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Experiences With Editors
In this series on the Emerging Writers Network blog, published authors share the best and worst of their experiences with editors (the comments have been mostly kudos so far) and what they learned from them.
ExpertAccess
ExpertAccess is a membership group offering discounted rates for freelance writers to purchase access to LexisNexis, a premium subscription database of U.S. case law, statutes, and news articles. Writers also receive training in how to use LexisNexis.
Exploitation Versus Representation
Exploitative content can even creep into the work of progressive writers. Here's a primer on how to identify potential exploitation in your writing and what to do about it.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
Trigger warning: Racism, sexism, ableism, stereotypes, suicide, abuse
When we think of book critiques, we often think about narrative features like structure, character, plot, and theme. But as a contest judge and critique writer, I am also concerned with identifying exploitative depictions of disadvantaged and marginalized groups.
"Exploitation" can sound like a scary, moralistic word. It can spark arguments about who is "allowed" to imagine their way into characters different from themselves. In the Winning Writers North Street Book Prize, we're looking at how these depictions function within the story itself. And as a developmental critiquer, I also consider how exploitative scenarios might appear to agents, publishers, and a book's intended audience.
Exploitation means that a character from a marginalized group is given a narrative function that does not benefit people from that group, but instead benefits members of a more privileged group.
A quarter of the manuscripts I receive from authors—yes, even progressive authors—contain exploitative premises and themes. Such manuscripts are significantly weaker in three areas:
Ethical—The manuscript is reinforcing assumptions that have no basis in reality and harm the kinds of people it is claiming to represent.
Literary—The vitality and immersivity of the work is harmed through the use of tired tropes and dated concepts. The true potential of the work is missed.
Commercial—Agents and publishers are looking for work that engages with the world we live in today. The use of stereotypes makes a book feel inherently dated, less relevant, and alienating to readers of modern commercial fiction.
Some examples from past manuscripts include:
Native American culture being used as a backdrop for a white character to find themselves or have an adventure.
Man Friday English being used to show that a character is speaking English as a foreign language without any consideration for the realities of the cultural and linguistic conditions.
A character's disability being used primarily to create humor, pity, or disgust in the reader rather than functioning in a deeper role touching characterization, plot, or theme.
Who are these exploitative authors?
Exploitation in one in four manuscripts sounds like a lot. Who are the authors using these exploitative elements?
Believe it or not, nearly all of the authors whose work includes this kind of issue self-identify as progressive. Occasionally, the author I'm working with has included an exploitative element in their work with a genuinely exploitative goal, but it's extremely rare. Only twice in the nearly 400 manuscripts I've evaluated did that turn out to be the case. The other examples were all by authors who were already progressive.
So how can this happen? How do sincerely progressive writers end up including exploitative material in their writing?
Representation, then and now
We live in a time when ideas have been able to change very quickly due to increased connectivity. One of the better ways in which society is changing is that marginalized voices have more reach. Thankfully, it's more possible than ever before to find, and to produce, "own voices" narratives that describe marginalized lives from the inside.
As a result, the way publishing sees "representation" has also changed for the better within the past 10-20 years. "Inclusion" is no longer a sufficient condition to be considered "representation". When marginalized characters appear in a story, other important questions are being asked by agents, publishers, and readers:
- Who benefits from the way this character or situation is being portrayed?
- What is the real structural function of this character or situation?
- Does the portrayal of this character or situation have deeper connections to underlying themes or world-building elements? If not, why is it there?
If the answers to these questions show that the marginalized character is there only to benefit those who are already privileged, it might be time to reexamine whether the characterization is exploitative.
Examples of exploitative content from real-life manuscripts
Below are 16 examples of exploitative scenarios I've encountered in books and manuscripts. Again—in nearly every case, the author didn't realize that they were using a trope, or that the trope was exploitative.
A marginalized character is placed in the narrative only to help the more privileged character realize their goal.
An older black woman who is a nurse is only seen in the story when she is providing folksy wisdom and encouragement to a younger, white nurse. The older nurse has no problems or needs of her own.
A white boy and girl find a magical Native American arrowhead, and its powers bring a feeling of mystery, seriousness, and significance to their romance arc. There are no living Native American characters or discussion of why Native Americans no longer live on that land.
A wealthy white woman travels to a Pacific island where she sleeps with a native of the island. His "primitive" wisdom and love give her a new perspective on life and she goes home again renewed and empowered. The Black male character has no interiority and the book provides no context about the power dynamics in the relationship.
A female supporting character is included in the story exclusively to help the male protagonist become the man he was meant to be. The female character is physically beautiful and has no interiority or life of her own. She may be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
A stereotype is used as shorthand in the book without any deeper relation to the content or structure.
The villains in the book are portrayed with Cold-War-era Slavic stereotypes, not because it has anything to do with the universe or plot (it's a fantasy novel), but because it's the book's shorthand for greed, criminality, and brutality.
A character is depicted as fat, not because it has any bearing on the way they experience the world of the story or on the story's themes, but as shorthand for greed, corruption, slovenliness, or bossiness.
An Algerian character speaks with Man Friday English, not because that's a realistic depiction of an Algerian speaking English as a Foreign Language, but because it's the book's shorthand for "foreigner".
A character has schizophrenia, not because schizophrenia relates to the deeper themes of the book, but because the character's function in the book is to be "weird", "funny", "unpredictable", or "mentally sick".
A non-Western setting is used as shorthand for "exotic", "inspiring", or "dangerous" and includes no other context to provide depth.
A memoir about Saigon in the 1980s portrays Vietnam as the "Wild East"—a lawless and wild place where the white main character can truly find himself. No context is given about the colonialism or other conditions that led to the Saigon that existed at the time of the story.
A white middle-class character is shown as wanting to go to Benin because it is dangerous and he wants to test himself. (But an internet search by the critiquer reveals that the crime statistics in Benin are similar to Ontario, Canada.)
The suffering of a disadvantaged or marginalized group is used for the sake of entertainment (also known as trauma porn).
The abuse and subsequent suicide attempt of a teenage girl is described in great physical detail, despite the book being mostly about the main character, a teenage boy. No interiority or POV writing is provided for the teenage girl character.
A book opens with the slaughter of a tribe of indigenous people. No member of the tribe is a character beyond that first scene. The structural function is to grab the attention of the middle-class, white American readership and to give the white main characters an inciting incident.
A gay man is tortured and killed, and these passages go into detail about the violence and suffering. The context within the book reinforces the idea that gay people are outsiders and that their lot is tragic whether they are killed or not. There is no further discussion of gayness and no other gay characters.
A female character is raped, not because rape is related to the story's essential themes, but to create a sense of peril and titillation.
The antagonist in a book is depicted as having become a crazed villain due to past trauma. The presentation implies that their extreme reaction to trauma was the result of not having enough fortitude (moral, psychological) to stand up to it.
Trauma being used as a device in "origin stories" for villains and heroes.
The protagonist in a book is depicted as having undergone trauma, but completely bounced back from it (e.g., a female hero is raped but has no PTSD). The presentation implies that their resiliance is due to higher-than-normal fortitude (moral, psychological) to bounce back.
In both the villain and the hero examples, the real experience of traumatized peoples is distorted. Trauma often leaves lasting effects with no relation whatsoever to the sufferer's "fortitude", and without turning those who undergo trauma into either heroes or villains.
What should I do if my book contains exploitation without me meaning it to?
If you're reading this with a sinking feeling that your manuscript might include exploitative elements, take heart. There's plenty of time to reconsider, rework, and move on from exploitative narrative strategies. Following the ideas below will make your work more marketable and give the stories you tell new depth.
Try to find another angle.
I remember reading a well-written manuscript about a transwoman transitioning not only into a woman but into a vampire at the same time. It seemed like a good idea in itself, but unfortunately, the execution of the story at that time tended to equate transness with monstrousness (disgust, horror, ugliness), which wasn't the intention of the author.
My critique outlined the dynamic and suggested different ways to come at the scenario. For example, what if the plot focused on comparing and contrasting the two transition processes, with a more sympathetic interiority for the main character? That way, people in that marginalized group (transwomen) might benefit by increased discussion about, and artistic expression of, the nature of trans experience.
Reconsider if you need to be writing about that particular subject or character.
I once worked with a white poet who had included a Magical POC stereotype in one of his poems. I asked him what the structural and thematic function was, and after consideration, he found that there was no constructive function. He ended up removing the character and diving more deeply into the themes that really were at the heart of his poem.
Reconsider your premise.
Rarely, I'll come across a draft where the exploitation is woven into the very premise. One manuscript I read was about a young white Canadian man who on a whim decided to travel to Benin to find a Black man whose name he had discovered by accident. The goal of the young Canadian was to test himself on this "dangerous" journey, a "hunt" for the Beninese character.
My critique pointed out the power imbalance of a white, relatively wealthy Canadian man seeking out and potentially disrupting the life of a stranger halfway across the planet, and how strange and uncomfortable the situation might feel from the Beninese character's point of view. The author's use of the word "hunt" also seemed threatening, especially in the white-Black context given the histories of colonialism and slavery. The author had not considered these factors and decided to drastically revise their premise.
Do your research.
I've found that in many cases where exploitative characterizations are being used, it's because the author relied on their existing memories of older books, films, and social contexts as their main source of information. If you suspect your book may be venturing into the exploitative, the best course of action might be to do some research into the characters and subjects you are writing about in order to bring more realism into the depiction.
As Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter pointed out to me recently, "Writers do research on all kinds of things. Cars, the moon, animals, philosophies, anything. Why not research the people you're writing about?"
Get a sensitivity read.
Generally, if you are going to include minority characters whose identities are not the same as yours, it's a good idea to hire one or more sensitivity readers who share those identities with the characters. Firefly Creative Writing, Writing Diversely, and the Editors of Color database are excellent places to find sensitivity readers of diverse genders, ethnicities, disabilities, and cultural, class, and religious backgrounds.
Address your own privilege.
I often mention the word "privilege" to authors and it occasionally raises hackles. But when a writer gets real about the role of privilege in their writing process and how they handle their content, their work tends to become more timely, realistic, relatable, and immersive: all qualities that are highly attractive to agents and readers alike.
Below are some articles about privilege and writing. Some of them discuss the idea of privilege as an "invisible knapsack" that contains tools that help us complete what we'd think of as very basic tasks during the day. The less privilege a person has, the fewer tools they have, until these "basic" tasks (for example, interacting with the electric company, shopping for groceries) become much more difficult or simply not possible.
Negotiating Social Privilege as a Writer
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Equity360: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity—What's in Your Knapsack?
Become familiar with dead horse tropes and avoid them in the future.
One of the best ways to avoid exploitative and plumb-tired-out tropes is to learn what they are. TVTropes.org is a fantastic directory for tropes in all genres of art, not just television. Wikipedia is also a good place to find information about tropes.
Some of the tropes I encounter in manuscripts most often are:
Disability tropes
Mental Handicap, Moral Deficiency
Tragically Disabled or Magically Disabled
Hollywood Autism
Obsessively Organized and Neat Freak (OCD stereotypes)
Funny SchizophreniaBlack/POC tropes
Black Dude Dies First
Magical Black Person
"Mammy" Figure
Closer to EarthIndigenous tropes
The Noble Savage
The Nubile Savage and The Chief's Daughter
"Good" Indigenous vs. "Bad" Indigenous
Man Friday English and Tonto TalkMore racial tropes
Acceptable Ethnic Targets
Tokenism
Africa Is a Country
Dirty Communists (evil Slavs)
Husky Russkie (Slavic thugs)
The Evil Brit
Magical Romani
Inscrutable OrientalWhite savior tropes
Mighty Whitey
Raised by NativesSexuality and gender tropes
Bury Your Gays
Trans Tribulations
Dead Lesbian SyndromeTropes about women
Defiled Forever
Disposable Woman
Not Like the Other Girls
"She Just Needs to Smile!"
My Girl is Not a Slut
Makeup is Evil
Manic Pixie Dream GirlTropes about men
Writing as a process of breaking down barriers
The activity of writing is defined by constant exploration and breaking through personal barriers—especially emotional barriers. One could argue that a writer is a person who provides value to readers by doing grueling emotional, psychological, and intellectual legwork.
This process can be terribly uncomfortable for the writer. But the more processing the writer can do, and the more they can work through that discomfort, the better the writing will be—and the more the readers will keep coming back.
Facing up to assumptions, stereotypes, and exploitative scenarios in writing is an essential part of that fundamental process of exploration and breaking through barriers. Any writer who ignores that part of composition is avoiding an opportunity for significant growth in their craft.
Meanwhile, the authors who do address problematic assumptions through their writing stand out head and shoulders above their competition in the eyes of agents, publishers, contest judges, and readers.
As a critiquer, contest judge, reader, and human being, I stand up and cheer for all writers who pledge themselves to breaking down barriers like those described in this post.
Explore Your Premise
Want to impress agents, publishers, and contest judges? Explore your premise—and only your premise.
Fiction, memoir, poetry, children's books, middle grade, art books, graphic novels…almost any book will fail when it wanders away from its premise. Why does it happen so often? And what are signs to look out for?
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
I see thousands of books and manuscripts a year, and about 85% of them have the same problem:
They include too much stuff.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen a strong premise get lost under an avalanche of subplots, characters, genre identities, themes, settings, time periods, and background.
An eleventh-century Viking princess is taken back to the early Roman Empire. Wow, I've never heard of a time-travel story where someone from the past goes even further into the past! Genius!
…but the rising action has so many subplots that the main plot is buried. The deeper interest of the premise is never explored, and the climax has to do with a different character.
A witch who is also a lawyer must choose between her friends and a dashing new love interest. I love contemporary romance/magic crossovers! I can't wait to read this book!
…but soon after the inciting incident, the book becomes about an ancient artifact that leads the lawyer and her friends to uncover secrets that could turn deadly. Dang, I guess that's cool, too, but I was really looking forward to the first story?
Agents, publishers, and contest judges know this pain so well. It's what I think of when authors tell me how competitive the market is, when I've just read their manuscript, and it left its premise behind. If an author can choose a good premise and write a book only about that, they will sail past 85% of the competition.
But it can be incredibly hard for emerging authors to stick to their premise.
I have two theories about why. Maybe authors have so many ideas that when they finally start writing, it all pours out together. Once it's on the page it's too hard—whether emotionally or craft-wise—to discern what belongs to the premise, and what doesn't.
Or maybe authors can't trust that one premise is enough. For a book to be unique, memorable, valuable, it must include as wide a variety of things as possible. That's the way to hold interest…right?
These explanations are understandable. The first is a result of passion, intellect, and imagination that have yet to be guided by experience. The second arises from a desire to stand out, leading authors to prioritize the perceived value of "originality" over the quality that agents, publishers, and contest judges are actually looking for: immersivity.
Regardless of the cause, I really want more of these amazing premises to be explored rather than abandoned. So I'm here to outline the most common sources of distraction in each of our eight North Street Book Prize categories.
Does your book have "too much" of any of the following…to the point where it's no longer supporting the book's exploration of the premise? If so, prune back and let your premise take its rightful place.
Genre Fiction
Too many subplots. These side narratives seem to exist for their own sake rather than supporting the main plot. This can make the rising action feel episodic, lacking the rising tension that leads to a climax.
Too many characters. Every event that happens in the book comes with one or two new characters that the reader must remember. Alternatively, secondary characters' storylines grow to where they're competing with, rather than supporting, the main characters' arcs.
Too many genres. Either there are so many genre identities that it's impossible for the reader to form expectations, or the genre identities are not mixed well enough to be immersive, so the reader feels like they must keep switching gears.
Too much worldbuilding. The worldbuilding expands to where it's clearly being valued for its own sake. The rising action gets bogged down in details. Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter adds, "Too many kinds of magic or futuristic tech in genre fiction starts to feel like the world has too few constraints for meaningful suspense."
Too much background on character or plot. The classic, "but in order to tell you that, I first have to tell you this." In many cases, readers can appreciate the plot or character perfectly well without the extra information, and it only slows things down. Background should be given in cases where it provides essential support to the main plot or character arc.
Too many books in one. The author tries to fit two or three complete narrative arcs in the book, but really, they should each have their own book. This is often the consequence of any of the above conditions. It can also be a pacing issue when the exposition, rising action, or falling action are stretched past their usefulness.
Mainstream/Literary Fiction
In addition to the issues discussed above, authors of Mainstream/Literary Fiction should watch out for:
Too many points of view. The narrative shifts character perspective so many times that it's unclear whose motivations are driving the story, or how all of these characters relate back to the main plotline.
Too many styles. The narration switches literary styles without a clear reason why.
Too much of the first-person narrator. Whether they are chatty, abrasive, or simply observant, they keep telling us things that don't end up building up the main plot or themes. Too much philosophizing/editorializing. This can be related to "too much of the first-person narrator" but also occurs in the third person. The narration is "talking" about so many things that don't end up connecting back to the main plot, themes, or character development.
Collection is too long. The book includes too many short stories (or essays, or poems…) A collection might also feel too long, even if it's not, when pieces are included that don't contribute to the collection's sense of unity.
Middle Grade Fiction
The top issue specific to this genre is:
Too many adults. The main and secondary characters should nearly all be aged 8-12, the group it's marketed to. Giving adults, or even older teens, too much page-time can contribute to a sense of shifting diction, genre, and target audience.
Creative Nonfiction & Memoir
Too many subplots, too many characters, too many genres, too much background on character or plot, too long—see Genre Fiction above.
Too much of the first-person narrator, too much philosophizing, collection too long—see Mainstream/Literary Fiction above.
Scope too wide. The time period and range of ideas exceed what is needed to explore the premise. For example, a doctor writes a memoir of their years working in Intensive Care, but the narrative starts with an account of their grandparents' lives, how their parents met, and what their childhood, teenage, and young adult years were like. This can happen when an author loses sight of the differences between memoir and autobiography.
Poetry
Collection too long—see Mainstream/Literary Fiction above.
Poems are mismatched. The topics, tones, imagery, and word choice of the poems vary too much to give the collection a sense of unity or forward movement. For example, we see many "Collected Works of…" books in the North Street Book Prize that bring together a large body of poems with various subjects. It's harder for such catch-all collections to feel immersive or establish a sense of authority.
Children's Picture Book
The top issue specific to this genre is:
Too many incidents. A well-written picture book will typically explore only one kind of episode at a time. Think of the Clifford series—in one book, it will be Halloween, in another, the first day of school, in another, Clifford's first trip to the dentist.
Many unsuccessful contest entries are multi-episode—"Clifford" experiences Halloween, the first day of school, and his first trip to the dentist all in one book. As Jendi points out, "a picture book is too short for exposition or transitions" of the kind that would be needed for such major plot shifts, making everything feel squished together.
Graphic Novel & Memoir
Too many subplots, too many characters, too many genres—see Genre Fiction above.
Too much of the first-person narrator, too much philosophizing/editorializing—see Mainstream/Literary Fiction above.
Scope too wide—see Creative Nonfiction & Memoir above.
Art Book
Collection too long—see Mainstream/Literary Fiction above.
Presentation too chaotic. Some art books include a lot of images with, as Jendi describes, "no logic to the order in which they're presented," making them feel "random and overstuffed." More editing is needed to let the core concepts show.
Too many styles. I've seen art books in the contest that put together 4-10 different styles of visual expression. Sometimes these submitters are young artists who are still exploring where they might want to go in the future and include everything good that they've done regardless of continuity. But an art book is not the same as a portfolio. I want to be immersed in the potentialities of just one of those styles.
What to do next?
Book creators work so hard. I understand the reluctance to cut back. Responses I've heard include, "I need to express these things," "that aspect means a lot to me," "these ideas are important," "beta readers like that part," "but that character is so good," "I've been working on this for such a long time"—all relatable reactions.
But, if a book is destined to be anything other than a tool for personal processing or personal expression, exploration of the premise must take priority. Not everything can, or should, be expressed in a single volume. There's a reason authors write more than one book. But don't "kill your darlings." Re-home your darlings.
Did a secondary character you love take over your rising action? Maybe they need their own book. Working on a memoir about your early thirties, but can't stop writing about your teens? Excerpt that part. With a few alterations it will make a fine essay. Have a picture book that's three books in one? That's a series. Poetry collection of 200 poems? More like two poetry collections of 50-70 poems each, minus the ones that didn't match. Those can become the seeds of their own collections.
Trust me—your premise is good. Follow it through from exposition, to inciting incident, to rising action, to climax, to falling action, to resolution. The competition is tough, but you'll advance to the top of the heap—and be respected and remembered by the agents, publishers, and contest judges evaluating your book.
F.J. Bergmann
Non sequiturs like bear traps plunge you through the surface of this poet's world into an absurd, slightly sinister, often funny alternate reality. We especially love the William Carlos Williams parody "An Apology". Buy her prizewinning chapbook, Sauce Robert, from Pavement Saw Press.
F(r)iction
A publication of Brink Literacy Project, F(r)iction is a triannual literary journal with a contemporary design and a strong personality. They accept short fiction, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, comics, and poetry, illustrated with custom artwork. See their "What We Look For" page for editorial preferences and sample published work in each genre. They also offer contests judged by prominent authors. Editors say, "We embrace the new, the weird, and the unconventional."
Facets of the Heart
By Eleanor Gamarsh
My emotional heart is a child.
When left alone
its smile turns down.
My intelligent mind is an adult
always telling my child,
"It's okay to be alone."
My child's heart says,
"To be alone
is to be without love."
My adult mind says,
"Love can never be gone;
only hidden by the shadows
of your fears."
Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer
Poet and memoirist Mary Karr muses on the resemblance between poetry and prayer as "sacred speech" that eases the soul's isolation. Karr also describes her recent conversion to Catholicism from a secular upbringing that made a religion out of art and literature. "People usually (always?) come to church as they do to prayer and poetry—through suffering and terror."
Fairrosa Cyber Library of Children’s Literature
Online library of children's literature contains the full-length text of dozens of classics. Reference Shelf feature includes links to background material on many authors of children's books.
False Witnesses: On Writing About War
In this 2022 critical essay from The Point magazine, Phil Klay examines the moral and aesthetic conundrums of bearing witness to war through poetry. Klay is a fiction writer, essayist, and US Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
Family Cookout
By James K. Zimmerman
we sit in peace among bees
painting pictures of lives
we cannot know, like drinking
from a mountain stream
hands cupped to capture the flow
from springs erupting deep
in the body of the earth
stories steeped in brine and limes
for the chicken and the irony
of wine that opens only after
we drink the second bottle
recollections layered with fresh
Italian mozzarella, tomatoes
shipped from Mexico or Jersey
basil from the garden, salads
of onions, beans, and garlic or
cabbage laced with sour cream
recipes of long-dead generations
spiced and salted with their struggle
and pain, add a dash or two
of laughter, a pinch of bitterness
to taste
a potluck of childhood
memories slow-cooked over
smoky heat on the grill
and the bees hover
in the deepening shadows
waiting for the last drops
to fall
Family Reunion
By Deborah LeFalle
New moon
midnight sky
tall trees obscure
desolate road
in back woods
of small southern town
Darker than black
can't see hands
arms' length away
frightening—
indescribable
uneasiness
Hard imagining
ancestors' anguish
ruthless attacks
on their very being
hatred, bigotry
inhumanity
Lifetimes of
oppression
crooked necks
from looking back
over shoulders
to see next day
Acquiescence
all too common
yet better than
dangling bodies
numbed to death
by knotted nooses
Courageous folk
who endured the
unthinkable
for survival's sake
It's a miracle
we’re even here.
