An Interview with Mina Manchester, Judge of the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest
ANNIE: Hello, and welcome. I'm Annie Mydla, managing editor of Winning Writers, and I'm joined today by Mina Manchester, final judge of our Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest. Mina holds an MFA and is a working writer, as well as an editorial assistant at independent publisher Great Place Books. She's currently working on a short story collection as well as her debut novel. Mina, welcome.
MINA: Thank you so much, Annie, for having me. It's a pleasure.
In your eyes as the judge, the head judge of Tom Howard/John H. Reid, what makes a great story or essay?
That's my favorite question, because that's why I sit down at my desk every day: to discover that. A story that resonates with me emotionally is always going to rise to the top, whether I laugh or cry, and I love stories that have a real concise tightness to them—some of the basics, like I can see a beginning, middle, and end.
But I also love stories that are like life—stories that have dimension, conflict, and contrast. A story that just hits the same piano key over and over is not going to be as interesting to a reader as one that has highs and lows. So I think that's really important for people submitting to take into consideration with the work that they're submitting: we are looking for that texture and dimensionality, and that tightness of the overall story. Nothing extraneous. I also love stories where it really feels like the author knows what this story is about, and I'm just ready to go on that journey.
One of the things that I talked about with Lauren in her interview is that, at least for the Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest, it's clear that some of the poets submitting are writing the poems more to process things from their personal lives than with the actual reader in mind, and the reader's experience of the words on the page. Do you find that at all in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid entries?
This is a question that I think is central to being an artist and a creator, and it's something that I've struggled with for many years: are you writing for yourself, or are you writing for an audience? I've toggled back and forth, and I think—here's my real thing, okay?—this is what I've come to after many years: it's both.
As you mature as an artist in your craft, and you learn more, you are able, through muscle memory and your craft abilities, to make the work ready for the reader. So, I personally believe that the work should always be for you.
The best writing advice I ever got was from my first writing teacher, who said, "Write where it's hot." My best work is always something that I'm trying to work out or deal with, or it's really hot, whether I feel good or bad about it. And I think that hotness comes through in the material. And then, I think, it's just a matter of, to what degree are you executing on the craft abilities that make it appealing for your reader?
Are there any patterns that you see appearing in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid entries?
As I've done [judging] for more years, I see that different writers are at different places in their writing journey. There are some commonalities with writers who are more early on in developing their material, where there is sort of a looseness or a bagginess with the story, or the transitions don't really work, or the characters aren't totally, fully fleshed out. Or sometimes the material is a little cliché, or it's not really a hot take.
I really feel empathetic to creators who are working on that, because that's part of the journey. You don't always know when you're writing something that a lot of other people are writing about. A great example was during the pandemic and the lockdown. We just saw tons of stories about that from everybody's different take. And just as someone who's reading literally thousands of those stories, it does get a little repetitive.
So, I just think in terms of advice for submitters: we've seen a lot of different thematic material that does get repetitive. I think one thing Annie and I were talking about earlier is that we've seen a lot of Boomers writing about aging and dying and sick parents. And I expect that we're going to see another wave of that with the Millennials, and even Gen Z, talking about how their familial relations are.
And so that's great, and we love those stories—I think it's just trying to figure out, how is your story in your unique voice? And what makes your set of circumstances really different?
I think the way to do that is to read a lot. Even in my own life—I write about, sometimes, parenting or motherhood, and it feels really hot and fresh to me, because I'm experiencing it. Then I'll read more and I'll be like, "Oh yeah, this is pretty universal." And that's not to say that universal is bad, because honestly, appealing to the universal is the goal. Like, full stop. But how do you do that in a way that's really engaging and interesting? For me, it's through specifics, through details.
I imagine that a lot of writers are also writing about things that they feel in the cultural zeitgeist, for example, identity politics and so-called "political correctness". How do you see those topics as factoring into the Tom Howard/John H. Reid entry pool?
I think it goes to a question of authenticity. For me, I'm Scandinavian-American, I'm a woman, I'm white, I'm cisgender, I'm straight—mostly!—I'm a wife, I'm a mother, a daughter, a friend. And when I'm reading entries, I really try to be aware of [my] possible biases, of blind spots. So anything that touches on those topics, I try (even though it's all read blind, of course) to have an extra degree of scrutiny to counteract familiarity with material or themes.
I try to also be extra gentle with things that might be more outside of my purview, and I work closely with Jendi to get sensitivity readers or educate myself more if it's something that's not as much in my wheelhouse.
I do think it's really important to elevate other voices, like trans voices and LGBTQ voices, people of color, and disability voices. I've dealt with chronic illness in my life and my kids' lives, and trans identity in my family, and so those are just really important, and we don't see enough of those stories.
