by Katy Jensen

Years from now, we will probably remember February 2011 for the monstrous winter storm that turned Houston into a skating rink and gave Chicago schoolchildren their first “snow day” in 12 years. From New Mexico to Maine, millions of people struggled to maintain their daily schedules, only to realize the situation was beyond their control. Eventually, millions of people decided to put down the snow shovel and curl up on the couch with a blanket and a good book.

A Question-and-Answer Session with Rebecca Frost and Linda Shapiro

Linda and Rebecca are the founders of Dancers Who Write, a reading series showcasing the literary talents of writers who are also movers.

The View: How was the Dancers Who Write series born?

Rebecca Frost: Our project was conceived somewhere alongside the fall soccer games of our de facto godniece in common. Linda and I, who knew each other from myriad connections in the dance world, would show up to watch the games in chilly weather, intermittently, independently. In between cheering for preteens’ near scores, we’d talk, compare notes, stamp our feet. Turned out we were both writing a lot and had no idea the other was as well.

Linda Shapiro: As a published freelance writer on subjects ranging from dance to the research of University of Minnesota faculty, I had been thinking that I needed an outlet for my newly hatched fiction. As a choreographer, I always had plenty of opportunities to present my work in various stages of development. I wanted that for my writing.

I’d also been thinking about other dancers I know who write and have published or performed their text-driven work, and thought there might be more waiting in the wings. So we chatted a bit about the possibility of a modest series somewhere and started doing some investigating. Todd Boss graciously offered us three evenings in his Verse and Converse series at Nina’s Café in Saint Paul (January, March, and May 2010). They were successful enough that we wanted to continue into the summer at the Bryant-Lake Bowl—to see what would happen in a Minneapolis venue, and, as the Nina’s events were free, to see if anyone would actually pay to hear dancers read their stuff.

Writers’ Journeys to Cuba

by Anya Achtenberg

Es la poesía la única patria real del hombre.

(Poetry is the only real country of human beings.) ~Derbys Dominguez, poet, arts instructor, in Matanzas, Cuba

I first traveled to Cuba from Boston when I was a barely published poet, at a time when those who worked against the US blockade of Cuba faced threats and sometimes murderous retaliation. I made a second trip a year later. After our translator Lilia Berta learned that I loved poetry and was trying to write it, she began to call me “Poeta.”

by Emily Brisse

Early on in my life, I knew what I wanted to be: worldly.

experienced; knowing; sophisticated: as in the benefits of her worldly wisdom

I was the child who read Jane Eyre at ten (or tried to, anyway), convinced it would open up some corner of the universe. I was the teenager who read Jane Eyre again (this time actually) while nested between two branches of a tree, feeling that this was what people in love with the world did. At 21—after many more books, many more secret trysts with vocabulary words and foreign-language dictionaries, many more far-off yearnings, after finally a study-abroad term in Paris—I went east, to Maryland, my desire for worldliness a warmed stone in my hand.

by Clem Nagel

aptmetaphor

It was Earth Day 2010 . . . and was I prepared. Typical of me, I brought everything except the office desk lamp. Extra pencils, blank paper (in case someone forgot), name tags, paper clips, Scotch tape, roll of paper towels, Band-Aids, easel pad, masking tape, markers (I used to work for the YMCA), books, and my detailed class outline for each of the coming four weeks. I had been invited to teach a series of poetry classes. I arrived at the residential senior center community room half an hour early to get acclimated.

by Michael Fedo

When was the last time you received a rejection note from an editor? If you’ve been routinely getting editorial turndowns during the past few years, consider yourself lucky—not because you’ve been rejected, but because you were informed of those rejections.

It’s been my recent experience that many editors no longer notify writers that a submission didn’t pass muster, and I’m left wondering whether my manuscripts were lost in transit or, if submitted electronically, went missing in cyberspace.

I’ve made more than 50 submissions in the last three years and have been fortunate enough to place most of my writings eventually. But during this period I assume I’ve often also been rejected, since I’ve never heard about some of those submissions.

To be fair, a number of publications state on their websites that they only respond when interested in a submission. Others add that a piece should be considered rejected if the author hasn’t received a reply within a specified time period—usually two weeks to six or more months. Other editors announce they’ll respond to queries and manuscripts, but many fail to do so.

About ten years ago a friend who had completed a literary biography received a letter of interest from a major university press. The editors stated that the manuscript would be considered only if they were granted exclusive refusal. My friend acquiesced, but the press took more than a year before returning his manuscript, albeit with an apology claiming their outside evaluators had dallied in reviewing the text. Not a legitimate excuse.