[First published in What Brings You Here? (2016)]
Family: 5 Variations
By Annie Dawid
1.
At table, silence,
rum-blossomed cheeks
puffing with goose,
adult children smile
slyly, sipping their drinks.
2.
Squatty-bodied, dark and loud,
they gallop their words
over lox and chopped herring,
opinions fly like scrapping gulls.
"You're wrong!"
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
The child wishes for worlds
where only one person
speaks at a time.
3.
Parents and grandparents,
three friends, four visitors
representing Jews, Hispanic
lapsed Catholics, more lapsed
Wasps and various agnostics
argue testosterone
and range-and-basin geology,
baby spitting peas and pasta,
two husbands check their balls
(still there) and mourn
their manhood while tacos keep
flipping from grills, beer keeps
emerging, warm, and later
the men clean up, grumbling.
4.
Three lesbian couples, two babies, adopted,
of another race, urban vegetarian
uniting with rancher's daughter
over potato salad, public radio from Fargo humming
in the background, Lucy Blue
coming to town and questions of
childcare, no spice in the rice,
no men in the room,
air heavy with intrigue
as one couple crumbles, all eyes
on the parental pair, one
wanting babies while her protesting
partner wants the newcomer,
too alluring to resist for long.
5.
Three gay men, one straight woman
at her house, she's serving
spanakopita and baba ganoush
while her dog, neutered, huddles under the table,
and the topic of
discussion is how to make
a family, she wanting baby
from the one who refuses,
the one with the temper wants one now,
but she prefers his partner,
already a father in a previous life,
now monogamous.
At breakfast, nothing concluded,
they start over again.
FanStory
Online forum for poetry and short fiction offers frequent contests for members, with creative and offbeat writing prompts.
Fantasy Map Generators and Worldbuilding Tools
This 2021 article from BookRiot recommends 10 websites and software programs that create fantasy maps with detailed terrain. Great for speculative fiction writers and role-playing gamers.
Favorite Children’s Books: Poetry and Song
Selected by the New York Public Library. Featured titles include And the Green Grass Grew All Around: Folk Poetry from Everyone and X.J. Kennedy's Brats, where "forty-two poems describe a variety of particularly unpleasant children."
Favorite Poem Project
A project of Boston University, the Poetry Society of America and the Library of Congress. Nominate your favorite poem, and read the excellent poems chosen by others. Wide range of styles.
Feed the Beast
By Pádraig Ó Tuama. Rage, survival, and the tentative beginning of self-love infuse this poetry chapbook about theological and sexual abuse in the Irish Catholic Church. The author was forced into "conversion therapy" for his homosexuality by a priest who molested him. Broken Sleep Books, the publisher of this collection, is a Welsh literary press with an interest in social justice and working-class themes.
Feminist Book Club
Feminist Book Club is an online book club and resource site that builds community around reading new literature by women and nonbinary authors. There is a choice of membership tiers: buy the book of the month on your own and join the discussion; receive the book in the mail; or receive a monthly curated box with the book plus fun items from women-owned small businesses. The site also features book reviews and author interviews.
Feminist Studies
This scholarly journal published by the University of Maryland also accepts submissions of poetry, short fiction, personal essays and artwork, with deadlines of May 1 and December 1 annually. No simultaneous submissions. "Whether work is drawn from the complex past or the shifting present, the pieces that appear in Feminist Studies address social and political issues that intimately and significantly affect women and men in the United States and around the world." Authors published in Feminist Studies since its inception in 1972 include Meena Alexander, Nicole Brossard, Jayne Cortez, Toi Derricotte, Diane Glancy, Marilyn Hacker, Lyn Hejinian, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Sharon Olds, Grace Paley, Ruth Stone, and Mitsuye Yamada.
Fictional Café
The Fictional Café is a virtual coffee shop and literary magazine created especially for writers and artists. They publish short stories, novel excerpts, poetry, visual art, podcasts and audio dramas on their website. Other occasional features include interviews and links to literary news. All accepted submissions are automatically considered for inclusion in their print "best of" anthology. No simultaneous submissions.
Fictionaut
The blog can be read by the general public. To join the social network, you need to request an invite via the link on their website.
Fig Tree Books
Launched in 2014, Fig Tree Books publishes and promotes high-quality, commercially viable literary works that chronicle and enlighten the American Jewish Experience. They encourage submissions from both new and established writers. Fig Tree Books will also be re-publishing works that have fallen out of print or were not previously available as e-books. The press began with a focus on literary novels; as of 2015, they are also open to memoirs, graphic novels, and young adult literature.
Figures
By Robbie Gamble
Ancient cave, cup of shade
a scoop in the canyon wall
the entrance littered with flattened
cans of Red Bull, tattery t-shirts,
a limp knapsack
silvering in the sun.
You can feel the fatigue
of those who rested here,
one more toehold
on the claw toward El Norte.
If they raised their eyes to the ceiling
they might have seen
two ochre stick figures, hand-in-hand,
looking down on them—
how many centuries,
how many passers-by,
O'odham people bearing
squash and castor beans
from Sonoran highlands
south to the Gulf of California
returning with dried fish
in labyrinthine baskets,
succession of steady feet carving paths
up and down the Mesoamerican spine.
In the cool of the evening, this generation
will reshoulder their burdens
head past the sacred mountain on the left,
northward towards the bulge of Kitts Peak
bristling with crazy gringo devices
for watching and listening to the stars,
and somewhere up there
a ship named Voyager
inscribed with a man and woman
and its path through the planets
slides further on
from home.
FilmMakers.com: Screenwriting Contests Database
Alphabetical listing of screenwriting contests. Expired and current links are mixed in together, but list is a good starting point for researching this market.
Find Editors Who Like You
In this 2023 column for Lit Mag News, poet and freelance journalist Noah Berlatsky advises cultivating long-term relationships with sympathetic journals and presses. Traditional career advice tells you to treat lesser-known venues as mere stepping-stones to more prestigious publications, but if the latter opportunities don't materialize, perhaps you're just depriving yourself of satisfaction in the career you actually have.
Finding Communion in Disability Poetics
In this essay from the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares, poet Lizz Schumer surveys foundational works of the disability poetics movement, and what they meant to her self-concept and aesthetic development. Authors cited include Vassar Miller, Kenny Fries, Jim Ferris, Karrie Higgins, and Sheila Black.
Finding the best awards for your book: An interview with Book Award Pro founder Hannah Jacobson
"No matter how you decide to publish your book, there are accolades for you"—and Book Award Pro will help you find them.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
This year, Book Award Pro is giving three free months of their unique accolades-finding services to all entrants and winners of the North Street Book Prize.
Book Award Pro founder and CEO Hannah Jacobson joins Winning Writers managing editor Annie Mydla to discuss:
- Why book awards are within your reach as an author
- How Book Award Pro finds the best awards for your book from over 11,000 submission opportunities
- How book awards connect your book to new audiences
- How Book Award Pro's in-house-designed AI protects author privacy and intellectual property
- What is included in the 3 free months of Essentials- and Pro-tier services that North Street entrants and winners will receive
Watch the entire interview with Hannah Jacobson or read this lightly edited transcript.
ANNIE: Hello, welcome, thank you for tuning in. I'm Annie Mydla of Winning Writers, and this is my blog. I'm joined today by Hannah Jacobson. She's the founder of our North Street Book Prize co-sponsor, Book Award Pro, a service that connects authors to curated submission opportunities for their books. But how does that connection happen? What is Book Award Pro's evaluation process for the books for the submission opportunities, and why is it helpful for authors to have this narrowed-down, personalized list of places to send their books? Hannah, thank you so much for being with me here today.
HANNAH: Hi, Annie. Thank you so much for inviting me here. And, you know, thank you for the opportunity to be a co-sponsor of the North Street Book Prize. We're really proud to be a co-sponsor.
So first, let's just let people know a little bit about what we're talking about. What is Book Award Pro and how does it help authors?
Validation and credibility are so important in your author career. Validation is just the knowledge that your writing is really resonating with your readers. And credibility is building trust with those readers. And quite frankly, in the book world, there's not a better way to do that than through book awards. Book awards give you a way to build that validation, to build that credibility. And Book Award Pro is a technology platform to help you actually pursue those awards, pursue those accolades, and know what's actually out there for your book.
Yeah, it can be really hard for people to know what the opportunities even are.
And you know, historically in the book world, there hasn't been a lot of great information on when to get awards, how to get awards, what does that look like? And as an author, you're really busy. You're a business owner. There's a lot of things to keep track of. So knowing that there's a service like Book Award Pro that can just handle that for you, that's kind of where we come into the book world.
We always believe in transparency, so directly on our website, we always include our plans, our pricing information about our services. You can go directly to BookAwardPro.com, you can just give us a few details about your book and that helps our system understand, what is your book about? So from there, you choose the best plan for your book from among our three plans, and if you would like to do your own entries or if you would like to have our team perform professional entries for you. Our system gets straight to work on your very first award matches. In fact, our authors have told us that they get their first award matches in moments.
You mentioned these three different plans. Are those different from the kind of pricing levels or subscription levels on the website?
No, those are exactly, those are our subscription levels on the website. We always believe too, again, from the very beginning of Book Award Pro that we wanted to offer a variety of pricing, a variety of plans to suit not only your needs but also your budget as an author. So you can essentially use our services to find what accolades are out there for your book, and then you can decide if you would like us to actually submit those opportunities for you or if you would like to do it yourself.
Can people only submit one book at a time, or can they submit multiple books?
Authors add multiple books all the time. And something we've come to find is that many authors actually not only write and publish a single book, maybe you publish a series, maybe you have multiple series, maybe you have just multiple standalone books. But our services work for every single book, no matter whether it's fiction, nonfiction, part of a series. You can absolutely use our services to find accolades for all of your books.
Do you mind if I ask how many contests roughly or how many, sorry, submission opportunities roughly there are in the Book Award Pro database?
Book Award Pro is really proud to operate the world's largest database of legitimate awards and reviews. And at this time, that's more than 11,000 accolades and counting, every single day.
Oh my gosh, I didn't even know that. That's a lot more than I thought you had. That's amazing.
I love to hear that from you as well because I know you're very well-informed in the awards world. And there are thousands and thousands of awards out there and it can be really frustrating for authors to figure out what's the best fit for my book, what's even out there for my book? And there are so many different data points to consider. We're really proud to really simplify that and make that easy for authors to find, make it accessible.
Do you accept every book that people send to you, or are there some kind of requirements?
Yeah, I love this question, actually. So Book Award Pro, we firmly believe that we're not a gatekeeper. Our purpose, our goal is to show you what opportunities exist for your book. So no matter whether you're unpublished, maybe you haven't published your book yet. If you're independent, if you're self-published, hybrid-published, even traditionally published, we work with authors, thousands of authors every year all around the world. And I can tell you that no matter how you decide to publish, there are accolades for you.
That's awesome. And you know, I can actually imagine a developmental function for Book Award Pro, because a lot of people who are creating manuscripts would really benefit from knowing, where am I trying to send this after it's finished? So if they can get an idea of the kinds of contests that would be available to them given the document that they currently have, it could actually help their editing process and kind of help to work towards something that's more focused, and also more geared towards specific opportunities.
You're really digging into the important questions here because there's so much to consider as an author. We actually do have lots of authors who sign up with us prior to publication. As long as you have a book and it's kind of ready to go, it's ready to present to these readers. Readers are award judges. So a lot of authors find validation in their first kind of, you know, those are those last steps of producing their manuscript, maybe even finding a publisher and even becoming an award-winning author prior to publication. We have authors who work with us all the time who do that.
Wow. So you're talking about these readers. How does Book Award Pro gauge whether a contest is right for a book? Who's making that decision? What do they kind of think about? What factors do they think about when they're looking at a book?
