Publishing Creative Nonfiction

"Essays end up in books, but they start their lives in magazines. (It's hard to imagine a book of recent but previously unpublished essays.)....The influential essayist is someone with an acute sense of what has not been (properly) talked about, what should be talked about (but differently). But what makes essays last is less their argument than the display of a complex mind and a distinctive prose voice."
--Susan Sontag,
from her Introduction to The Best American Essays, 1992

Getting published involves more than just writing your best work; it means knowing where that work will get a good reception, and how to revise so that the essay makes it past the malevolent eyes of the first readers. Once you start aiming toward publication, your writing will take on a new level of professionalism. You may find focus where before there was just a blur, or you'll finally figure out the dead prose that's slowing down your first paragraph. Think like an editor, with hundreds of essays crossing your desk every month: what will makes your essay stand out from the crowd? Particularly important will be that first paragraph: if it fails to grab the attention of a reader right away, chances are the essay will be rejected, no matter how wonderfully the prose blossoms in the middle of the piece. Conversely, if the ending lets the reader down, the editor will be tempted to throw the essay on the reject pile without a second glance.

Before submitting essays for publication:

1. Read, read, read! Read magazines that publish creative nonfiction. Browse in the library, bookstores, and newsstands. Send away for sample issues of magazines. Target your work to the markets most likely to publish your particular brand of nonfiction writing. This will save you time and money. Editors hate getting work that comes from writers who obviously have never even cracked the covers of one of their issues.

2. Look through resource books to find out contact information for literary journals. Send away for their writers' guidelines. Directory of Literary Magazines, Writer's Market, and Novel and Short Story Writer's Market all have extensive contact information for literary magazines. Many of these magazines also have web sites for easy access to their writer's guidelines, which include types of work they're reading, reading periods (many of these journals do not read in the summer), whether or not they read simultaneous submissions, payment (if any), etc.

Aim high, but not unrealistically so. It's important to start establishing a publishing history, so don't hesitate to send off to smaller, lesser-known journals.

Look for contest and anthology submission opportunities. Good resources for these are The Writer's Chronicle (published bi-monthly by the Associated Writing Programs) and Poets and Writers (published bi-monthly, available in bookstores.) The website for Poets and Writers is www.pw.org. It has lots of great links to other literary resources as well. The website for the Associated Writing Programs is www.awpwriter.org.

Elements of your submission packet:

Your essay, polished to perfection, with extra care taken on the first and last paragraphs. There should be no typos, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, messy print, or anything else that will undermine the professionalism of your work. Put your name, address, phone number, and email address on the upper left hand corner of the first page. Number the subsequent pages on the upper right hand corner, using your last name as part of the header. Example: "Miller -- 2". Do not staple; use clean paperclips.

Your cover letter. Use standard business format. Keep it short and simple. Do not tell the editor what your essay is about! The essay should stand on its own.

A business size Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope for the magazine's response. If you want your manuscript returned, use a big enough envelope and sufficient postage.

Put all these in a 9x12 manila envelope. Keep a record of your submissions, noting the date, the place sent, the title of the essay, and the result of the submission.

Cover Letter

Example of cover letter:

March 6, 2001

Stephen Corey
The Georgia Review
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602

Dear Stephen Corey:

I've enclosed the personal essay "The Road Home" for your consideration.

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in ........ (and/or) I am currently studying nonfiction writing with........

There is no need to return the manuscript, but I've enclosed a SASE for your reply. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Signature

Print your name, address, phone, email address
(Put this information on the top of your first page as well)

Some Good Markets for Creative Nonfiction

Ascent
Atlantic Monthly
Bellingham Review
Boulevard
Calyx
Crab Creek Review
Creative Nonfiction
Cutbank
Doubletake
Five Fingers Review
Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction
The Georgia Review
The Gettysburg Review
Gulf Coast
Harper's
Hayden's Ferry Review
The Iowa Review
The Kenyon Review
Kinesis
Michigan Quarterly Review
Mid-American Review
The Missouri Review
New Letters
The North American Review
Northern Lights
The Paris Review
Ploughshares
Prairie Schooner
River City
River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative
The Seattle Review
The Seneca Review
Shenandoah
The Sewanee Review
Sing Heavenly Muse!
The Sun
Zzyva

Send away for sample copies of these journals, or look on their web sites for samples of the type of work they publish. Also, be on the lookout for new journals in your own area that may be eager for your work.

The Burgeoning World of Ezines

The world of print literary journals is a fairly small one. A successful literary magazine like the Kenyon Review may have a subscription base of two or three thousand people. Smaller journals carry readerships in the hundreds. By contrast, ezines -- electronic journals published on the World Wide Web -- may average ten thousand "hits," or views, per issue. The difference is largely due to accessibility and reading habits on the Web -- most users "surf," or cast around for things that interest them, and sample many different websites. Ezine editors can hook up their publications with popular search engines (programs like Hotbot or AltaVista, that search out websites in response to user commands) for free, and cast a wide net that way. Finally, the cost of creating an ezine is minimal -- you have to learn the programming, which isn't hard, and find a server that can accommodate your files. Most universities have servers students can request space on; in fact, several of our students at Western Washington University created an exciting ezine, Arbutus, just last year.

The relative ease of creating an ezine means that there are many of them, too many to get a clear number on, and their quality varies. There's also a distinction made between ezines that publish traditional print literature -- posting it as it would appear on the page -- those that publish a mix of traditional print literature and hypertext, and those that publish only hypertext and hypermedia (more truly mixed media works that may not include print).

In the first category would be a wonderful ezine like Brevity, which publishes short, 750 words or less, creative nonfiction. (Brevity is housed on the website of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction, a site worth a look in and of itself: generally Creative Nonfiction has three or four essays posted, plus lots of news and discussion of the genre.) In the third category would be The New River, a gold standard ezine publishing some of the best hypertext and hypermedia around.

To look at some ezines and electronically published work, go to the web site (URLs given at the end of the chapter 12) of the Electronic Literature Organization, a very comprehensive group that exists solely to promote on-line literature. If you click on their "Directory" link you'll find an enormous list of works published on the Web, broken down by genre -- nonfiction, poetry and fiction -- length, and other criteria.

Browse around, and take some time to enjoy the energy and creativity of the on-line literary world. As with hypertext, there are few limits to what a spirited electronic journal can do. One jazzy, longstanding ezine called The Blue Moon Review offers, in addition to top-notch literary writing, other features like Cafe Blue. The Cafe is an on-line writers' community that uses e-mail and other electronic techniques to interact; members even post their photos (optionally) in a "Rogues' Gallery" on their site. Blue Moon also has audio readings by their authors that users can hear by clicking on that option, if their computers support sound. Ezines, like hypertext, form a fresh and interactive environment; when they're well constructed, you feel as if you're truly participating in the literary worlds they hold.

Some places to start:
Blue Moon Review (http://www.thebluemoon.com)
Brevity (http://www.brevity.com)
The New River (http://www.cddc.vt.edu/journals/newriver)
Web Guide (http://www.line-in.com/iu/webguide)
Writer's Net (http://www.writers.net)

Ezine Universe (http://www.ezine-universe.com)