. in Psychology and had edited several dissertations as a doctoral committee member. Also, for a year I promoted myself as an editor of memoir and fiction and edited one of each. The memoir required massive rewriting and took most of a year. The fiction was a thesis for an MFA. and required only a small amount of copy-editing over a weekend. I was good at editing. thought it would be an interesting additional income stream, but I didn't enjoy the work as much as I thought I would, and this has come home tenfold during production of Bacopa Literary Review. I have pretty much of an eagle eye for errors, but between the staff of editors we kept finding small mistakes, some of them from the original submitted manuscripts, some of them a lack of consistency in our use of grammatical rules or technical problems in transferring a Word document to print-ready form. It's agonizingly detailed work.   

Describe your job.   

For Bacopa Literary Review the genre editors choose what to accept—sometimes in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief--and are responsible for key editing decisions in concert with contributors. So my main responsibility has been to coordinate the efforts of the editorial team: facilitating creation of a vision, reaching consensus on what kind of writing we seek, developing marketing statements, setting up an Editors' Blog, Facebook and Twitter pages (and using these to promote the journal and past prize winners). I and the Associate Editor worked mostly behind the scenes; particularly during production, which requires creating the parent document to be readied for print, as well as copy editing proofs/sample copies before ordering the print journal in bulk. 

I suspect I was asked to take this volunteer job because—in addition to my editing experience—I've written poetry, memoir, and a small bit of fiction, I had been Nonfiction editor of Bacopa for one year and knew a little bit about what was required, and I've been a member of a mixed-genre critique group for more than fifteen years. So, my work and capabilities were known. Others may not have known I also brought experience consulting to leadership and facilitating small group efforts (first as Bast Consulting and later as Out of the Box Coaching). However, I said "No" the first few times I was asked because I didn't think I'd have the time. Also, I had more contemporary preferences in all genres than had typically been true of the past six annual issues of the journal (2010-2015). I only agreed when I was assured that I could break the rules.

There were five of us, all new to each other as a team my first year for the 2016 issue, and we pretty much changed everything that was done in the past. Because of the excitement engendered by this freedom, I found the energy to step up to what became a 15-hours-a-week commitment that first year. The former editorial team, by the way, was in place—more or less—for six consecutive years, and knew that greater use of social media would be necessary to step up the number and quality of submissions. I had that experience to bring, having created a phone coaching business via online marketing, including writing for my own blogs and for online publications, plus a Facebook and Twitter presence. 

Technically, we had three months to promote the journal and run a cover art contest January through March (also part of our marketing plan), then three months of open submissions April 1 - June 30. We wanted to increase our accessibility, so stayed in close touch with submitters and contributors whose work we accepted. Because of our marketing efforts, we increased the number of submissions from about 200 before I took over to more than 1,000 during most of my six years.

Maybe it's because of my own interests and background, but I think of a sustainable literary review, even though nonprofit, as bearing a close resemblance to any small business. And speaking of "nonprofit," we are sustained financially by Writers Alliance of Gainesville (WAG) here in Gainesville, Florida. Because of this we were able to dismiss submission fees and some years have offered small contributor payments in addition to financial prizes. The cost of publishing a journal is no small concern. In the past, many journals have charged submission fees, but writers are rebelling against even a small $2 "processing fee" as will be evident if you search online. The basic attitude is that writers can't afford to pay fees to sustain a journal when there's no guarantee they'll be published.

 Why did you choose to study psychology?

Because of my fascination with the range of human behavior. My literary interests are the same—I'm always attracted to deeply drawn characters and what does or does not change in their lives. So, I'm drawn to literature and poetry that evoke common psychological themes. As an undergraduate I was blown away, for example, after reading Justine (the first in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet), to then read Balthazar and realize it covered the same events as Justine but from another key character's perspective. When I consulted to organizations, I discovered exactly the same: talk to three people about what's going on in the organization and/or with a particular individual, and you'll have three different perspectives.  

Share a few more details about your career, interests, and path to becoming the editor-in-chief of a literary journal:

I had no conscious path to become editor of a literary journal. My goal was to be a practicing coach with a psychological bent. My professional interests have been to show how poetry and literature can evoke and/or illustrate issues of personality. My personal hobby has been writing poetry and memoir. During my years as an organizational consultant I learned how to market my business, how to show leadership, and how to facilitate a team meeting or conflict resolution. These turned out to be very useful skills in pulling together an editorial team.

What genres of fiction did you personally write?

My one foray into fiction was in a Wildacres Writers Workshop with a piece that had originally been memoir about my affair with a fairly well-known poet. I wanted it to be as compelling as good fiction, so rewrote it as a short story for critique, then later owned it as memoir, slightly revised to protect the not-so-innocent (later published in Connotation Press).