We actually collect more than 70 unique data points on these awards and reviews. And I tell you that because it's really important to understand. We understand exactly what an award is wanting on a very nuanced level. We heavily research all of these awards and ensure that our database matches your book to the perfect awards, to the right ones for your book. And that is taking into account millions of data points. That's even more than a human being can manage. But our goal is to find kind of the perfectly nuanced award, the award that will bring the most value to your book.
You mentioned these 70 data points. Can you just talk a little bit about them and maybe mention what a few of them are?
Absolutely. Thank you for that clarifying question because there's a lot I'm thinking of: word count, page count, your copyright date, which may be very different from your publication date. How are you published? Are you an independent author? Are you hybrid-published, independent, traditional? Are you unpublished? There are even details such as, how are awards treating authors? First and foremost, are they upholding their promises? Are they delivering value to winners? And like the North Street Book Prize, are they delivering value to entrants as well? Are they doing their best to do well, do right by authors?
So we have all these different kinds of unique data points, not only to find a great fit for your book. Does the copyright date fit? Does the word count fit? But also, does this award hold high value for this book? And then those awards are the ones that are more highly esteemed in our system that do really well for authors. Those will always kind of float to the top and you will see more matches, more submissions to those awards.
You know, those are really great angles to look at, just all of the little nitty-gritty details about the publication, copyright, page number, these things that authors may not actually be thinking about because they're so concerned with what's in the book. But, you know, I'd like to ask you a question and I know this is kind of a delicate topic in the book world right now. Are you guys using machine learning to like kind of look at the PDFs, or are they people, or…?
I love your questions. I'm the founder of Book Award Pro and I got this started. But I have a team of people, software developers and a systems architect, who design our technology to be useful for authors. There are all kinds of different AI, I've come to learn. We create our technology to best serve authors. So all we use our technology for is to understand what your book is about. Our AI is kind of handcrafted at Book Award Pro and we never share those details externally. That's only used for the benefit of providing your service.
That's great to know. That's really valuable. So there's no chance that like Google could end up with your data or Open AI, or it's just all in-house and it just stays there.
That's exactly right. And I think it's really important, like I said, I don't think that I understood a few years ago that there are different kinds of AI. It is important that your information is kept private and purely for the use of providing your service. So that's why we also give authors the option. It's really easiest for them if they upload a PDF book file because it's kept only within Book Award Pro. We don't provide that to any external sources. But for authors who are really, really sensitive about that, you can still use our services. There are still ways to give us information and tell us about your book that wouldn't inhibit your services.
Oh, yeah. So authors don't actually have to send the full text. They can answer these key questions and get all the benefits anyway. That is really good to know.
That's exactly right. The only time that we require a PDF copy of the book is when we're actually submitting it, you know, like digitally submitting it to the North Street Book Prize, to all their awards that are asking for a PDF book copy. But again, that is only ever shared with the awarding entity and never externally, never for the use of other technologies. It's only used to provide your service at Book Award Pro.
It's really great that Book Award Pro thinks so much about people's intellectual property as well as their privacy.
Absolutely. And in fact, one of our key technology executives is actually formerly in information security. So a lot of our background is really strict on privacy, security, keeping things very, very safe. Your book file we only ever share to an award that you have explicitly asked us to submit to. So everything is really kept under lock and key to really protect your information, protect your privacy, protect your book.
That's fascinating. Wow, you know what? Sorry, now I'm talking to you, I'm just like thinking about a lot of stuff. Before I met you, I was just like, oh, yeah, Book Award Pro, they just match up contests, but like…
Thank you for kind of the off-the-cuff conversation. This whole kind of process, there's a lot that goes into it. Book Award Pro, I started by myself in 2019. I actually launched my own services to submit authors to award services. Even at that time, wow, even at that time, Annie, I didn't even do awards submissions yet. I had done them previously with my book publishing background, but my goal was to find awards for authors. So I would maybe serve up to five authors at a time. My authors were really happy and they started telling their friends about my services, and their friends would tell their friends, and quite honestly my journey in awards has really grown, as well.
The technology is changing so fast, but also like, when you scaled up from just you, you just had to evolve so much. Like, can you just tell me a little bit about that process?
So a long time ago, I actually got my start in the book publishing world, working in a university press. And one of my jobs was to find awards for our books. As time passed, and even after I had finished that job, I always wondered what awards are out there for other authors. What awards exist? How can more authors use something like that, have that kind of tool in their toolkit? Because something I've learned is that authors don't know. They don't know, number one, that awards are something to pursue. It sounds like something that's just kind of bestowed upon you, but it's actually a process you have to pursue. In a lot of cases, it's very time-sensitive. There's a lot of information rolled into that. So I happen to really be passionate about awards and kind of finding that connection for authors.
So in 2019, I launched my own services to help match your book to accolades. And over time, that really kind of blew up in how fast that it grew. And at that time I chose to bring on my technology co-founder who has that background in information security. And he actually helped me scale this to actually serve more authors at a time. So instead of only being able to take on five, we could serve more authors, find more accolades for more authors around the world. And that kind of transparency, that kind of research and information has been a backbone of our growing company. That's kind of a long answer, but yeah, we really believe in bringing that information, that power to authors. It shouldn't be so shrouded in mystery.
I think people really don't realize either how many very specific and particular contests there are. I mean, in North Street, we accept a lot of different kinds of material, but some contests are just looking for a very specific subgenre.
There's a book award specifically for books about chess. There are also awards that feature either a feline main character or a canine main character, which I happen to love. And something important about those very specific awards is that they highlight almost this certain part of your book or a certain theme, if you will. And that really helps authors kind of find a new way to market their books, a new way to share it with their readers, a new way to connect with those readers.
In that case, it's not just about kind of getting a stamp on the front of your book saying this book won an award. These contests also have their own constituents, shall we say, readers who just love to read that kind of material. So when you win that kind of award and you get your information on their website, it must open up a whole new readership for this book.
That's exactly right, Annie. And now that we're kind of, we're really, really deep into this, but those are some of the details that we also collect in our system. So we know this award has a really great romance book audience. It's really, you know, maybe they're open to other genres, but they're really looking for romance. Romance books have the, they're held in the highest regard among these readers. That's not something that you can immediately know just from casually browsing a website or just trying to figure out what's out there. But we do a lot of research to understand that nuance and help really connect books with readers. We really, really believe that.
Can you tell me a little bit about the research process? How do you find new contests, for example?
We've got a lot of different sources and different ways that we kind of keep tabs on the awards industry. Once you have a database, it goes stale very quickly. So you have to constantly monitor what that looks like. It's a tremendous ongoing process. So we have a team, we're constantly monitoring awards. Are they continuing to uphold their promises? Are they still, you know, have they fallen off the face of the earth, they're not operating anymore, or are they still continuing to do a really good job for authors? So we don't have a single way that we, you know, like a single way that we research an award or find a new award. We just have so many touchpoints and have such a pulse on awards that we have this information coming in all the time. We're always doing that research and always maintaining it. It's especially kind of technology back-end things.
Wow, that is so fascinating. I freaking love it. And I really love the idea that by using technology, especially technology that keeps things so private for the authors, it's just able to expand the amount of authors that are served, the amount of opportunities that are there for them, and also it's able to allow you guys to maintain the quality of your database by checking up on these contests and accolades opportunities again and again and again. So, I mean, I think this sounds like a really good use of the current technologies, maybe a force for good instead of the evil AI scenario, like apocalyptic stuff.
Our core, our number one value at Book Award Pro is to do great for authors. And we literally build that into our software. We build it into just everything that we do. And I truly believe, especially, you know, and you and I have talked very candidly that I didn't start with any kind of technology background, it was me doing things very manually. Understanding that technology can be used for good, it's the people behind it, it's the heart behind it.
You know, I often reflect on kind of the earlier days of self-publishing. Like in the 90s and the early 2000s. And there were some very predatory services back then—no transparency, hid their fees, told authors that they were a traditional publishing house when actually the authors had to pay for everything out of their own pocket. And I think at least a lot of people who are in the Winning Writers world, I think they're actually traumatized by these times and now they've got this mindset that if they're in a transaction with anybody except like traditional publisher, capital T, capital P, that somebody must be out to get them. Somebody must be out to scam them. But you and I know just how many people are there across the world who just want to help authors, pay authors, honor authors, help authors find readers, and also are subjected to monitoring activity like Book Award Pro performs for their own database.
It's important to understand, where is this award coming from? You know, just because you charge an entry fee, that doesn't mean anything necessarily good or bad. It means that you have a business to run. It's a legitimate business. That money goes to run that. But you do get a good sense, especially just keeping a pulse on awards, who has the author's best interest in mind? What's actually a legitimate opportunity? And there are higher-value opportunities, like Winning Writers. All of your programs really go to serve authors. There are other awards that don't do as much for winners, for entrants. They just don't have as much kind of firepower, if you will. But it doesn't make them less legitimate. And so we always kind of try to put the power in our authors' hands to choose, you know, there are so many other thousands of accolades out there. If you don't like a certain one, move on from it. There are so many other opportunities to pursue. You should never feel locked in.
I think when people started to really explore non-traditional forms of publishing, this industry didn't exist. There wasn't a service like Book Award Pro. And people were really looking for their own ways to get their writing out there rather than just depending on the old traditional methods.
You know, it makes me think like in our history, in our, you know, in the human history, progression of history, whatever, like it's really a time, maybe because of the internet that people are really learning how to be themselves. And not having to, in order to get along in life, feel like they have company, feel like they're not like an outcast. They don't have to conform to the local standards anymore. We can find people who are like us as we already. So I really see Book Award Pro as kind of just extending that really important kind of social progress that we have just to the book world, where people don't have to have these super boxed-in like traditional products. They can really produce the book that they want and be connected with the people who are already looking for that book as it is today.
You know, with self-publishing, it puts the power in your hands. For better and for worse, that means you're managing your own business as an author, but it also means that you get to publish exactly the way you want to. You get to choose your book cover design. You get to choose your story. You can choose what awards, what reviews you want to submit to. But with that does come a lot of, with freedom comes great responsibility, something like that.
With great freedom comes great admin! I don't know if the listeners or the viewers know this, but in the past couple of years, Book Award Pro has been very generously supplying our winners with three months of Essentials-level service. But this year, actually, every entrant will be receiving three free months of the Book Award Pro Essentials-level service. So what does that actually include for them?
So our Essentials plan, our authors tell us that it saves them hours of research in trying to figure out exactly what awards are out there for your book. Our service will actually work for you and you can think of it as almost a personal awards researcher. So you actually have access to our research directly within your dashboard and you'll get ongoing award matches specific to your book. So when you see an award match in your account, you can trust that this is a good fit for my book. It's already been completely researched for you.
So that's amazing. You know, we usually get between 1,900 and 2,000 entrants in the North Street Book Prize, and every single one of those entrants is going to be able to have that level of research in over 11,000 other contest opportunities. It's amazing that we can offer that. Like, thank you so much for being a co-sponsor. It's awesome.
Oh, we, I mean, we really love being a North Street co-sponsor. We've enjoyed meeting all kinds of different writers from all around the world. And I can say that no matter how you decide to publish your book, what it's about, what your word count is, your page count, Book Award Pro will go to serve your book. So plug in and get those three free months when you enter the North Street Book Prize.
So the entrants are getting the Essentials tier. The winners this year are getting the Pro tier, three months free of the Pro tier. So what are the differences between the Essentials and the Pro tiers?
Our Pro plan takes things to the next level and our authors have told us that the Pro plan is the way they find the very best awards for their book. So in addition to actually seeing those ongoing matches, those ongoing awards for your book, you'll know exactly which one you should submit to for its high value. You'll also get access to special awards and you'll actually be able to see awards that are for book cover design, illustration, even best editing. There are all kinds of different accolades out there that can celebrate other aspects of your book.
