The McKnight Artist Fellowships turn 30 this year. McKnight Fellowships for Writers have been administered by the Loft for all of those years. The fellowships allow writers to devote time to their craft. The Fellowships for Writers guidelines are posted for the next round of winners.

In reflecting on the success of writers and this anniversary, the View asked a recent judge and two winners of McKnight fellowships what the judging/being judged process is all about. Bernard Cooper‘s and John Reimringer‘s responses are below. You read Wang Ping’s answer last week.

Now you, gentle reader, can see the ins and outs and be inspired to apply, apply, apply. All the best to you. –Ed.

Here are the questions answered by Bernard Cooper and John Reimringer. 

• Do you get into a certain mind-set as a judge?
• How do you choose winners? What is your system?
• What influences your decisions? (One judge in the Loft’s history of contests encouraged          people to keep applying. She intimated that what applicants can’t know is the state of mind and emotion the judge is in. Did she just have a fight with her partner? Did her child fall ill? Judges have normal lives, too, and just because you got a “no” this time . . .)
• As teachers, you’ve all had the “OMG, this is great/has potential” moment when you’re reading a student’s work. What do you say/not say to that person?
• What do you wish someone had said/not said to you in your early writing days?
• Why keep applying? Is math, strategy involved?
• Are some people more likely than others to want their work judged? How do you get to that point? Is it a personality trait?

And Bernard Cooper says:

Ideally, one approaches the judging of contests with the same frame of mind one brings to any kind of reading: trying not to impose a set of rigid expectations on the writing and allowing oneself to be surprised. This particular kind of impartiality benefits the judges as well as the writers who’ve submitted work to be judged, since all avid readers hope to experience the unpredictability of a writer’s voice, language, and narrative direction. Vladimir Nabokov believed that pleasure was the most important effect of literature, and in order to experience pleasure, it’s more fun to have one’s expectations transcended or defied than it is to have them met. This open-minded approach to judging a contest isn’t so much in service of being “fair” as it is a way to assure that, as a judge, one will be astonished and moved in new ways by what one reads. It’s actually kind of selfish and greedy, and this selfishness and greed are a big part of what motivates one to devour books in the first place.

Of course there are biases at work in any contest. Each judge will bring a particular temperament and complicated range of aesthetics to the reading of manuscripts. It seems to me, though, that this is desirable in a judge; just as we want the writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to create work that reflects his or her cumulative experience and unusual point of view, so too should judges bring to bear a unique sensibility.

If there are a set of judges, haggling often ensues. There are agendas to advance and favorites to play. Still, how wonderful to have one’s work thoughtfully considered by a group of people who take writing seriously enough to argue, to fight for one writer or another.

And then, yes, it’s a spin of the roulette wheel, a roll of the dice (insert your own gambling analogy here). That the element of chance plays so strong a part in who wins literary awards/contests should be a small consolation to nonrecipients and a bit of a warning to recipients not to rest on his or her laurels.

There’s no good reason that I can think of not to enter contests and apply for grants if one wishes—as poet W. S. Merwin put it, “The same fat chances roll their many eyes.” Fingers crossed!

Bernard Cooper has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, and literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment of the Arts. He has written five books. The most recent were: The Bill From My Father, memoir; Guess Again, short stories; Truth Serum, memoir. The first chapter of a new book appears in The Best American Essays 2008, edited by Adam Gopnik.

John Reimringer weighs in, too.

Do you get into a certain mind-set as a judge?

Readers at journals and presses will tell you that plowing through the slush pile quickly blunts your sensibilities so that it’s hard to make qualitative judgments. It’s much the same with judging contests. I was on the selection committee for a grant that had 150 entries. When you’re reading in that volume, there’s no way to guarantee you’re not going to miss something good.

How do you choose winners? What is your system?

Any writing, whether it’s a student paper or a grant submission, gives away a lot in the first paragraph or page. I tell my college students that I could assign a grade after reading their first paragraphs and, 90 percent of the time, I wouldn’t have to change it when I finished the paper. It’s the same with judging contests. After the first page or so, you may not know what’s going to sustain the spell and be a successful work of art, but you’ve got a pretty good idea what isn’t going to. Of course, you read further to confirm that first impression, but first impressions are very telling to an experienced reader. Once you’ve got the stack down to a reasonable size, you look more closely at the stronger entries, and all kinds of factors come into play.

What influences your decisions?

Anyone entering a contest should keep in mind that there’s a real element of chance involved.

Where a submission falls in a stack of manuscripts makes a huge difference, but not in predictable ways. Take a story at the top of the stack: it might get more leeway because you’re looking for candidates for a second round of reading—or less, because you’re trying to cut a big stack down to size. Same with a story at the bottom: if you’ve got a strong second round already selected, it’s going to be tough to crack that pool. But if you haven’t seen many quality manuscripts . . .     

Your reaction to a new manuscript can be influenced by the one you’ve just read: the new one is good or bad in comparison. Or by subject matter: I once got a very nice rejection from the Sewanee Review because, as the editor said, “We’ve just published too many stories about infidelity lately.”        

And most contests and grants are judged by committee. So one judge loves Writer A and hates Writer B, and another judge feels just the opposite, and they compromise on Writer C, who gets the money or the publication without being anyone’s first choice.           

Which is to say, keep submitting. Someday your manuscript will land in the right place with the right committee. One person with a lot of judging experience says that Minnesotans are too easily discouraged: reject them once and they don’t apply again.

As teachers, you’ve all had the “OMG, this is great/has potential” moment when you’re reading a student’s work. What do you say/not say to that person?

I try to keep quiet about it. I compliment them on concrete things they’ve done right, critique what they haven’t. But I don’t say anything like, “You’ve got the potential to be a great writer.” I did that once as a graduate student, and I think it was a big mistake. Young writers are delicate things, and too much praise can be as damaging as too much criticism. Besides, it’s so hard to tell who has the intangibles it takes to keep writing in the face of the inevitable rejections a writer faces. They’ve got to find that in themselves.

What do you wish someone had said/not said to you in your early writing days?

Write two hours a day, every day. Network with writers at your own level; you’ll remain friends and help each other as you grow. And if you’re asked to judge a contest or serve on a selection committee, do it. Judging is a lot of work, but it’s invaluable to see the process from the other side.

Why keep applying? Is math, strategy involved?

Yes. See above.

Are some people more likely than others to want their work judged? How do you get to that point? Is it a personality trait?

It seems to be a personality trait. You need a strong enough ego to be able to learn from criticism and rejection without being crushed by them. Writers who are overly defensive about their writing don’t tend to make it. On the other hand, neither do writers who take every criticism absolutely to heart, or who try to change their work to make every possible critic happy.

John Reimringer‘s first novel, Vestments, named one of the “Best Books of 2010″ by Publishers Weekly and winner of the 2011 Minnesota Book Award for Novel and Short Story, was a Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week/Starred Review, and the Milkweed Editions 2010 Editor’s Circle Selection. Also an Indie Next and Midwest Connections pick, Vestments was featured on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning.