Six Questions

My goodness, so much is happening right now. First I'd like to welcome Sonya Dunning to our team. We're very excited to have her as our new Nonfiction Editor. Jory Mickelson has switched his responsibilities from Nonfiction Editor to Poetry Editor, and, sadly, Mishon Wooldridge has resigned to focus on other things. So, a warm welcome to Sonya and a farewell to Mishon.

As for the Six Questions the title of this post refers to: Jim Harrington emailed me a couple of months ago now about participating in his blog. I'm happy to be a part of it. Jim contacts publishers and editors to ask them six questions, and then he posts the answers on his blog. He's gotten a lot of responses. This is great for all you overachievers (if you're reading this blog, then you probably fit this category) who want the inside scoop into what will get you published.

It's great for publishers too, because we get to be very specific about what we want to see. Hopefully it means receiving more submissions that meet our guidelines.

Today happens to be the very day that Jim posted the six questions I answered for him. Check it out here.

Since answering Jim's questions, I received an email from an artist who brought up a concern, and I'd like to address it here. Let's call this the seventh question:

I have a comment to make: Although I am technically a "youth writer", I don't appreciate the fact that writers who are younger have to be separated out in a distinct youth section. I think it's degrading to view us on a separate scale and our work should stand for itself. If it flies, it flies. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

Here's how I responded:

Thank you for voicing your concern. We are constantly trying to find ways to improve, and your thoughts are important to us.

Here's why we separate youth art from everyone else: If we believed that, generally speaking, high school students could write/create art on the same playing field as adults, we would also have to believe that college and MFA programs didn't teach anyone anything. We don't believe that. So it stands to reason that someone who has earned an MFA is going to be better at writing a great, concise story. To say that high school students can write just as well as graduate school professors is degrading to the education system as a whole and everyone involved in it.  This doesn't mean that an individual high school student can't write an outstanding piece; we just have to set up our system for everyone, not individuals.

And there's more: I like to believe that we receive submissions from high school students who haven't even shown their work to their friends and family. That they've done some writing, and they're proud of it, but they don't want to show it to anyone else until they know that it's good. Those people aren't getting advice from their peers as to how they can improve the piece for publication.  So they're at a bit of a disadvantage, because as you probably know, getting input from other artists is a great way (I'd say the best way) to improve your art. Although these kids don't have this advantage, I want to let them know that their work is good. Maybe all they need is to get something published and then they'll know that it's safe to share it with others. We can provide that anonymous feedback. But, without telling us that they're too young to have gone to college and gotten feedback from other college students and professors, we don't know why the story isn't written as well as Sherman Alexie can write. I'd say it's unfair to put that teenager's work up against Sherman Alexie without giving some sort of advantage. 

And more: We just don't get very many high school submissions right now. We're trying to get more, and one way of doing that is by publishing youth art and advertising that it is in fact youth art. Hopefully we'll get more in the future. Right now we get close to 500 submissions in five different categories. Probably ten to twenty of those are youth. What I've discovered in the three years that I've been doing this is that the more submissions we receive, the more good submissions we receive. If we were receiving 250 youth submissions and 250 submissions from everyone else, I have no doubt that we'd accept a youth piece without having to give the advantage of telling us that they're youth.

And finally: the work does still have to be good enough. We don't simply publish a youth piece just because it's written by a high schooler. This issue is testament to that. We're publishing one youth visual arts piece. The poetry and fiction wasn't up to par because it just wasn't written well enough, or it didn't fit the theme as we wanted it to, or, in the case of both of the fiction pieces I had to reject, it was too explicitly sexual. We do tailor our magazine to high school students, among other demographics, so we do have to be mindful of sexuality in stories.

I hope I've assuaged your concerns somewhat. You can see that I've put a lot of thought into this, and your concern has been one of mine as well. I still think that the benefits outweigh the cost. I hope you agree, but if you don't, I'd love to hear more about what you think.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.  All of you.  I'd also love to read your submissions.  The deadline for the Divided themed issue is only two days away!