And then I will also say as a caveat to all of that as an artist. I think that our society is trying to figure out the role that identity plays in everything in our lives, and where should we be sensitive. I think, as an artist, it's important to also just totally disregard it and write what you're going to write, right? Everyone has the right to write anything, and that's the freedom of being an artist. That's also the sacrifice that we take on when we become artists: that people aren't necessarily going to like it.
I think it's really brave, and it's important. So really, don't self-edit yourself. Be brave with what you're going to write and let the chips fall. And of course, another caveat—we don't want to see violence or disturbing material that is difficult for a number of reasons.
Something that I think it's also important to mention as a judge, reading so many of these submissions year after year, is that a lot of it is about the author's worst day, or something really traumatic that happened to them. And that makes sense. That's why we're writing—we're trying to understand human suffering and these experiences. That's just also a lot to absorb as a judge, and I have to protect my mental health.
I'd like to see more stories that are about the happiest day of someone's life, or just about a normal day of someone's life, and have that sort of dimensionality. Bad things happen too, and I'm not saying write light or fluffy material, but I'm just saying, maybe get into it from a different lens that is a bit more like life.
And don't worry—I do have like a lot of strategies to take care of myself so that I don't feel too sad all the time. I take breaks, and I have a lot of support.
I really admire the authenticity of the pieces that you choose as winners and honorable mentions for the contest.
I try to just read for what is the best, without thought of duplicates [entries that take on similar topics in similar ways] or anything like that. Then, when I go back through, sometimes hard decisions at the very end are when two stories of pretty equal merit are sort of on the same topic or theme. That's the heartbreak for me, because I do like to have diversity in theme and subject matter.
I think sometimes that's also sort of necessarily why those pieces are winning, because they do lean into their specific experiences. Like this year, we have a veteran or an active military member, and we have a nurse from the past, someone who is adopted, someone who's working with the Deaf community. I think the more specificity about your particular experiences that are in the story, the better.
There tends to be a focus on unanswerable questions in your picks, I've noticed. For example, from this year, there's this unbridgeable gap in understanding between a veteran, their community, and basically themselves, in [2024's] fiction winner, "Cryptozoology". And then in the essay winner, "Memory in Tibet", there's this unsolvable problem of grueling child labor and what it does to children in these villages versus, community survival. What is it about these unanswerable questions that makes them so attractive in short fiction and short nonfiction?
I love this question. I feel like for me, even the work I gravitated toward as a small child—I think life is pretty unanswerable, and circumstances, and the fates, seem random. I also think human life is very complex, and we have these beautiful big brains, and we're just a mass of contradictions. I love work that captures that messiness and that explores all of it.
The work that I don't [tend to] like is too simplistic, and that doesn't feel realistic to my life experience. I feel like life is really hard for most people, and we're all just trying to do our best. I like to learn from the choices that people make, or how they're trying to be better.
Like, god, I love a character who's flawed and just trying their best, because I feel like that's me! I relate to that. I'm not perfect, I'm so deeply flawed, and am I trying my best every day? Probably not, but I do try, and I really relate to that.
You are also a working author, you make a lot of submissions, and you do a lot of writing. I'm wondering if the judging has influenced your own work, and if your own work has influenced your judging.
Oh yes, definitely, yes. And yes, I love coming back to judge this contest every year. It comes at a certain time for me in the summer, and it really helps me to dig back into it, because it's just always such a good reminder of what stories need to be. All of the good material inspires me.
I want to say, especially for submitters, one thing that really warms my heart is when a piece I've seen has been submitted or even longlisted in the past, and then the author has gone back for the last year and revised it and reworked it, and maybe worked with other editors or writing groups, and workshopped it, and made it better, and then resubmitted it. There's a great example from a piece that did win in the past, a nonfiction piece, "Manny" by Elizabeth Becker. I had seen that piece before, liked it, and longlisted it. Then she went back and worked on it, and it won. To me, that is the work of a writer. This is a long game.
And yeah, it does help me with my own work. I am a judge, but I'm also judged in everything that I submit. So it helps me to see what is good and what doesn't work, and then I take that back to my own work and try to make my own work better. So really, this is a gift to me. I feel very, like—"I'll take it!" Because writing is very lonely and isolating, and when I submit to things with my own work, sometimes months, or even a year, will go by, and I will hear nothing.
I think for me, even hearing a rejection, or just getting a few sentences, a few words, of feedback, whether good or bad, is better than just the deafening silence. Wherever we can help each other as writers to get feedback [is valuable]. Work with friends, or work with other writers on your work. I think it just really helps you move forward and can help deal with that loneliness and isolation and get more eyes on what you're doing.
It's worthy. It's okay to be vulnerable. Do it! Just do it. Just let me encourage you to do it.
