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The CLMP Newswire
A Biweekly Email News Dispatch on Independent Literary Publishing
A Project of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (http://www.clmp.org)

Table of Contents for September 1/15, 2002 (Volume 2, Number 16/17)

• One Year Later: Publishers Respond to Sept. 11th Aftermath
• Events

ONE YEAR LATER: PUBLISHERS RESPOND TO SEPT. 11TH AFTERMATH

It's been almost a year since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This special double issue explores the impact of 9/11 on the small press and literary magazine world as seen through the eyes of editors and publishers forced to muddle through its physical, psychological, and economic aftermath. As you will see, each of the editors interviewed responded to the event in his or her own way, but they all shared one thing in common: the need to respond no matter what.

Here, then, in their own words, are the ways in which CLMP member publishers coped with the tragedy.

Martha Rhodes, Director and Founder, Four Way Books (http://www.fourwaybooks.com)

"I saw everything," Rhodes says of the attacks on the World Trade Center last September. "I saw people explode right in front of me." The Four Way Books office was six blocks away, and afterwards Rhodes and her staff were forced to evacuate. Initially, she didn't know how to go on publishing. It seemed impossible to respond to mail and a looming deadline in the face of so much tragedy. She also worried about finances. Most of the press's support came from private donors, and though they had pledged their support prior to 9/11, the stock market's plummet and the subsequent downturn in the economy raised concerns about their actual ability to do so.

A year later, many of Rhodes' fears did not come true, but some did. Two donors, long time friends and supporters of the press, have been unable to contribute. "These were two steadfast, loyal, loving friends of the press who just couldn't come through with significant donations," says Rhodes. "It was absolutely tied into the fragility of the economy that started with 9/11." But the loss of this money was mitigated by a surprise $25,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation. "The money was helpful financially, but it was really helpful emotionally," says Rhodes. Not only did the press meet its fall deadline last year and publish two books, but Four Way Books ended up publishing more books between the fall of last year and the spring of this year than ever before. "I owe so much to my staff. We were able to pull through because they didn't skip a beat even though I did. I was working at 1/4 capability," says Rhodes.

Psychologically for Rhodes, one of the most difficult obstacles was the noise. After moving back to the press's office, Rhodes was inundated with the sound of the barges removing debris from the collapse of the Twin Towers. "You would see and hear the trucks 24 hours a day. It was so hard and in many ways, I remained stunned for a long time," says Rhodes. She also believes that her editor's eye has changed since 9/11. Though she had already begun looking for what she calls, "leaner and meaner" writing, Rhodes now admits to being a less tolerant reader in general. "I've begun looking for the work within the work, the line within the line, the stanza within the stanza," she says. She also has some questions about her role as small press publisher. "My temperament is to be more inclusive, but it may be that I find less and less books to publish and start to nurture writers in other ways like through residencies and reading series," says Rhodes.

Danny Shot, Founder and Editor, Long Shot magazine (http://www.longshot.org)

"I watched the World Trade Center come down with my kids," says Danny Shot, who founded the Hoboken, NJ-based journal in 1982. This was enough for Shot to realize one thing about proceeding with the 20th anniversary addition of the magazine: he had absolutely no idea how to proceed. "How do you go on doing what you do and deal with what happened on 9/11?" he says.

His solution was to include a section on 9/11 in the upcoming 20th anniversary issue, which hit the stands last May. At issue for Shot was how to keep the section tasteful. "I couldn't ignore [Sept. 11th]," he says. "But to do something and do it badly would be worse than ignoring it." He also didn't want to appear to be capitalizing on the tragedy of others, so he chose carefully. The section, titled "On 9/11," featured photos, graphics, poetry, and prose by writers who had in some way witnessed the event themselves. For instance, a poem by Tom Obrzut traces his experience on the day the towers fell and what it was like walking through the twisted metal of the World Trade Center.

Shot published "On 9/11" knowing it couldn't be all things to all people. "Ultimately I found that it was impossible to succeed with this section because so many people have so many emotions about 9/11," he says. "No matter how noble my intentions, some people will be offended. It's just the nature of how horrific this event was."

Brett Van Ernst, Publisher & Editor, Midnight Mind (http://www.midnightmind.com)

For Brett Van Ernst, who founded and edits Midnight Mind, the magazine was the last thing on his mind when the planes hit the World Trade Center. "We are only 15 blocks away from the site, and nobody wanted to work for obvious reasons," says Van Ernst. "It was too emotional, too close for any of us to comprehend." For that reason, Van Ernst suspended everything at the magazine until he and his staff could pull themselves together.

When they came back to work, the first order of business was to let readers know that the announcement of the contest winners would be pushed off until Midnight Mind could get up and running again. And, since Van Ernst was being inundated with letters from friends and readers alike, he made it a priority to put information up on the website about the magazine and well-being of the staff. Van Ernst also had to deal with the deluge of submissions about the event. What he found coming in upset him. "I was sort of put off because I was in New York and some guy in Whitefish, Montana was writing about it," he says. On a broader level, Van Ernst says, "I was having trouble comprehending the situation and I felt that very little of the writing really explained anything other than the same incomprehension."