And you'll also get access to editorial reviews. If you're wondering how to maybe increase distribution, get some extra marketing for your book. These awards and reviews connect you to different readers, to different audiences, to different ways that you can market your book. And we even have, separate from that on the Pro plan, you unlock the story marketing feature, which is a really easy way to share your award progress, your review progress with your readers, with your social media followers, your email newsletter. There are all kinds of different ways to use the news that you were doing as an author pursuing these accolades, a way to share that with your readers to entice them and keep them interested in your work.
Thank you so much for all you've told us about Book Award Pro today. And I'm wondering if you have any words of advice for viewers who might be preparing their books for a submission opportunity right now.
First and foremost, feedback that we have seen award judges provide directly to authors is to make sure that you have professional-quality editing for your book. Most of the time you may have a really great story and it's a polished professional book, but without editing, that's a really key way to make your book feel really professional, really polished. But I would also say, just remember that there are thousands of awards out there. You should never feel pressured to pursue a single one. Really focus your time, your effort, your resources, your money on the best fit for your book. And if for any reason you don't really like a particular award, pass on it. There's always a new opportunity around the corner. And just really give your book the chance to shine, to be recognized, and to be awarded for its beauty.
Thank you so much. Beautiful words. Well, we need to be wrapping up right now, but Hannah Jacobson, it's been a pleasure to speak with you about Book Award Pro. I'm so glad that our North Street entrants. not just our winners, but every entrant, is going to be getting the benefit of three months of this amazing service. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Annie, and to everyone watching, thank you so much for tuning in. We would love to be a part of your award-winning journey.
Disclosure: This interview includes affiliate links to Book Award Pro, where Winning Writers receives modest compensation if you purchase from them.
FindLaw Articles on Copyrights
Clear and concise articles on what is copyrightable, why to register your work, ownership of rights and enforcing your rights. A good place to visit before registering with the US Copyright Office.
Fire Sale
I dreamed that the seventh house
On the left on my street
Burned down
And every soul perished.
In my dream
Burnt flesh hung from
Silver poles, poked
Through holes of artless parchment
In the evening sky.
A cannon sat in the square
Across the street—
Pointing to the second story window
Where my father leaped—
His diabetic limbs akimbo
Dancing on a treadle to
The Galilean stair.
Soaked white linens he was wrapt in
Set the dream on fire, he was
Wailing as he sailed,
"Why did god the only one
Give me a nigger lover for a son?"
Body to the Anatomy Board
For the docks to skewer, disembowel;
I dumped you there myself, dad,
Though I seldom called you that. All
The soused ensemble was resplendent
In the fall's night air!
The racks are full of you now,
All that I can bear.
I think I'll just go in and browse.
Copyright 2005 by William J. Duvall
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Fire Sale" by William J. Duvall, uses the language of fantasy and nightmare to capture the essence of a son's love-hate relationship with his deceased father. Just as classic fairy tales provided a code language for societies to discuss taboo passions and conflicts within the family, the surreal world of a poem permits the narrator to express feelings he may be afraid to name. Sharon Olds and Sylvia Plath are examples of poets who used this style to create cathartic, powerful poems about their own troubled relationships with their fathers. Finding images for the emotions that the situation generates, rather than simply describing the facts or stating your reaction to them, is a technique that brings the reader closer to seeing the scene through your eyes.
The opening lines of "Fire Sale" thrust us into a shadowy realm where everything we observe has ominous significance. The odd specificity of "the seventh house/On the left on my street" calls attention to itself, recalling the connection between "left" and "sinister" as well as the numerological belief that seven is an especially powerful number. "Every soul perished" tells us we are about to hear a story where redemption is urgently sought but may not be found.
The torn sky implies that the world we lived in is unreal, separated by a flimsy membrane from a mystery whose existence we never suspected. We have crossed over into the realm of the unknown, on the other side of death. The "artless parchment" is like a blank canvas, a Sistine Chapel with no God on its ceiling.
The cannon pointed at the father's window is most obviously a metaphor for death, but could also be viewed as a symbol of the son's disguised aggression. Like death, but also like a poem, it acts at a distance, in seeming anonymity. No one is visible behind the cannon to take responsibility for the judgment or threat that it levels at the father.
Then we receive this amazing vision of the father, transfigured yet still recognizably flawed by the illness, prejudice and bitterness that marked his life. The latter traits still haunt the son, who is repelled by his father's body and soul, as he half-taunts, half-confesses how he "dumped the body" at the Anatomy Board for medical students to dissect. He refuses to sentimentalize his father in death, but cannot avoid seeing that the man has passed, with all his faults, to a plane of existence that makes these resentments seem unworthy.
"All/The soused ensemble was resplendent/In the fall's night air!" Dazzling, enigmatic, this moment of revelation slips away from our understanding. "Soused" is a wonderfully earthy word that grounds us in ordinary, tragicomic existence even as we are given a glimpse of the "resplendent" beyond.
So who or what is the soused ensemble? My first impression was of a crowd of men, happily drunk, a little maudlin; perhaps the father's working-class buddies, giving him a good send-off at his funeral. The son, more cosmopolitan, estranged from that community (as we learn from the father's "nigger-lover" comment), uses the judgmental word "soused" but is also surprised to discover a nobility in the bond they shared.
An alternate reading of "ensemble" is a suit of clothing. This fits with the recurring imagery of fabric and sewing in the poem. A treadle is the foot-pedal that operates a sewing machine. The "soused ensemble" could refer to the "Soaked white linens he was wrapt in," a shroud or bedsheet wet with the fever-sweat of illness.
The last stanza, beginning "The racks are full of you now," also seems to use clothing as a symbol of the father. Perhaps he was in the garment trade — an immigrant Jewish merchant, not understanding why his baby-boomer son has joined the civil rights movement? The retail term "fire sale" then becomes a metaphor for disposing of the father's leftover clothing and possessions after his death.
I found the last line jarring ("I think I'll just go in and browse") because it seemed flippant, too casual, after the anguished spiritual journey that preceded it. A poem this weighty needs to end on a powerful chord. Is the son wryly imitating something his father's customers might have said at a literal fire sale? I wanted more context to make this line meaningful. Otherwise, I wouldn't change anything about this mature, well-written poem.
Where could this poem be submitted? These upcoming contests came to mind:
National Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: October 31
https://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/national-poetry-competition/
Prestigious contest from a leading UK poetry organization offers 5,000 pounds top prize, other cash prizes
Briar Cliff Review Fiction, Poetry & Creative Nonfiction Contest
Postmark Deadline: November 1
http://www.bcreview.org/contest
High-quality journal offers $500 and publication for winners in each genre; read passionate and daring poems by past winners online
This poem and critique appeared in the October 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
By Charles M. Blow. The New York Times op-ed columnist's gorgeously written and introspective memoir is a case study in overcoming patriarchy and healing from abuse. Brought up in rural Louisiana by a devoted but stern and overworked single mother and their extended family, young Charles yearned for more tenderness and attention than a boy was supposed to need. An older male cousin preyed on his isolation, giving him a new secret to add to his fears of being not-quite-straight in a culture where this was taboo. Channeling his need for connection into school achievement and community leadership, Blow found himself on both the giving and the receiving end of violent hyper-masculinity as a fraternity brother. In the end, he recognized that self-acceptance, not repression, was the best way to become an honorable man. Blow writes like a poet, in witty, image-rich, sensitive lines that flow like a mighty river.
Fireship Press
Fireship Press, based in Tucson, AZ, publishes e-books and print-on-demand books of nautical and historical fiction and nonfiction. They publish a wide range of works from Age of Sail, Medieval and Renaissance histories, to Westerns and Civil War fiction. The press's Cordero imprint publishes fantasy, murder mysteries, thrillers, biographical and instructional books.
First Rain
The poems in this chapbook are spare yet filled with longing, like the empty rooms in an Edward Hopper painting. Their narrators reach for the unsentimental wisdom to be found on the far side of divorce, aging, and other losses. This collection won the 2009 Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition. High-quality book design enhances the appeal.
First World War Poetry Digital Archive
This British website features work by the major poets of WWI, plus contextual resources, online tutorials, podcasts, lesson plans, and more.
FISH List of Lively Independent Literary Magazines
Author Charlie Fish, editor of the online journal Fiction on the Web, compiled this list of over 1,800 independent literary journals that he recommends based on their longevity, transparency, active readership, and author-friendly submission practices like rapid response time and no fees. Though the list would be more useful if the journal names were hyperlinked, the metrics that he uses are ones that more authors should consider when submitting. As he explains on the Chill Subs blog, "My metrics for the FISH list focus less on awards and prestige, and much more on the features of the magazines themselves. Is there an active community of readers? Do the editors give feedback on submitted stories? Is the magazine going to stick around, or fade away like so many do?...I don’t want to give too much weight to the same-old darlings of the lit mag scene: I want to illuminate the margins."
Fish Publishing
This well-regarded Irish literary publisher runs a range of competitions, from poetry and flash fiction to crime, historical fiction, and short stories, with prizes up to 2,500 euros. They also provide a full editorial consultancy service designed to provide writers with one to one, on-going, constructive feedback on their work, whether it is a complete novel or just the beginnings. As of 2012, they also offer an online mentoring service, with pricing based on the manuscript length and duration of the mentoring relationship (3, 6, or 9 months).
Fishing
Copyright 2010 by Hank Rodgers
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Flash fiction or prose poem? Like the optical illusion that can be either a vase or two facing profiles, this hybrid genre eludes a single definition. Its multivalence makes it an apt form to address the mysteries of faith and doubt, as Hank Rodgers does in "Fishing". A good story or poem, like a spiritual parable, will reveal paradoxes and ambiguities in the reality we take for granted, awakening us to multiple perspectives even as it also brings out universal themes that connect us.
"Fishing" begins, at least, in the conversational voice of prose. We expect that it will take place in the everyday world of hobbies ("I love fishing") and practical details ("I took my rod and tackle and a small lunch"). Although the syntax remains straightforward and suited to realistic narrative throughout, the content drifts imperceptibly into the metaphorical realm of poetry.
The "once upon a time" feeling starts with the decontextualized voices whom he quotes as the source of his contradictory information about the lake: "I knew that many said that there were no longer fish in the lake, but I had also heard otherwise"; and later, "Over the years, while I have heard others say that the lake was drying up, shrinking in size, I have noticed little change". We are deprived of the cues that would tell us whether these sources are reliable or whether the narrator has waited an unreasonable length of time. That is, we don't have the data to assess his character or theirs, which a proper naturalistic story would provide.
Meeting vagueness where we expect a further fleshing-out of the specific location, as befits a story, we begin to feel that the lake is more of a symbol than a place. On the other hand, the narrator's apparent failure to remark on this transition could also be a reason for us to question his sanity, if we choose to remain with our feet planted on the farther shore of narrative realism, where we began. It could still be a story, but a story about someone who has lost touch with the reality that we, outside the narrative, must fill in.
Rodgers' piece reminds me of Mary Ruefle's fascinating book-length foray into prose-poem-parable territory, The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008). Tagged by the publisher as an essay collection, it's nothing near as rational, which is precisely the point. Each stream-of-consciousness discussion unwraps the strangeness, even the incoherence, of the original concept, and makes that bewilderment a pleasurable resting place. This is the mindstate of Zen, and also of poetry: the shift from analysis to awe. (Read samples here and here.)
"Fishing" takes the reader on such a journey from the realistic to the mythic, and possibly back again, depending on whether one prefers to see the narrator's persistence as enlightened or deluded. It is what we bring to it, the piece seems to say.
"Those who have ears to hear, let them hear," Jesus says after telling one of his parables. You'll recognize the signs of God's presence if you're looking for them, and on the other hand, if you want your doubts confirmed, that's what you'll get. Jesus isn't in this poem, of course—or is he? In the Western literary tradition, you can't write a poem about faith and fish without situating yourself in the Christian dialogue.