Can you talk a little bit about the things that you're working on right now?
Yes, I'm excited! I'm working on a story collection which was my thesis at my MFA program—shout out to Sewanee School of Letters!—and it was a finalist for the Santa Fe Writers Prize this spring. And the judges, bless their hearts, sent me some feedback, and so I'm working on that right now and revising it and submitting it around.
And then I have a novel that I wrote, also at Sewanee, and I've been revising for the last couple of years, so that has been sort of out on submission to a couple of different agents and editors. I'm getting some feedback on that and hoping that someone will want to take it out for me, which would be really exciting.
I graduated with my MFA just thinking, "Oh, I'm ready. I'm going to get a job in publishing, and I'm get my novel out there." And the reality is, years go by. I always need to reset my own perspective with, "This takes a really long time," and slow myself down, and just be like, "The material is going to take the time that it takes."
Now, because I'm so invested, I'm so far down the rabbit hole. I'm like, "Take the time!" Because I want it to be the best it can be. I want the book to be all it can be for readers, and for what I can do. That, to me, is the most exciting challenge right now.
It's worth taking time, because the book will live on. The book is not mortal like we are.
You're an editorial assistant at Great Place Books, the independent publisher and I just wanted to ask you a little bit about that work and any overlap that it may have with being a judge for Tom Howard/John H. Reid.
I'm so glad that you're asking, because this is definitely my soap box I think as an emerging writer—and I feel like all of us at some point spend a lot of time as an emerging writer—I think most of the submitters to this contest are kind of in the trenches with me on this! In the last ten years, we've seen just such a constriction of publishing options for ourselves. We have five publishers, which do have multiple imprints, but it's really hard to get in. And there's also just a proliferation of writers because we had time during the pandemic, we have digital tools, we're able to self-publish. Amazon has changed the landscape.
So what I'm excited by, that I'm seeing now, is the rise of some new indies. And, as a writer who maybe tends toward the more artistic or literary or eccentric, I think it's really important to have more submission opportunities, and I think the indies are leading the way.
Great Place Books is certainly one of them. We're new, we're small, we're scrappy. We take three titles a year, so it's not a volume game for us. One prose book, one book in translation, one book of poetry. Send your stuff! We promise we'll read it. Go to our website. You can submit.
I read submissions there, and then help, once we do have our chosen titles, with some copy editing and getting them out there. And we really support our writers. We want to support you!
As a writer who's trying to publish my own work, I just think indies are doing really great work. I would die to be published by an indie. They give such careful attention, consideration, and thoughtfulness to work, and I think most of us have spent literally almost decades, or more, of our lives on this work, so that's really, really important and necessary and beautiful.
I'm wondering if the evaluation activity differs. Do you have to have slightly different mindsets when you are working at these two different places?
Oh, yes. I love that we're talking about this right now, and all these different platforms and audiences, because it is all different.
For example, just as an individual in my life, I do developmental and copy editing for different writers privately. I work one-on-one with people. Right now, I have a client that's writing a memoir, and I'm helping with developmental edits and trying to get to a first draft. This writer has published before with big presses, and that's just the stage this particular project is at.
With the [Tom Howard/John H. Reid] contest, it is a lot more about what's already on the page, because we don't have the ability or the setup to go back and forth with the author to change anything. When I was a fiction editor at Five South, we did. I could choose pieces, and I could email the author, and famously did with E. P. Tuazon—an amazing Filipino American writer. We made a couple substantial tweaks to his story, and that became the title story of his collection, A Professional Lola, which won the Red Hen AWP Prize two years ago. I feel really proud of that editorial shepherding. I guess in that case, he was very open to it, and I think we both felt together that that story had found its true home, like it was already leaning there, and we just sort of helped guide it.
I think that's one of my editorial signposts or lighthouse, or whatever you want to say, where I really feel like the work is trying to tell you what it wants to be, and you have to be quiet and still, and listen, and try to see what's there, talk with the author, try to figure out where it's going, what it wants to be. Sometimes that process can be difficult, and sometimes it's hampered by where the craft abilities are for that particular artist.
But yeah, with Great Place Books, that's more like the [Tom Howard/John H. Reid] contest in the sense that [the book] has to be totally ready. I feel bad about it, actually. What it means is there's so much good stuff that is so, so close that I have to turn down, and that makes me feel bad, because I know what it's like to be on the other side of the table and have a novel that's getting these close rejections.
We do give feedback if it's a project that's so, so close like that. The co-founders of the press, Alex Higley and Emily Adrien, will give feedback, which is really amazing of them, because they're taking their own time for free to do that, and they're self-funding this whole company, which is incredible. They have a lot of experience in the indie world as well, and teaching, and they're just wonderful souls.