How is the journal now different from past issues?

We've had a greater range of ages among contributors and more current topics across genres—from reactions to a Paris bombing to what it's like to grow up Black in white America. Also, a greater variety of contemporary forms such as found poetry or visual poetry and innovative creative nonfiction such as one that conveyed what can be visualized in 1/60th of a second. Also, more contemporary use of language across genres, including profanity; not that profanity is a mark of excellence, but work that's authentic conveys how people actually think and speak.

Was it difficult or challenging to revamp Bacopa Literary Review?

Quite the contrary. It was exciting and not at all difficult. I made sure the new editorial team was composed of members excited about change and full of ideas to attract a greater range of readers. Our motto: "Let's break some rules." As only one example, the previous six annual covers had been quietly elegant variations of two designs, each in three different color schemes. There was a third, similar design (with three different colors schemes) that the former editors suggested we use for the next three annual issues. But we wanted a cover that would signify we were revamping and renewing the journal. So before submissions opened, we held a cover art contest and chose a new and fresh cover design.

As an editor, do you find it's easier to write and publish your own material, since you have greater understanding of the editing and publishing process?

Most of my writing has been either blogging related to my business or using my knowledge of personality to help writers deepen their characters. However, if I do submit, I'll be more understanding of form rejection letters and more appreciative of personalized rejection letters. I'm also much more aware of the competition, and more realistic about the quality of my own writing. (I laugh to remember that I once submitted a poem to The New Yorker.) So I'm less likely to submit, but if I do, I'll pay closer attention to the journal's guidelines. As an editor I've been dumbfounded by how few submissions follow our guidelines. The two that cost us the most time are single-spacing fiction and creative nonfiction instead of double-spacing as requested, and leaving identifying information on manuscripts when we made it clear we judge blind.

How would you describe your poetry and memoirs? 

Short, sexy, funny, metaphorical, not prize-winning writing but okay. My memoir pieces tend to be what I call "flash memoir." Many of my poems are memoir-based. Most of my publications have been in online journals. Some work in print journals responded to calls for specific work, such as "Remaking Moby Dick" (my contribution was a found poem drawn from one of the chapters in the book).

How do you handle difficult or challenging submissions? (Inappropriate content, poor quality, etc)? 

If the writing is poor quality, we reject a submission with a letter indicating it wasn't a fit for us and "good luck with your writing." We're pretty broad-minded about viewpoints if the writing is good, so "inappropriate" isn't a word I'd use. As far as language, there's pretty much nothing that disturbs us unless it's poorly written--profanity for profanity's sake, for example, isn't interesting to read. But we may have topped all six previous issues of Bacopa Literary Review with the number of times various versions of "fuck" appeared in the 2016 edition. In every accepted piece that uses profanity, the language is appropriate to the poem or story and the writing is superior. We did agree from the beginning that if any one piece we wanted to accept offended anyone on the editorial team, we would discuss and try to seek consensus, but in the end would not publish something if even one editor couldn't support its publication. We have a range of age, gender, politics, and personal tastes among the editors, but we're mostly left-leaning and have found that the focus on good writing has made agreement relatively easy.

Stemming off of that, what criteria do you use to evaluate submissions? 

I worked with the genre editors to create statements describing what they were looking for, then clarified these for each genre in our Editors' blog—for example: experimental poetry ("a weave of poetic language and technique"), literary fiction ("deep characterization, a compelling story, beautiful writing"), and truly creative nonfiction ("real-life stories that meet the standards of literary fiction"). Of course we received tons of work that came nowhere near our criteria, but the submissions we did choose are spectacular.  

Any pet peeves when it comes to being an editor? 

My main peeve has been the unexpected ire of a few authors who attacked me/us with profanity or accusations of partiality because their submissions were rejected. One, for whom English is a second language, misread the first "Thanks-we've received your submission--and will get back to you" letter as an acceptance, then had a complete, dramatic meltdown when he later received a rejection letter. Another—who had not followed the guidelines for one poem at a time and was asked to resubmit—even implied the threat of a law suit because of a disability that made submitting difficult. Another, when asked to resubmit a single-spaced fiction submission according to our guideline to double-space (I explained that we read the first time online and single-spacing is really hard on the eyes), sent me this email:

G

F

Y

!!!

Finally, something unrelated to to your role as Editor-in=Chief: Who are your influences as a writer?  

I like guts and honesty. Mostly, great women writers -- for memoir, notably Mary Karr; for fiction Virginia Woolf, and more recently Emma Donoghue and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; for poetry Sylvia Plath, Susan Olds, Maxine Kumin, and new younger poets like Fatimah Asghar--whose "Pluto Shits on the Universe" actually inspired my abstract painting, "Realigning the Cosmos":