As a believer myself, I'm inclined to focus on this narrator's progressive sense of peace as he leaves the agendas and security of the practical world behind, along with his lunch and his fishing gear. Letting go of the intention to catch fish in the literal sense, he finds their shapes again in the mysterious patterns of the heavens. By not striving, he is effortlessly aligned with his environment, which is almost personified, almost expressing volition and benevolence toward him: "The places, the spaces where I was, close up behind me, and the new spaces I occupy open for me, as always."
However, from Rodgers' other writings, I know that he's interested in religion but comes down on the side of materialism and atheism. The moral purpose or personality we might read into the cosmos is comforting but illusory. There is fodder for that worldview in "Fishing" as well.
Critics of religion say that faith-based habits of mind are dangerous, making a virtue out of indifference to contrary evidence. So, when our narrator says, "The fact that I have caught no fish has little meaning for me, while the possibility exists", we could worry that he's joined a cargo cult. As the popular saying goes, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
Of course, a person of faith would say that the spiritual discipline of surrendering to the unknown is the real answer to prayer. Since so much of life really is unpredictable and precarious, this kind of equanimity may be more practical than you'd think.
What's more Zen than the willingness to make a fool of yourself? Without it, none of us could sit down to write, to shut out the world's practical demands and chase the cloud-fish of poetry that we're never quite sure we've caught.
Where could a poem like "Fishing" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose
Postmark Deadline: August 31
Gulf Coast, the literary journal of the University of Houston, offers $1,000 for prose poems or flash fiction up to 500 words; online entries preferred
Gemini Magazine Flash Fiction Contest
Entries must be received by September 30
New online journal offers prizes up to $1,000 for stories up to 1,000 words
Other resources of interest:
Poemeleon: The Prose Poem Issue (Winter 2007)
This issue of the online journal Poemeleon features examples by notable poets such as Jimmy Santiago Baca, Chad Prevost, and Cecilia Woloch, plus book reviews and an essay on prose poetics.
The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal
Online anthology at Web del Sol includes work by Robert Bly, Maxine Chernoff, Russell Edson, Charles Simic, James Tate, and other leading lights.
This poem and critique appeared in the July 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Fixing the One-Dimensional Protagonist
Is your main character too bland? 10 mental traps authors fall into, and exercises to help get back out.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
In November, I'm deep into writing feedback for North Street Book Prize entrants. Among other things, this means meeting a lot of empty-feeling main characters over and over again. Here are a few of the usual suspects:
A tough, masculine man who's smarter than most. He's always fair to others, even though he's the victim of a lot of unfairness.
A smart, sexy woman who's not like the other girls.
A down-to-earth, sweet, misunderstood woman who has often come out the worse in love. Her innocence is what makes her attractive to the male romantic lead.
An intelligent, somewhat jaded man who has little patience for normals, but passionate excitement for his chosen field. He has all the time in the world for special individuals who recognize the specialness of his field (and him).
A plucky boy or girl who's wise beyond their years—far wiser than all the other children and adults around them.
A man, woman, boy, or girl drawn straight from the mid-1900s world of Leave It to Beaver.
A fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction hero or heroine whose main character trait is speaking and thinking with slightly more elevated diction than regular people, and never using contractions.
While each of these types can be the basis for a strong main character, so many of the books we get in North Street stop there, at the "basis" part. They don't define the character past the fundamental traits of the type. Often, the characters are static—they tend to weather the events of the book rather than grow because of them.
It's all but impossible for a book to recover from a bland protagonist. No matter how strong the other narrative elements are, an empty main character will leech a book of all immersivity.
As tempting as it might be to blame dull main characters on bad writing skills or lack of imagination and leave it at that, I've found there are a number of preventable mental traps authors fall into that can lead to blandness. Do any of these ten examples apply to you?
1. The author is overfocused on the plot or other aspects of the storytelling
Early-career authors have a special challenge in that they're learning to juggle a range of storytelling techniques for the first time. They may tend to focus either on what's easiest for them or what stresses them out most. Either way, the overfocus on just one or two elements can lead to an imbalance in the book as a whole. Character development is one aspect that tends to get neglected.
For many authors, the point of focus is plotting. The author is concerned about telling the story in a way that makes sense and is so glad when they do, that they move on to querying or self-publishing without firming up the other storytelling elements. Other dominant priorities can include:
Communicating the moral, religious, philosophical, social ideas at the heart of the manuscript
Conveying feelings about what is happening in the book
Making the worldbuilding unique
Working out a personal conflict or trauma
If you find you've been doing this, no worries. There's still time to beef up your characterizations! Read on for more exercises that could help.
Exercise 1: Make an outline of your main character's development from beginning to end. How are they changing at each major plot point? What are they learning? What are they hating about themselves? Liking about themselves? What do they want?
Exercise 2: Get concrete. Make a list of the character's attributes, then a list of physical items that signify those attributes. Throughout your narrative, show the items to the reader at key times to demonstrate static attributes, growth, or both.
Example: A character is always late to things. A friend gives them a watch to help them be on time. Later, the watch gets destroyed or lost, but the character no longer needs it/immediately gets another one/gets a new one but isn't as successful at following it/mourns the old one for years and can't bring themselves to get another, no matter how many times they're late. How the character responds is a concrete demonstration of their character.
2. The main character is an extension of the author's own voice
In this scenario, the author identifies with the character so closely that it's like the character is an extension of the author themselves. The character's ideas, actions, and speech don't differ from the book's tone, collapsing the difference between the character's attitudes and the book's attitudes. At that point, there's a risk the character will blend in with the rest of the book instead of becoming alive to the reader.
Exercise: Give your character more independence. What do they want to keep secret from you? Where would they much rather diverge from the narrative path you've set out for them? Where don't they agree with your personal beliefs? With the message the book is trying to get across? How might all of these things influence their behavior, speech, and thought over the course of the book?
3. Successful mimicry feels like success, not practice
For many early authors, a key criteria for success is writing a manuscript that feels like "a real book". This can lead to reproducing patterns that they've seen before in plotting, prose style, and characterization. Not a bad thing! In fact, mimicking others' styles is one of the best ways to develop as writers. But in some cases, an author who achieves replication and stays there might end up with a bland main character who really does feel like "just a copy".
Exercise: Give your character a spikier profile, including, but not limited to:
More specific limitations, abilities, likes, and dislikes
Inner contradictions
Irrational and potentially ugly or unlikeable sides to their personality
Different levels of ability in one kind of task versus another
A more distinct and individualistic pattern of growth from the beginning of the narrative to the end
4. "This type of character couldn't be any other way"
Authors can sometimes get trapped in assumptions about age, gender, class, race, and more that keep them from making characters dynamic. For example, Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter observes that an author who wants to write a strong male protagonist might fail to imagine that he could have complex relationships that change him. The women in his life end up being objects to protect, rather than participants in the hero's journey.
On the flip side might be a female character who's universally loving and fair to everyone and doesn't have any moral blind spots or prejudices. Adherence to these stereotypes about gender could lead to overlooking the kinds of unexpected inner contradictions, weaknesses, and strengths that real people have, leading to flat characters.
The 2023 North Street First Prize winner in Literary Fiction, Lucy May Lennox, chose a privileged man near the top of his society as her main character in Flowers by Night. Tomonosuke is a samurai in 1825 Japan who enjoys a range of social, personal, and sexual freedoms due to his status. But rather than keep Tomonosuke static in this role, Lennox leads him on a journey that culminates in his rejection of the class assumptions he was born into.
Exercise: Journal on the factors in your character's inner life that are keeping them from living up to their potential regarding some kind of value (i.e., humility, integrity, or something else). What assumptions would they have to shed in order to embody those values more fully? What path will lead them to rethink those beliefs?
5. A stand-out character feels like a marketing risk
Commercial aspirations can make authors cautious about every aspect of their writing, including main characters. What if they go too far? What if, instead of relatable-unique, they cross over into just-plain-weird-or-unlikeable-unique? But overcaution isn't necessarily wise.
Jendi comments that sometimes, "[authors] are expecting all readers to crave an idealized protagonist as a kind of wish-fulfillment, pretending they are living the life of a super strong cop or overpoweringly sexy woman. But that's kind of dull for a more sophisticated reader, and it often reinforces stereotypical social roles."
So how to strike a balance? When considering your main character's level of distinctiveness, it might be helpful to reflect on your goals for the book. If you're aiming to self-publish, playing it safe with the character might be okay. But if you're hoping to get the attention of agents, editors, publishers, or contest judges, it could be important to remember that a literary professional is often a different kind of reader. We've seen many books in your genre, and many protagonists like your protagonist—and we want something new! Pushing out of your comfort zone might reward you here.
Exercise: Journal on whether you're planning to issue your book to the public directly or trying to attract the attention of a professional in the industry. If the second option is true, write down at least 10 unique things that professional might be wanting to see in a protagonist but likely don't see enough of. It might be helpful to reflect on the values of contemporary society and the audience you're ultimately trying to reach through that professional. How can you adapt those values to your character in a stand-out way?
6. The character is vivid in the author's mind, but the portrayal hasn't made it onto the page
You just know your character so well—and it feels like everyone else does, too. But some traits or growth points can fail to make it onto the page due to an author's blind spots. This is something all authors do at some point, and it's a main reason beta readers and editors exist.
Exercise: Ask your beta readers to describe the character's core traits and arc of development back to you. Don't prompt them towards any one response. Are you surprised by anything they say? When they've finished, ask them if anything about the character made them reflect on an aspect of their own inner contradictions, and if so, what.
If the answer to either of these questions is no, or you are surprised by any of the answers, you may still have more work to do in putting the fullness of the character down on paper.
7. Change feels bad
In real life, the goal for most of us is often simply to get through challenges without changing. When something bad happens, we just want things to go back to normal! In most books, though, maintaining a character's initial status from cover to cover takes away from narrative tension. The challenges of the plot are simply a storm for the character to weather, and a happy ending is one in which the character hasn't changed. Desirable for real life? Certainly. But in a novel, it can make everything feel slack.
In the 2022 North Street First Prize Literary Fiction winner, the heroine of Wendy Sibbison's Helen in Trouble is a privileged, white sixteen-year-old from an Episcopalian family in the DC suburbs in 1963. When her first relationship leads to an accidental pregnancy, her decision to get an abortion—a plot device that could have been used to symbolize the desire to "get back to normal"—instead launches a sequence of new experiences that change her assumptions on race, class, and her relationship with her own mother.
Exercise: Make an outline of your current plot points. Then "show" it to your character as they exist in your exposition, before the inciting incident. Ask them: if you were faced with this sequence of events, how would you want to grow during the course of it? How would you not want to grow? Who would you want to be on the other side? Who would you not want to be? What would you be willing to sacrifice to become that? What wouldn't you give up at any price?
Then in your next draft, make the narrative do something different to the character than what they told you, and have them react to their arc from the perspectives of the wants and fears they described to you.
8. Sequels are planned, and the author doesn't want to box themselves in
Authors can fall into the trap of thinking that their protagonist needs to stay exactly the same throughout a series. After all, that's what happens in sitcoms, isn't it? Any changes a character might have undergone during the show are cancelled out at the end so we can start fresh next time. But in the best book series, characters do grow and change. Even in genre fiction.
Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne crime series is a good example. In every book, Thorne, a moody Detective Inspector in modern London, learns a little bit more about relationships and grows as a person. Then his new knowledge is challenged in the next book, making him learn and grow even more. This makes Thorne dynamic, and meanwhile, there's still continuity in the series because of Thorne's core traits, the focus on London, and Billingham's other plot, theme, and aesthetic decisions.
One straightforward argument for character growth in every book of a series is that readers first come in contact with the series just through a single book. It's best to make every book as attention-getting as possible, and that means having the main character change by the end. Readers might turn away from the series if the protagonist doesn't pop. That goes double for agents, editors, publishers, and contest judges, who have likely seen many characters similar to yours.
Exercise: Consider your main character. List ten things that would be good for them to know or be able to do, but would be exceptionally hard for them to learn. These things could be information, viewpoints, behavioral styles, beliefs or something else.
