We are very, very proud…

...of upstreet’s Fiction Editor, Robin Oliveira, who has just won the 15th annual James Jones First Novel Fellowship. This $10,000 Fellowship, awarded to an American author of a first novel-in-progress by the James Jones Literary Society and Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA, is intended to honor the spirit of unblinking honesty, determination, and insight into modern culture exemplified by the late James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, Some Came Running, and other prose narratives.

Robin Oliveira was born in Albany, NY, in 1954. She earned a BA in Russian from the University of Montana and continued to study at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow, USSR. She became a Registered Nurse, and then worked as a bone marrow transplant and cardiac care nurse in Seattle before earning an MFA in writing from Vermont College in 2006. Besides being Fiction Editor for upstreet, she is an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. She lives in Seattle with her husband, Andrew Oliveira, their daughter, Noelle, and their son, Miles.

Robin’s novel-in-progress, The Last Beautiful Day, follows the story of Mary Sutter, a midwife at the time of the Civil War, whose desire to become a physician is hindered by tradition, the war, and family entanglements.

Getting it on more shelves--finally

On September 17 I signed a distribution agreement with Source Interlink Companies, which will expand upstreet's exposure beyond the independent bookstores, to the chains. Up to this point upstreet 3 has been marketed by two small distributors, Ubiquity (a national distributor located in Brooklyn) and Armadillo (which services California bookstores, primarily in the L.A. area), and has also been available online at Amazon.com and through the upstreet website. Additional marketing efforts have consisted of my contacting retail outlets directly, either by driving around Western Massachusetts and hand-delivering books, or by making phone calls to bookstores whose names were given to me by upstreet 3 authors. A labor-intensive operation, for sure.

I have been assigned a Circulation Manager, who will oversee the formal solicitation of the upstreet title to Borders/Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, B&N College Stores, Hastings, and Disticor (a Canadian distributor which services Chapters/Indigo, the largest Canadian chain, along with literary bookstores throughout Canada). That means that Source has sent a sample copy, along with relevant marketing information, to the people in charge of ordering for each of those corporations. My role at this point is to sit here in Richmond, MA, and wait to hear how many copies of upstreet 3 have been ordered. I should have this number by around November 1.

Nothing would please me more than to receive so many orders that I'll have to go back on the press. upstreet Fan Club members are encouraged to make burnt offerings to the deity of their choice.

The short story: an endangered species

Once upon a time, there were many popular, commercial magazines that published short fiction. You could buy them in bookstores, newsstands, drugstores, supermarkets, and variety stores. Today, there are very few of those periodicals, so publication of the short story has largely been left to literary journals. This has caused the literary journal One Story to begin a campaign, Save the Short Story, which was inaugurated at the Brooklyn Book Fair last week. upstreet supports this campaign, the details of which you can find on the Save the Short Story website. We especially like their Annotated History of the short story, and the section on How You Can Help. Here's my own How You Can Help list:

Read more short stories. I do. All the time. I even publish some of them. :)

Buy short story collections. I just bought several, including No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July; I Like It Better Now, by James B. Hall; and The Long and Short of It, by Pamela Painter.

Recommend short stories to others. I'll recommend two old favorites right now, by Frank O'Connor, who was my favorite short story writer until I discovered Alice Munro: "My Oedipus Complex," and "Guests of the Nation" (just to show that I still hold a very warm place in my heart for Frank).

Support literary journals that publish short fiction. If you're a member of The upstreet Fan Club, you probably already do this. Encourage your friends to do the same. upstreet thanks you.

Eyes on the prizes, part two

The Pushcart Prize is one of the most sought-after honors in the literary magazine world. Each publication may submit up to six entries from its pages in a given year, in "any combination of poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot." The winners, chosen by the Pushcart Press editors, are published in the annual anthology that represents "the best of the small presses." upstreet has made six nominations from its third issue, and they are being sent in today. Here they are--

Fiction (chosen by Robin Oliveira, Fiction Editor):
Nannette Crane, "Sunday Best" (p. 25)
Joyce A. Griffin, "Michael Ryan" (p. 199)

Creative Nonfiction (chosen by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Creative Nonfiction Editor):
Kelly Ruth Anderson, "This Good Year" (p. 187)
Frank Tempone, "Born Again" (p. 11)

Poetry (chosen by Jessica Greenbaum, Poetry Editor):
Stephen Ackerman, "Magic Lantern" (p. 214)
Aaron M. Beatty, "The Flood" (p. 197)

We congratulate our nominees, and wish them the very best of luck in the competition.