Van Ernst realized that in order to stay true to the vision of Midnight Mind he would have to carefully select the work that was coming in. "We immediately started putting work up on the site--some reaction poetry by David Ray and a stuck-in-the-city piece by Linda Fasano. But we were very careful not to pander to the event." Van Ernst included a story by Ben Tanzer called "Going Home," about a character trying to get from Boston to Chicago after the attacks, in the magazine's spring issue. However, the piece was initially posted on the website, and Van Ernst toned down the 9/11 references for print. "First of all the issue had to do with being on the road in America, not 9/11," says Van Ernst. "But also, we wanted to make sure that if you went back to the story six months later it would still be important. The piece is really about movement, not about firefighters trying to get out of the World Trade Center."

Van Ernst is reluctant to do anything to commemorate the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. "A lot of people in the publishing business used 9/11 in the wrong way, he says. "I would see people dedicating their work to the New York firefighters after 9/11, but why not before 9/11?" This self-described cynicism aside, Van Ernst does believe that the events of 9/11 broadened the scope of the journal. There was no financial impact on the production or distribution of Midnight Mind after the stock market tumbled. Instead, Van Ernst says he feels publication is freer now. "We have all this white paper, and we can do anything we want," he says. "I can't say for sure if this idea comes out of 9/11, but at the same time you can't separate it from 9/11."

Richard Nash, Publisher, Soft Skull Press (http://www.softskull.com)

Richard Nash, Publisher of Soft Skull Press, wondered whether to respond to the events of 9/11 or not. "As a small publisher we have very limited resources," he says. "So what's the best thing to do?" For the Brooklyn-based press, which Nash describes as a politically radical, the obvious choice was to publish something that a mainstream publisher would not. "Our mission is to change American culture one reader at a time," says Nash. "And, less messianically, to try and publish poetry, fiction and nonfiction that the mainstream press doesn't want to publish or doesn't know how to publish."

Nash was reluctant to do anything beyond that. "I didn't feel a need to respond from a financial standpoint like the commercial publishers were doing," says Nash. "The stuff that came out of 9/11 was about money. From what I saw in the mainstream journals, there was a feeding frenzy." Part of the problem was that many of the submissions Nash was receiving were from what he called "crackpots." "There were so many crank submissions--like books arguing that the entire thing was planned by the CIA," says Nash.

Then Nash met David Rees. After 9/11 Rees posted eight comic strips on his website about the war on terrorism. "Get Your War On" as Rees called the strips, elicited a massive response, garnering over eight million visits to the sight. "David keyed into the kind of confused emotions that people had and continue to have," says Nash. "The book taps into the mixture of rage we have over what was done and at the same time how 9/11 has been manipulated to allow all kinds of outrages by the government."

Other than Rees' book, Nash believes there will be no other publication from Soft Skull press in the near future that directly addresses 9/11. Like so many of his fellow publishers and editors, Nash is loath to answer to the event without carefully selecting the editorial content of his publications. He says he won't do anything that profits from the misery of others. "So many publishers did the easy thing by responding to the hype and notoriety of the event," says Nash. "We were looking for other ways to express the emotions that are arguably harder to market."

As for the financial fallout, Nash says that the press is actually doing better than ever. This year Soft Skull published 20 books, double that from the previous year. He says the press is in the process of doubling again and projects up to 25 books for 2003. But the press's commercial endeavors--namely its bookstore--did not fare as well. "Our bookstore lost about three weeks of sales right after the attacks because we were low enough [in Manhattan] that nobody was supposed to be there," says Nash.

Polly Swafford, Editor, Potpourri, A Magazine of the Literary Arts ( http://www.potpourri.org)

The events of 9/11 have had various effects on that Kansas-based Potpourri, according to Editor Polly Swafford. For one, the submissions have changed. "We have always had an international presence, but I was surprised by the pick-up of submissions from the Middle East," says Swafford. Also, the magazine has not shied away from publishing material related to the attacks. "It was such a mind-boggling event. And we had a lot of submissions about it that were very good," she says. In the first issue to follow 9/11, the magazine featured a poem called "Apocalypse" by Terry Hoyland, the publication's Poetry Editor. And in subsequent issues, Swafford continued to publish poetry that dealt with the event, as well as a firsthand account from a writer whose plane was detained in Iceland on the day of the terrorist attacks.

The most significant change for the magazine since 9/11 is the number of corporate funders who have scaled back their contributions. "We have really experienced a fallout of the general recession. Corporate funding has declined sharply," says Swafford. "It's definitely been a domino effect since 9/11." This cutback comes at a time when state support for the arts in Kansas has been cut by fifteen percent to make up for a shortfall in tax revenue. As a result, Swafford has had to think up ways to increase the budget using the few resources available to her. She decided to try a direct mail campaign not long after 9/11--which had an astonishing 4.7 percent response rate. "I'm told that's a very good return, but it just shows you that there's a long list of people who have faith in our publication," says Swafford.

And though the year has been a difficult one for the magazine from a financial perspective, Swafford says that from an editorial standpoint the publication continues to thrive. In the past year, Potpourri received two Kansas City area awards, The Writers Place Award and the Thorpe Menn Special Recognition Award. "In many ways we haven't changed at all philosophically," says Swafford. "We have always been open to multicultural submissions, and 9/11 simply brought us more of the same kind of literary works."

EVENTS

Fall Reading At Bellevue Hospital to celebrate The Bellevue Literary Review's Fall 2002 issue. Featuring Rick Moody, Michael Collier, Ray Gonzalez, and Robert Oldshue. Date/Time/Place: Sunday, September 29th, 5 p.m. at the Bellevue Hospital Rotunda, First Avenue at 27th Street. Admission is free. Questions? Email The Bellevue Literary Review at info@BLReview.org.