Put out by Southern New Hampshire University, this annual literary journal strives to reach the typical, and atypical, readers of lit journals. I read the Spring 2007 issue.

The journal is perfect bound with black and white photos on the cover and interior.  The body text was readable, had a good white space ratio, and I didn’t catch any typos. Visually, this is an appealing journal. My only complaint is the TOC looks cramped. They jammed it onto two pages, which looks odd since the second page of the TOC is facing a blank page.

One story I really enjoyed was “Deception” by Dolorus de Leon. A grandmother bored with Heaven tries to make sense of the one-word counsel given by an angel. This is probably the best written of the issue, and the most original.

Most of the other stories were decent, but one of the authors gave a supporting character the same name as one of the main characters. I beg all writers: please don’t do that unless you have a good reason for it. It’s confusing, even if the minor character is only mentioned a time or two.

Amoskeag also features the winning stories of their contests for high school and university students. The high school story read more like creative non-fiction, but it had nice imagery and tied together well. The stories from the university students were better than some of the others in the issue. It’s always interesting to see the difference between contest winners and other stories published in the same issue.

Overall, about equal space is given to poems and stories, with 8 photographs included. The stories tended to be on the shorter side, with about half of them being flash-fiction, and literary in tone and plot. While the stories were good, “Deception” is the only one I can still remember.

To look at it yourself, contact editor Allison Cummings at Amoskeag, 2500 N. River Road, Manchester NH 03106.

Last week I mentioned starting work on verifications, but didn’t really explain what that was. The backbone of NSSWM is the listings, and a large part of my job is making sure those listings are up to date. Year round I’m looking for and contacting publishers, magazines/journals, contests and conferences we don’t have in our database. (If you want to be listed, our forms can be found here.) 

I started working on the 2009 edition (which comes out in the fall of 2008) over the summer. The articles and interviews were assigned in August/September, and I’ve already gotten a few drafts from some of my freelance writers. Right now I’m working on the debut authors feature (some good books in there) and doing an email interview with sci-fi author Elizabeth Moon. Soon I'll be getting more interviews and articles from my freelance writers, and I'll need to edit those.

The current phase is verifications. Verifications are the emails/letters we send to those listed in NSSWM with their current information to ask if the data is correct. If it is, we get an “All correct” response, and if not, they write back with the changes clearly indicated by using bold, caps, brackets, colored font or a combination thereof. (Well, most people follow the instructions.)

So if a publisher wanted to change how many debut novels they've published recently, they would do so like this: Plans [2-3] first novels this year.

Sometimes people respond with a request for us to remove their listing. The reasons range from the fact they no longer publish fiction to they're going out of business to wanting fewer submissions, or sometimes we’re not told why. Fortunately, I don’t get very many of those.

As I get the responses I enter the changes in the database and mark the listing as verified. Since this is my first time doing verifications, I have had to decide the best way for me to keep track of which verifications I have or have not entered. In a few weeks I will send out a second email to those who haven’t responded yet. In late December I will send letters to those don’t have email (~sigh~ join the 21st century please) and those who aren’t responding to their email.

Every time I send out verifications I get many eddresses bounced back as invalid, so I get to go to the publisher's website and see if I can track down an accurate email address for them. If not, they get snail mail.

The bulk of the verifications will be done by the end of January, but I’ll be doing these follow-ups through March. It’s a long process because so many people don’t bother to respond or they change their contact info and I have to track them down, plus I’m adding new listings the whole time-just not as many as I was over the summer.

That’s a brief peek into some of what goes into getting this book published, and an explanation as to why I might not be blogging every day.

I'm still trying to fit in all of the items I had tagged as interesting, so here's an assortment of interviews.

Junot Díaz, author The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, has an interesting interview regarding his book and the relationship between comics and literary novels. Part 1; Part 2.

Next we have a three part interview with Top Cow President Matt Hawkins. 

You're getting the weekly listings early because I am going out of town and wont be in the office the 25th-29th. I hope something in here suits you. See you next week!

Contests

Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Short Story Competition. They want a positive story about gay/lesbian lifestyle that is based on a historic person or event. The prize is $1,000, the deadline is Nov 30th and there’s no entry fee. 

Sonora Review Short-Short Contest. Judged by David Means (author of The Secret Goldfish and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the O. Henry Award), the prize is $250 and publication, plus 10 finalists will also be considered for publication. Mss must be 1,000 words or less. A $10 entry fee is required. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but fees are non-refundable. Postmark deadline of Dec 1. Current students or instructors in the University of Arizona's MFA program are not eligable. 