Eyes on the prizes, part one

One of the more pleasant duties of a literary magazine editor is choosing which of the works in a given issue to nominate for the many prize anthologies that are published each year. upstreet submits to several of these anthologies. Some of the better known ones--Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, O. Henry Prize Stories--don't take nominations of individual pieces, but invite literary magazines to send in the entire issue, and choose that way. The same is true of Best American Nonrequired Reading, which is edited by Dave Eggers, who asks the kids at 826 Valencia, his San Francisco writing center, to help him make the selections each year.

One anthology, Best New Poets, allows eligible literary magazines to nominate two emerging poets (poets who have not published a book-length collection) each year. We submitted two nominations from upstreet number two (Stephen Ackerman and Judy Katz) for the 2007 book, but they didn't make the list, which was announced two weeks ago. Nominations for the 2008 anthology can be submitted between January 15 and April 15 of next year.

Two prize anthologies ask literary magazines to send in nominations for individual pieces that have appeared in their pages. The journal Creative Nonfiction is currently taking submissions for the second volume of its anthology, The Best Creative Nonfiction, and upstreet number three is eligible to submit. CNF Editor Harrison Candelaria Fletcher and I have chosen two personal narratives: "Born Again," by Frank Tempone, and "This Good Year," by Kelly Ruth Anderson, which were mailed in today.

The other upstreet number three editors and I are currently working on our selections for The Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses 2008. We're going to nominate two poems, two creative nonfiction pieces, and two short stories. Come here at the end of next week to find out which ones.

We are not your writing teachers

At upstreet, we get many different kinds of letters from writers. Some of them want us to double as their writing instructor. Here’s an exchange that followed a letter we wrote telling an author we wouldn’t be using her short story. Sally is not her real name.

Dear Vivian and/or editors,
Would you be so kind as to tell me how come. It would be very important for me to know what you didn't like about my short story. Please get back to me asap. In great appreciation of your trouble and time. Kind regards, Sally

Dear Sally,
It really isn’t possible for us to give a critique of every piece that is submitted to upstreet. We receive a great many submissions, and inclusion in the journal becomes more competitive each year. The Fiction Editor has read 97 short stories thus far, and turned down 92 of them. Five have been shortlisted, but it may be that none of them will ultimately make it into upstreet number four, since we will probably receive more than two hundred more stories to consider.
Best of luck with your writing,
Vivian

Dear Vivian,
Thank you so much for getting back to me. But you don't give any personal critique whatsoever? After all you invest all the time into reading it? But maybe that is too much trouble. Kind regards, Sally

I don’t know of any literary journal that gives personal critiques, Sally. This is the sort of thing that writers pay an editor or ms consultant to do, or that one gets from a professional workshop at a writers’ conference, for example. At upstreet, we have a Fiction Editor, and she has no assistant or additional readers (and she reads for another literary journal as well). Reading to decide whether or not we’ll take a submission is a very different kind of reading from the kind that would be done by someone doing a critical evaluation. The stories that end up on the shortlist will be read two or three times before a final decision is made.
Best wishes,
V.

R.I.P.: Bernhard DeBoer, Inc.

Every year, the distributor Bernhard DeBoer, Inc., sends out a notice to its clients, telling them which dates in August they will be closed for vacation. Yesterday, they sent out the following announcement:

August 20, 2007

Dear Gentlepeople:

With deep regrets, I am sorry to inform you that the changing economic climate in our industry has forced us to close our doors after 60 years. We appreciate your support and loyalty over the years and wish you luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Faye Kosmidis
Owner, Bernhard DeBoer, Inc.

upstreet was not one of the publications that received this notice, since our relationship with DeBoer had been terminated more than two months before. In her last e-mail to me (June 28), Faye said: “Just read your blogspot on Deboer. I guess we really did overstay.” About a week later, she sent me a check for what she owed me for distributing upstreet number one. I will obviously never get paid for number two. She had requested 150 copies of number three, and I'm very glad I didn't accept her offer to distribute that issue.

For its first thirty years of operation, the company was run by its founder, Bernhard DeBoer, and I have heard many good things about him. Based on what I know, the company's problems began more recently. I don't know who will become the premier distributor of literary journals to independent booksellers, but I'm hoping that Ubiquity will make an offer to purchase DeBoer's bookstore list.

If Faye had dealt with me honestly, I'd feel sorry for her; but she didn't, and I don't.