When you have your list, compare it to the most important themes of your planned series. Are there any intersections between the hard lessons and your books' themes? Would it be possible to implement incremental growth for your character over the course of the series, in the areas where the intersections occur?
9. This is not the right character for the plot
Sometimes, the author has not asked themselves whether the character they've chosen will create opportunities for exploring the plot from a unique angle. Likewise, maybe they haven't considered whether the premise and plot they've chosen will allow them to explore the main character to their full potential. In this situation, the mismatch between the protagonist and other elements of the story mean that neither can be shown off to their best advantage.
For example, in detective novels, it's important that the detective be given a crime that only they can solve. Sherlock Holmes's power is logical reasoning based on minute pieces of evidence, and Arthur Conan Doyle only gave him crimes that could be solved with that ability. Miss Marple's talent is using social gossip to solve crimes, and Agatha Christie made sure to give her crimes that could be solved through conversations with other characters that felt social, but had an undercurrent only Marple could appreciate.
Imagine if Sherlock Holmes had been given a crime that depended on social nuance, the way Marple's do! That crime might never have been solved, and meanwhile, we wouldn't get to see Holmes's amazing powers of fact-based reasoning in action. He'd appear dull and flat, and the plot would be boring, too.
Exercise: Think about the features of your main character's premise and plot in comparision to their personality, goals, and past. Is this really the challenge that will get the most out of them? And are they the right character to show off the plot and premise to their full advantage? If not, reworking might be needed for one or both sides.
10. Readers/beta readers already like the character, so no changes needed?
"I've shown my book to readers/beta readers already, and they like the character. Why should I go further?"
This is a response I sometimes get from critique clients when I've questioned the dimensionality of their main character. My reply is usually that if they are seeking to self-publish without the intent to enter book contests, their approach is fine as-is. On the other hand, authors looking to get the attention of agents, editors, publishers, or contest judges might want to remember that literary professionals have read hundreds, if not thousands, of books in that genre. We've already met characters similar to, or the same, as yours, and we're keen to meet someone new.
For example, we received dozens of pandemic novels in the 2022 North Street Book Prize. Most of them were eliminated in the first round because we were tired of reading the same plot points, themes, and characters. But First Prize in Genre Fiction went to Robert Chazz Chute's Endemic that year—a pandemic novel! Why? Because his main character was someone we'd never seen in that kind of situation before: a queer, neurodivergent book editor whose reactions throughout her plot arc were complex and unexpected. That made the whole story pop.
Exercise: Pretend you are a contest judge who's read hundreds of books in your genre, with plot points, settings, themes, and characters exactly like yours. What changes could you make to the main character to make all these elements feel fresh, new, and relevant to today's readers?
Flaming Comforter and American Charybdis
FLAMING COMFORTER by Airlie Sattler Rose
French whistles sing to the coal train moving mountains, the green motorcycle gleaming under stained glass cylinders, tumbling star-like crystals peacefully rolling, comfortably rolling around on the bed on top of the motion of waves, the bare feet of the catalog's down comforter singed with fire.
It's ok, really. Don't you think the swan song is beautiful and the Lorax might find his way home some day? I look at the concrete, the molasses geography and dream of Jesus bursting through radiant clouds skipping on giant sandal feet from building to building. David Byrne's "Nothing but flowers" mark his steps until everything is flattened into life.
There is no more room. It is either going out or going in, breathing, sustenance, fire. Fire is the root, the structure, the comfort. A burn is a sharp thing that cuts. I sing to my children 10,000 songs, but they always want to hear Happy Birthday. Synchronicity when they line up together and—darn—those bare feet sticking out from under the blanket again.
I keep going, but the horizon is grey with smogulous smog and fogulous fog and everyone is coughing. This nation is so small minded. We are such children—gathering our bugs in a jar. We don't know enough to touch the other. The other's touch inflames us. It is how we grow-up. Un believable the American children. Un believable their world of princess dolls and ballrooms. What do they make of the decaying corpse of nature that fills the air with the stench of poetry? Ugh. It is inescapable.
Fleas contaminate the bed. Plink, plink—they're hard to catch, but I don't mind. I like to squish fleas and lie down in flea free luxury. America doesn't have fleas. I live here. The island paradise awaits, and the sun is setting. What kind of boat is this? Why does green flash as the fireball submerges? and did my freckle move?
Copyright 2010 by Airlie Sattler Rose
AMERICAN CHARYBDIS by Airlie Sattler Rose
I step into the lapping edge
of American culture.
My daughter looks adorable in her red ribbon pleated polyester
cheerleading costume
safely within the eyes
of the camera.
My son is safe.
He stands beyond the jetsam line
yelling "Mommy!"
afraid to come closer.
Good.
Cars snake along
ahead behind
I can't slow down
pull out of traffic.
The guy to my left
flips me off when
I swerve to get off of
here. This bridge isn't safe.
I've got kids on board.
It's rotting from the inside
out and
below the water
sucks around the piling
as it bounces and returns to
New couches smell of urethane.
If they catch fire,
they melt
into a scalding puddle
emitting cyanide.
So, I tell my kids not to play with matches.
It's the sucking sound
of the television
arguments over why we
don't buy from Wal-Mart.
The princess ball is surely happening in the heart of that castle and
the small plastic bucket
holds a blue bubble
that looks like plastic
except for muscle-less twitches
and the slow curl, uncurl
of tentacles.
The water was a draining ache when I got in,
but now it feels ok
warm even.
I pack my thrift store specials
into a charity bag
and take out my Chico's
passport card.
I ask the lady behind the counter
if any children wove until their hands bled
to make this garment, and
when she looks at me like I'm crazy
I feel I have done my duty to the children.
Because the only thing
that is real to me
is the slick
wrinkle-free fit of my pants
and the fact I feel professional
in-front of a class.
I like the way it feels
to spend money like smooth silk
spread over the rotting infrastructure.
The murdered land off-gases
beneath our feet.
It all feels normal.
Copyright 2010 by Airlie Sattler Rose
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Many authors have a set of core concerns to which they return, in one form or another, throughout their career. Mary Oliver's prolific volumes of nature poetry share a common message that life is precious and paying attention is a spiritual practice. At the other end of the mood spectrum, Stephen King is obsessed with the artist's evil double, the dark side of genius. With each variation on their theme, writers hope to come closer to finding the best form to express an idea that won't let them go.
For this month's critique, I chose Airlie Sattler Rose's poems "Flaming Comforter" and "American Charybdis" because they represent two such variations on a topic that attracts many contemporary poets: how to survive the unwholesome excesses of American commercial culture. Rose has tried out two poetic forms, the prose poem and the free-verse lyric, each of which is suited to explore different features of this dystopian landscape.
The prose poem is a hybrid form, rapidly evolving, elusive of definition. In this it resembles the mutating, confusing environment that the protagonist of "Flaming Comforter" inhabits. Surrealism is a natural tendency of the prose poem because it lacks the ruminative pauses of lineated verse, and also the logical progression of ideas we expect from prose. The quick succession of associative leaps can overwhelm the reader's analytical mind, just as this poem's narrator and her children are overwhelmed by the seductive pop-culture data stream.
One might say that the prose poem is the perfect form for our wired age. More than ever, it's up to us to connect and filter the random information that engulfs us. No one is going to shape it into a nice sonnet or an executive summary.
From the first paragraph of "Flaming Comforter", the reader is immersed in a stream of gorgeous yet disorienting images. Just as we begin to relax and enjoy it, a note of danger is introduced, "the bare feet of the catalog's down comforter singed with fire", followed by a hasty retreat into false hope: "It's okay, really. Don't you think the swan song is beautiful and the Lorax might find his way home some day?" (The Lorax is a Dr. Seuss character who warned in vain about all the trees being cut down to make consumer products.)
The narrator sounds alternately disgusted by, and tempted to share, the willed naivete of her fellow citizens. It would be a relief from the vain struggle to protect herself and her children from a corporate monoculture that threatens not only their physical ecosystem, but the biodiversity of their imagination: "I sing to my children 10,000 songs, but they always want to hear Happy Birthday."
The childhood references (Dr. Seuss, princess dolls) are part of the storyline of the harried parent, but also suggest the culture's general immaturity and egotism, an inability to grasp the implications of one's desires: "America doesn't have fleas. I live here." In other words, we can't be wrong! It can't happen to us! The stream-of-consciousness voice of the prose poem, which does away with explanatory transitions, makes it harder to differentiate between the narrator's own views and the messages she receives from outside—which is precisely the point.
Bagginess and a loss of direction are special hazards of writing a prose poem. The stream of consciousness must be edited, but it must not seem so. The pitch of the poem falters, it seems to me, in the fourth paragraph, which is a bit preachy and uses nonsense words in a way that feels out of place. The Seuss-ism "smogulous smog and fogulous fog" isn't how the sharply intelligent and wary narrator would speak when she is making a serious argument, in fact the central argument of the poem.
Before moving on to the next poem, I want to say a few words about the wonderfully multi-layered title "Flaming Comforter". As a literal, physical description, the paradox instantly draws us in. The security blanket is on fire. Something dramatic is happening here. I also thought of the Holy Spirit, one of whose traditional epithets is the Comforter. Angels are radiant and terrifying, like fire. That green flash on the horizon...is God going to intervene? Will we be happy to see Him? Maybe not.
In Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters living on either side of a narrow strait. Charybdis took the form of a whirlpool, while Scylla was shaped like a woman with wild dogs' heads coming out of her waist. The story has passed into common parlance as a metaphor for navigating with difficulty between two disastrous alternatives.
As in "Flaming Comforter", Rose uses water imagery in "American Charybdis" to represent the overpowering and chaotic force of a toxic culture. But if the prose poem was a flood, this narrative lyric is a drip-drip-drip, moving with the exaggerated slowness of paranoia, as the narrator must think and re-think the ramifications of the mundane choices that others rush through.
It seems to me that the target of this poem is false individualism, the privatization of public burdens. How interesting to use the first-person lyric, that supremely personal form, to critique an ideology that puts private choices at the center of the universe.
Try as she might, the mother cannot avoid being implicated in harmful decisions that are made at the corporate level. She has all of the responsibility, yet none of the power, to protect her family. Are your couches flammable (the flaming comforter again)? Well, just tell your kids not to play with matches! Simple as that.
Both of Rose's poems create the effect of two voices talking over one another, the ambient noise of the culture and the narrator's interior monologue which is in tension with those media messages. In "American Charybdis", the voices are more clearly delineated by the use of italics versus plain text, yet despite that, the voices bleed into one another as speakers break off mid-sentence and switch typefaces. It's like trying to read a book in a hospital waiting room where the TV is always blaring.
Perhaps because it has a clearer narrative line than the surreal "Flaming Comforter", this poem's political outrage feels a little more heavy-handed. Wal-Mart is almost too easy a target, and I would have liked to end on a more subtle and surprising image than "murdered land". Rose has no shortage of original images earlier in the poem, which makes her work stand out from the mass of other anti-corporate screeds. Some of my favorites are "the lapping edge of American culture", "money like smooth silk spread over the rotting infrastructure", and the lovely and strange sequence about the delicate sea creature in the bucket. Like the spirit of Hope at the bottom of Pandora's box, this little creature offers us relief from Rose's otherwise unbearable dystopian vision.
In style and content, I see similarities between Rose's work and the poetry of Joy Harjo, whose book A Map to the Next World also juxtaposed lyrics with prose poems on parallel themes. Other poets writing in the same vein include Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root, the husband-and-wife team behind the literary journal Cutthroat. Their annual contest will reopen in the summer.
Where could poems like "Flaming Comforter" and "American Charybdis" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Solstice Literary Contest
Entries must be received by March 23
New online journal offers prizes of $500 for poetry, $1,000 for fiction and essays; 2010 final judge for poetry is Terrance Hayes
Foley Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: March 31
Free contest from the Jesuit magazine 'America' offers $1,000 for a poem of 30 lines or less; no simultaneous submissions; past winning poems have touched on morally significant issues, but have not been "religious" poetry in the conventional sense
Bomb Magazine Biennial Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: April 1
Well-regarded literary journal offers this $500 award for unpublished poems in even-numbered years only; 2010 final judge is Susan Howe
Tiferet Writing Contest
Entries must be received by April 1
Tiferet, an ecumenical journal of spirituality and the arts, offers $500 for unpublished poems of any length; enter online
Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: April 30
Highly competitive $2,000 award from Nimrod International Journal; editors seem to like poetry with a progressive political bent
These poems and critique appeared in the March 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Flamingo Rampant
Flamingo Rampant is an independent publisher of feminist, racially diverse, LGBTQ-positive picture books for children. They publish six titles a year, which must be ordered as a box set. Other forthcoming projects include resource sheets for parents and educators.
Flash Fiction Magazine
Founded in 2014, Flash Fiction Magazine posts a new short-short story online every day. Contributors whose stories are selected for the annual print anthology receive payment. There is also a monthly $100 prize for the best story. Submissions should be 300-1,000 words and be a complete story (no vignettes or prose-poems) with conflict, character development, and resolution.
Flash Fiction World
British site for writers of short-short fiction includes advice for writing in the genre, listings of markets and contests, and a peer critique forum.
FlashFiction.net
Updated daily, this site features short craft essays on writing and marketing your flash fiction.
Floating Girl (Angel of War)
Luminous poems depict the spiritual tragedy of warfare through the idealized figure of the dead child, who amazingly deigns to comfort us with her beauty even as she indicts the ways we fall short of true humanity. The title poem in this prizewinning collection from Elixir Press took first prize in the 2003 Winning Writers War Poetry Contest. The book cover and design are also first-rate.
Flood Delusion
By Rosanne Dingli
In his sleep it comes through pipes and gutters. Spurt Gush
It runs; like in a burst aqueduct bearing weight; litre per kilo
Heavier than the tractor in the barn, fleeting as hay batches donated to feed
His cows. Gout Spout
It comes; over the north fence. Changing his world, changing levels and notches
On termite-eaten four-by-fours marked for decades with dates of past floods;
Over the tombstone in the far paddock where Horrie lies, buried with his gun.
Flow Run Past night windows it eddies; swirls, smelling
Of grass and dung and crushed foliage from gums at the Five Mile
It comes. Whirling and pooling up coronet, fetlock, hock of the last horse standing
Of a team of six. Up gaskin and ergot, over forearm and knee of
A long-suffering mount raising its muzzle
In alarm at the change, the shift, the sudden downpour sheeting
From skies purple with possibilities, with relief. Stream Rush
Remnant streaks of a white sunset turned orange. Orange with silhouettes
Of mill and trees cut from carbon; singed with the soot of flames so close
They warped the gate. That gate Horrie fashioned from lengths of pipe
Welded roughly in the half-light of the shadowy barn
The day he declared he'd never seen it so parched and dry. So hopeless
He took off to the crags and never came back.
Thank crikey he cannot see it now. Rush Surge
Torrents reel against the house, peel away cladding where
Nails were never enough. Where bins and dog bowls are carried away
By current and wave; rise, bounce, wallow. Disappear
Into a creek so swollen it is the stuff of dreams. Dreams
Spurt Stream Steam Dream
Wake, wake to chalky sensation of dry tongue, dulled eyes;
To red red dust and gusts through glass louvres curling eyelashes
With latent heat. Singe Scorch
No change, no change. It's the auction brought this on; hammering head and gut
With figures, totals, sums so poor he swore. Perhaps it's not worth seeing them
Trot, clatter over a ramp onto rivals' trucks,
His cows.
But better than taking the tractor to them, bucket spannered on
With desperate fingers; shake, tremble. Dry as bone. Dry
As horns on a carcase skull going white out there. Ah—better, he knows,
Than piling them for a fire. Out there where two dams are dams no more,
Where silent creek and ghastly memory of fish kills
Assault the mind's nostrils like a plague. And sand pours through fists like water.
Water? Water? No such thing. The future Horrie foretold,
Of water politics and water war is upon them,
Searing, branding onto hide and soul this symbol of desolation.
Two waves, once the emblem of the farm
Now signifies not water, but steam; heat miraging a prospect of fear
As obvious, as blatant as that in their eyes as they climbed that ramp
His cows.
But in his dreams, it flows. Every night a flood to bait and tempt,
Tantalize and bruise, to prove
He cannot help but dream. Rush Splash
Flood Sacrifice
He opened a window,
the cupola's shutter,
sole whimsy to this massive
gopher-wood coffin of a boat.
No mast, no steering possible
to where the world
swirled to an end.
Not time for the dove launch,
the grooves on the ladder's top
rung marked day thirty of
the promised Forty.
A Sound, not rain, spliced
the drifting—
a faint rhythm, a drumbeat ap-
proaching—his own
heartbeat? De-
moralized
panic?
He stretched further,
listing into the celestial river,
beard channeling danger for the remnant below.
Mantle saturated,
rivulets coursed
shoulder to sandal.
The cadence intensified,
steaming reminder of
his only world—
Clamminess of a last chance.
Would that his mantle
billow and hover
above the syncopated waves,
above the constant whump of
outside objects, all
in stages of decay—
rudder and lower planks,
sounding boards of wasted echoes!
Between flashes of lightning
the reckoning:
an ax-shaped image descending.
A beak, a giant parrot's beak?
No, an unearthly outline of a
mouth from which the
drumroll now roared—
overpowering everything.
What to take in,
impossible to tune out,
the pitch polarized his heartbeat—
lethal synchronicity.
What life after this massacre—
were the Nephilim to colonize
the earth after all?
Would the Adamic race
now serve a new kind of creator
whose thirst for
death impaled that
for life?
What sacrifice could ever appease
such a god, a vortex not
even the elements could defy?
***
Some one would have to be offered—
not the beasts.
Replenishing the earth was their birthright;
the fulcrum of flora and fauna
beyond the children's ken.
Undiluted human blood could
distill this cesspool of death,
offer the first fertilizer.
Were the Mother, the Garden, the vineyards
never to return?
What sin had turned the God
he had willingly, fearfully worshipped to this?
*** He didn't know. ***
God had picked him,
relatively righteous.
His own propagation completed,
the couples collected,
he'd become the patriarch of orderly patience,
only to be tortured in
this eternal wet night by
guilt?
Those last desperate souls...
pleading had replaced the jeers:
Ropes!
Seasick, he
opened his palms.
Death roiled about him—
how to cajole an unknowable god?
How to invite infinity, eternity
inside to witness the beauty of pregnancy,
to join baby rodent games,
bird song?
The drumming subsided,
he knew what he would do—
unfathomable conviction.
Back down the ladder,
grope in the darkness,
grip the unnamed
stone used only for
cutting the cords of mammals
and for grafting the
vine.
His feet had sunk into
velvet soil for
the last time.
Before raising the stone to his neck, he cried out,
You will teach your children how to play!
Copyright 2008 by Janice Lamberg
Critique by Jendi Reiter
In this month's critique poem, "Flood Sacrifice", Janice Lamberg dramatizes the story of Noah, with a provocative new ending that connects this episode to later Biblical stories of sacrifice, death and rebirth. In her retelling, Noah feels that he has to make the case for the preciousness of earth's creatures, in the face of God's destructive wrath. Lamberg enriches her story with tactile details that demonstrate why this world is to be cherished, such as the "velvet soil" in the closing lines.
Like Moses pleading with God after the Israelites turn to idol worship, the protagonist of "Flood Sacrifice" is willing to back up his plea for God's mercy by offering his very life in exchange. For Christians, this theme recurs most dramatically in the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. The poem's title echoes the familiar phrase "blood sacrifice", often used to refer to the atonement.
From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is convinced that this is a real person in a real place. It is so believable that the ark would have a small touch of "whimsy" to relieve the fear and boredom of a long confinement on a journey into the unknown, and that the inhabitants would mark the days like prisoners scratching grooves on a wall.
Noah is immersed in a chaos of sensations ("the constant whump of outside objects", "sounding boards of wasted echoes"), attempting to cling to his faith in a merciful God when all he can see around him is danger and disorder. These lines were especially vivid: "The cadence intensified,/steaming reminder of/his only world—/Clamminess of a last chance" and "Between flashes of lightning/the reckoning:/an ax-shaped image descending./A beak, a giant parrot's beak?"
We feel how overpowering is the evidence of his senses, which tells him of doom, meaninglessness, confusion. Yet he fights despair with other sensory memories: "How to invite infinity, eternity/inside to witness the beauty of pregnancy,/to join baby rodent games,/bird song?" This reminded me of a common pattern in the Psalms where the speaker begins by lamenting his misfortunes and his feeling that God is absent, then revives his flagging faith by recollecting how God has blessed His people in the past.
"Flood Sacrifice" has many eloquent lines that made this poem stand out among critique submissions. However, there were places where the line breaks didn't match the cadence of the phrases, and interrupted the flow of the poem. I'm generally not a fan of breaking a line on weak words like "a" and "the" (e.g. "unearthly outline of a/mouth from which the/drumroll now roared"). While this does highlight the important word at the beginning of the next line, it does so at the expense of making the line break seem arbitrary (in ordinary speech, one would not pause after "a"), which suggests that the author is having trouble maintaining a poetic voice as distinct from prose. A more natural cadence would follow from putting the breaks after "mouth" (or "of") and "drumroll". Similarly, I would have made "for grafting the/vine" all one line.
By contrast, elsewhere Lamberg more effectively uses very short lines for emphasis: "this eternal wet night by/guilt" and "whose thirst for/death impaled that for/life". Prepositions have more forward momentum to carry the reader to the next line; for me, "a" and "the" feel orphaned without their nouns.
How are we to interpret Noah's final outcry, "You will teach your children how to play"? We expect this sentence to end in "pray", a sufficiently serious remedy for a sin great enough to warrant the destruction of humankind. Surely this is no time for playing around. But let's think this through... People who can no longer play are those who take themselves too seriously, wanting to seem too sophisticated to look at God's creation with childlike wonder. Or they are ashamed and self-conscious, like Adam and Eve after they acquired the forbidden knowledge of their nakedness. Noah's dream is that humanity will once again reflect back God's spontaneous, creative spirit, and remind Him—"cajole" Him—to love us.
Where could a poem like "Flood Sacrifice" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Fish International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 31
Irish independent publisher offers prizes up to 1,000 euros and reading at West Cork literary festival; enter and pay online only
Dancing Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Prizes up to $100 plus opportunity to have your poem presented as an interpretive dance at festival in San Francisco
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Florida Writers Association
President Glenda Ivey is a great person to have on your side.
Fludd
A mysterious curate revives a dreary Catholic parish in 1950s Britain. This magical-realist novel combines the whimsy of Terry Pratchett with Anthony Trollope's affectionate satire of clerical life.
Flying Kites: A Story of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike
By the Stanford Graphic Novel Project. This fictionalized account of a real-life hunger strike to protest prison conditions exposes the horrors of solitary confinement and the inspiring struggles of families to stay connected to their incarcerated loved ones. The e-book is free to download for your computer or tablet.
Flying Object
Flying Object is a nonprofit art and publishing organization. Their storefront in Hadley, Massachusetts hosts a variety of literary readings, art exhibits, concerts, and multimedia events. Their Factory Hollow Press and Flying Object imprints publish limited-edition letterpress chapbooks and broadsides, literary fiction and poetry, artists' books, and a print and online journal. Editors say, "We're particularly interested in collaborative and interdisciplinary work of emerging, experimental, and often overlooked artists, writers, and performers that seek to expand the traditional boundaries of a given art-form and to see that work realized through performance and/or publication. We see our storefront as a laboratory for creative development, performance, and publication that encourages both deliberate and chance encounters with the community that supports and engages our organization."