W.Y. Boyd Literary Award. Sponsored by the ALA, this contest is to recognize a published YA or adult novel set in a time when the US was at war. There’s no entry fee, the deadline is Dec 1, and books can be submitted by publishers or authors. Oh, and did I mention the prize is $5,000?

Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. Poets & Writers, Inc. sponsors two prizes of $500 each awarded annually to a poet and a fiction writer from a select area (this year-Washington, D.C.). Each winner also receives an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City to give a reading and meet with writers, editors, publishers, and agents. Writers who have published no more than one full-length book in the genre in which they are applying are eligible. Submit five copies of up to 10 pages of poetry or 25 pages of fiction by December 1. There is no entry fee. 

Black Caucus of the ALA Literary Awards. Given to African American writers. First prize is $500. There’s no entry fee, but your publisher has to send 7 copies to the committee by Dec 31st.

Cintas Foundation Fiction Fellowship. A fellowship worth $15,000 will be given to a Cuban writer, or one of Cuban decent. Students are not eligible. There’s no entry fee, and the submission deadline is Jan 14th, 2008.

Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. This is for the best previously unpublished short story or novel excerpt by a student of African descent enrolled full time as undergraduate or graduate student in any college or university in the United States. First prize is $1000, two finalists get $500, and the entry fee is $10. Submissions accepted Nov 1-Jan 15th.

Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award. A national award presented to published writers of African descent by the national community of Black writers. "This award, underwritten by Borders Books & Music, consists of prizes for the highest quality writing in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, Nonfiction, and Contemporary Fiction." Paperback originals and self-published books are eligible. There’s a $25 submission fee, prize is around $3000, and the deadline is Nov 15th 

Southern California Review 1st Annual Fiction Prize. Send one story of up to 8,000 words with a $10 reading fee payable to Southern California Review. Multiple entries are permitted, but a separate check should be included with each entry. All entrants will receive a free copy of Southern California Review. 1st Prize: $1,000; 2nd Prize: $200; 3rd Prize: $100. The winning entry will appear in the spring 2008 issue of Southern California Review. Only the 1st prize entry will be published. Postmark deadline of Dec 31st. 

Conferences

The New York Anime Festival will be held on December 7-9, 2007 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City. Pop culture publishing and consulting company ICv2 has announced its first ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga:  "Inside the Otaku Generation" at New York Anime Festival (NYAF), the new event being launched by the organizers of New York Comic Con. The ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga:  "Inside the Otaku Generation" will be held on Thursday afternoon, December 6, 2007 at the Javits Center, on the eve of NYAF. These are the panelists currently booked for the event.

Whenever I have a magazine or journal fill out the NSSWM questionnaire, I also ask them to send me a sample issue. I’ve been getting a lot of them recently, and I’ve really been enjoying seeing the wide variety of publications out there. For example, last week I received a magazine called Watermen that has a poem about a Halibut.

Since I’m reading these publications, I thought I’d sporadically give you my impressions of them.

First up, Withersin wins points for best presentation. They sent me the second issue of the magazine, submission guidelines and some bookmarks in a folder. Snazzy, without being a bribe. Plus I like their business card.

From a layout perspective they did a good job. The cover is interesting, the text isn’t too small or crowded together, and the white space ratio is appealing. However, I’m not sure how I feel about the lack of page numbers on the title page, and they use an italic font that is a little hard to read. In one of the stories they seemed to use ? instead of – which got confusing, but for a second issue that’s a pretty minor technical glitch.

On to the content!  They have a mix of did-you-know type articles, book reviews, film reviews (old ones), interviews and stories. The magazine starts with an article about cannibalism. I can’t decide if author Ebien Piestar is joking or not. The eclectic bits of true-life weirdness are fun to read, and I have a hard deciding if some of the items are fiction or nonfiction.

Okay, I’m impressed. They wrangled an interview with Neil Gaiman. It’s a flippant interview where the interviewer talks more than Gaiman does, but it’s interesting, as long as you don’t want much in the way of concrete details.

The mix of the journal is mostly the small weird bits with 2-4 short stories thrown in, with illustrations to go along with every story. The stories are of good quality, and don’t tend to excessive blood and guts, but they still gave me the shivers.

Overall, I’d say Withersin lives up to its subtitle: Dark, different; the pleasantly sinister.