This past semester I was seemingly the luckiest little duck in all of Creative Writing MA world. A part of me kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, even though people keep telling me "good things happen to good people" and that "my time had come." Bologna.
Still, I was able to do a bunch of cool stuff so I figured I would map it out a little here on my personal blog. I had the opportunity to read for 4 different online publications, including both literary magazines produced by my program. I read more fiction this semester than any time in my whole life, to be honest, and I feel completely changed in both good and bad ways. "Personal growth" is what they call it. Starting on almost the first day of the year I began reading/judging for an online publication called
Best of the Net, which is a round-up of the best stuff published through online literary magazines of the previous year. It really puts a spotlight on online publishing which is often not taken as seriously as print.
Shortly after that I read for
The Mississippi Review prize issue which is released twice a year (Summer issue, prize winning work and finalists; Winter issue, solicited work) and gets hundreds of submissions. That one was probably the most grueling, but only because I read 85 stories in a month on top of coursework, but it was cool to get a taste of the editor life, and I quite liked it to be honest.
(I also had photos featured on their site here + here + here.)
Shortly after
that I was asked to guest edit an issue of my friend's and past employer's literary magazine
Stirring (and contribute the cover photo!). I really like
Stirring and was really flattered that they asked me to help out that month even though I am primarily a fiction reader/writer. Reading poetry does make me feel really productive though. While under the influence of poem-brain, I sent a lot of important emails, had an idea for an anthology, and I might have finished all of my homework that night! (Not sure about that last one, but I could have, who knows? The effects of poem-brain are sprawling.)
The last big thing I worked on was a labor of love undertaken by my publishing class. The 8 of us gathered submissions, picked our favorites, voted on cover photos, planned our launch party, and even more knit-picky stuff that isn't worth explaining here. My big project with this issue was designing the website. I enthusiastically volunteered to design every page of the site using Squarespace, because I really wanted the experience. I am crazy proud of what I created. It's pretty simple, but after starting with a blank template and a lot of trial and error, I think I ended up with something comparable to other online magazines that is also easy to navigate. Oh yeah, it's called
Product.
(My photo again!)
OTHER COOL STUFF:
I got the chance to partner with
Zoetic Press on two titles for online only e-books! Probably the coolest thing ever. In the spring when I attended the AWP Conference in Los Angeles, Zoetic was handing out homemade buttons with the book covers on them! It's crazy to have a mini-version of my photo on my backpack. I should have been doing this for years!
As always, thanks for everything, whoever you are.