It is hard [for writers], because as a writer, when you submit, people just don't really have the time in the current publishing economy to edit or make changes. You have to really pay for that. So you're spending thousands of dollars to work with people you trust, and who have the tools to help you get what you want, just to get that finished, polished manuscript ready to go.
I get the sense that a lot of writers who are just starting out don't understand how extensive the editing and revision process truly is for a successful piece, and I know that you must see that in the story and essay contest. So I want to ask you as someone who's also an editor and who works with people to develop their writing all the time: do you ever feel conflicted when you see a contestant that has opportunities for improvement? And what is that like emotionally—as a judge, but also as an editor?
Oh yeah, it's just heartbreak all around. Sometimes it's, frustration, too, honestly, because sometimes it's like, "Oh, why did this person submit it? It's too early"!" if it's not formatted correctly, or if they haven't read the guidelines, or listened to [the guidelines]. And honestly, the person that that's hurting the most is the writer and the person who submitted it. If they had taken more time, like we were talking about earlier, it would have gotten there.
But then there's another part of me that's like, "This is just the process!" You've got to start submitting early on, and get used to it, and build up your thick skin, and get better. And it's okay. I think we've all been there, and it's no shame, no big deal.
One thing that really helps me as a submitter is having a pretty good, I guess you would say, "group text" of other writers who support me and who cheerlead for me. I can screenshot my rejections to them, and they're like, "Oh, you'll get it next time!" And I do the same for them. That support is really crucial, because it also helps you learn things. If somebody in my circle gets into Bread Loaf, I'm like, "Send me your app! I want to read it! Like, what did you do?" because I want to learn from that and see what was successful.
And even though my envy rears its ugly head if a friend wins a big prize or contest, or gets a publishing contract—there was a friend from Sewanee for whom I edited the very first draft of her book, and now it's coming out, which is really exciting. I want to see what has been done there, and where the book did get edited, and where it's changed, because that's useful for me to learn as well.
Annie, you were mentioning earlier that through your work, what you're so interested in is the middle: the pieces that aren't super early/just kind of first effort, and they're not on the other end, honorable mentions or finalists, or super polished, or even longlisted, but the stuff that's more in the middle. I would just say for me personally, that was just a really hard decade in my own work! I was workshopping a lot. I would write something that day and email it that day to three people, because that's just a period where you have to make a lot of growth.
I will say this like advice, I guess: Go get an MFA! Go sign up for every workshop or class you can, and just have that accountability, and read a lot in a structured way, where you're workshopping other people's stuff and getting your stuff workshopped. I think that's how you [get out of the phase] of, like, "Here I am sitting at my desk just hitting my head on the wall every day." If you're with other people, you can slingshot into the future.
We all have commitments outside of this work. We have paying jobs, right? We have full-time commitments. We have families. We have stuff we have to do. And so fitting in the creative work outside of that is very difficult. If you have a class or a residency or workshop, that can be a way to prioritize your work.
It's so wonderful that as an editor, a reader, and a writer, you can bring all these experiences to bear as a judge, and to have this really comprehensive, humane approach to judging.
That's what I really like about working with Winning Writers in general. It's a community where we're sort of similar-minded about that, and it is about being gentle. There's a lot of stuff in art that isn't gentle, and so I think I sort of gravitate toward that. I guess it is a personal value, personal philosophy. Why be mean when you can be kind?
I also really like the way that you're talking about different things that authors can do to cope with the pressures of writing in their own daily lives.
Just in case it is difficult for anyone else, I think I'm definitely a poster child for trying to take care of yourself, because it's such a long game. How do you really stay in it for the long game and protect yourself? Because at least for me, it's not something I'm going to do once, or in my twenties, and then abandon.
So now, as a mom, as a parent, as someone who has to pay the mortgage and taxes, I do have to really be careful about how I think about my life, and how I have this practice that's so important to me. How do I fit it in in a way that's meaningful and lasting, and that isn't going to burn me out, and that I can do until I'm hopefully a hundred?
I was just wondering if you have any parting insights for writers who might be in the process of preparing their entries for Tom Howard/John H. Reid right now.
Do your research. Find someone whose work you love, where you think that their work can help your work. Do the work, get the draft, and then have your trusted readers that won't lie to you read it. And depending on what they come back with, you may need to go back to a drawing board again.
Before we go, your publisher, Great Place Books, is open for submissions, right?
We are, we are, yes. Go to greatplacebooks.com. Check out our website. You can submit. I can't promise that we'll take it, since we take very few titles per year, and we're also looking into the future now, but we will definitely read it.
Thank you so much. And the link for Great Place Books is going to be in the video description. Mina, it's been such a pleasure and so enriching to talk to you. I really appreciate the time that you took.
Thank you for having me.
Categories: Advice for Writers, Annie in the Middle