Discouraged, the man abandoned the project for several years before finding a receptive editor at another publisher, where the book won an award for biography. The lesson here is not to guarantee an exclusive unless the editor agrees to respond within a specified time that seems fair to the author.

Because many editors either don’t acknowledge or hold manuscripts for months, I almost always make multiple submissions. And yes, on a few occasions I’ve received more than one acceptance. One book received three offers to publish within a week. I chose the best financial arrangement.

A few years back I made multiple submissions of a short story, sending one copy to a long-established literary quarterly. The story also was read by more than a dozen other magazines over the next 14 months before a small journal agreed to publish it. The next day the previously cited quarterly also accepted the story and offered a $250 payment. I obviously chose the $250 offer, but that magazine had held the manuscript for 14 months before making a decision. Since this editor had not responded to an inquiry regarding the status of the story months earlier, I assumed he had passed on it without informing me.

Even editors who have previously published my work sometimes have not gotten back to me when my submissions have been declined. It seems that for every dozen stories or essays I send out, I’ll only see three or four rejections, when in fact, all the pieces have been nixed.

There was one exception of sorts that maybe set a record. Late last year I opened a handwritten note in which the editor apologized for the “inordinate delay” in returning my story. Although this one hadn’t worked out, he hoped I’d send him others in the future. I had forgotten that I’d mailed him the story six years earlier, but it had been published two years after that by a different magazine.

I suppose I should cut him some slack because he at least responded.

So what are we to make of editors who fail to advise of a rejection even with a form notice?

For me the multiple submission is a partial solution, and I’ll make them unless I have a prior publishing relationship with an editor. I’ll do this even when a publication may insist on exclusives, especially if editors also indicate they may hold the manuscript for six or more months.

I allow that editors may be overworked; literary quarterlies or annuals may be operated by one or two persons. But how difficult can it be to slide a rejection slip into a self-addressed stamped envelope, or type “No thanks” and hit return on an e-mailed submission?

Having gotten this off my chest, I recently received a 180-degree turn on the form rejection—a form acceptance. While not a delight per se, it certainly beats its sister notification of “Thanks but no thanks,” and is clearly better than the implied rejection of an article or a story by an editor who doesn’t inform the author at all.

Michael Fedo’s eighth book, A Sawdust Heart: My Vaudeville Life in Medicine and Tent Shows, by Henry Wood as told to Michael Fedo will be published in May, 2111 by the University of Minnesota Press.

by Burt Berlowe

blatantnews

The epiphany came to me 40 years ago amidst the flashing neon, echoing chants, and quiet drizzle of a historic Times Square afternoon. In that powerful moment, as I marched with people from around the country who had come together to walk their antiwar talk, I moved from interested spectator to active participant in the peace movement.

In the days that followed, that transformative moment became story. I put on paper what I had observed, experienced, and felt, and imagined what might be the stories of the others who rode on the bus, camped in the church, and marched through downtown New York in an awesome display of commitment and purpose. Thousands of compelling stories were unfolding that day, and I wished I could somehow know them all and tell them to a larger world. Although I didn’t label it as such at the time, I was yearning to be a story carrier.

by Lindsay Nielsen

Were you dying as I passed the Lake Harriet bench where we always met? As I breathed in the morning air colored by the sunrise, were you exhaling your last? Were you already gone when I woke during the night realizing I needed to drop a note off at your house? Because even though you weren’t feeling well enough to talk, I wanted to let you know one more time how much I admired you, how permanently your quiet presence had become part of my heart. Maybe you’ve gone to a place where you still have some form of consciousness, some kind of ability to watch your children grow and have children of their own. I hope by the end you came to understand how much you affected the world by your very being.

by Emily Brisse

When I was a sophomore in college, I took a course called Ethnic American Literature. Being that I was (1) an English major, (2) from an ethnically homogeneous small town, and (3) desperate for “culture,” I was incredulous when the reading list my professor passed out that first day had no Ralph Ellison, Leslie Marmon Silko, Maxine Hong Kingston, or Toni Morrison, but instead was full of, as he called them, “regional writers,” a mix of poets, novelists, and essayists from my home state that I’d never heard of and was sure had absolutely no relevance to my life. After all, I was going to teach, and how was I supposed to do that if I wasn’t introduced to the writers who’d been anthologized?

I went to another professor and complained (and, Minnesotan that I am, this practically killed me) until she loaded up my arms with every Toni Morrison book she owned. Walking back to my dorm room, clickety-clack, holding these canonical texts close to my chest, I felt fortified. Soothed. I would teach myself, then! And for the rest of the semester I gave those regional authors only bitter, cursory glances. I never took another class with that professor.