Interview with Ben Klinkner, Fiction Editor

Ben is my esteemed fiction co-editor.  I asked Ben some questions that I thought might be useful to writers or anyone that’s curious about Mr. Klinkner.  We found some seats in the grad student lounge (carefully avoiding the one with the suspiciously large seat stains) and commenced with the interrogation.

Tell me one thing you like about being an editor.

I like the moments when I realize three or four pages into a story that it’s actually a good one and I have something that my lovely coworker and I might actually be working on—as opposed to something that’s going into the pile we’re not going to use.  The good stories are definitely more rare than the bad ones. 

When you’re reading, what, if anything, are you looking for?

First and foremost, I’m looking for technical ability because I feel like all too often we see things that reflect unpracticed writing.  Technical ability and coherence and coherent structure are probably things I’m looking for first. 

So you ignore the pretty stamps?

No, pretty stamps are first.  Then all the other stuff.

Where Everyone Knows Your Pen Name

Yesterday, Bob-the-Mailman stopped by, as he usually does on slow afternoons. He took a seat in an empty swivel chair, picked up a spare copy of The Writer's Chronicle from another editor's desk, and promptly asked me how my life was going as a professional poet.

At first, I was a little taken-aback by that title. Professional poet? Is he talking to me?

But I guess when you're paid to read poetry all day, and known to be writing poetry when you're not reading it, that could make you--me--a professional poet.

Granted, I'm still wearing my grad student hat in addition to my duties at The Greensboro Review, but my paycheck is attached to this editorial job. And then it dawned on me: A job for reading poetry!? How lucky!

Moreover, how cool is it that my mailman is interested in my career as a poet, so much so as to casually ask me about it? I don't think my parents even understand what I do. But Bob--well, Bob's keeping me in check.

In an article that appears this week over at the online magazine The Millions, Greensboro Review Editor Jim Clark describes the writing community that has supported and surrounded this literary journal for 40-some-odd years:

There’s people out there who sit on their porches and talk about books, and drink together, and peck away in their rooms.

Indeed, we live in a place where writers are part of the community, and where, as journalist Bill Morris puts it in his article:

There’s a sense here that if your writing is not always avidly read by your neighbors, at least its making is regarded with genuine respect by them.

That's neighbors like Bob, people whom I'm certainly thankful to be around. And what better place to send your poetry for publication than where poets are welcome?

You can read more about Greensboro's literary community in Morris's The Millions article here.

And poets, when you're looking for places to send your work, remember how friendly things are down here. Our next submissions deadline is February 15.

Woo! Yeah! We're "the Best"!

Hearty congrats go out to contributors Travis Klunick and Elizabeth Gonzalez, both of whose work was selected for the The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 anthology, which hits bookstores this week. Klunick's and Gonzalez's fiction pieces first appeared in The Greensboro Review issue No. 85 (Spring 2009). If you a pick up a copy of the anthology, look for these star stories in the Table of Contents:

• "Yeguas y Caballos" by Travis Klunick from The Greensboro Review

• "Half Beat" by Elizabeth Gonzalez from The Greensboro Review

From the Best American Series website: "[This is a]n eclectic volume introduced by David Sedaris and compiled by Dave Eggers and students of his San Francisco writing center, who don't leave a stone unturned in their search for nonrequired gems."

View the full Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 Table of Contents here.

On Short Shorts

Ben (my esteemed co-editor for fiction) and I get a lot of shorter stories.  Anything below 10-12 pages counts as short to us.  Around here, we call them short-shorts or flash fiction.  When I hold those very thin envelopes, I have a moment of both dread and anticipation.  The Greensboro Review does not traditionally publish very short pieces, but it’s a new year with new editors and newness is the name of the game.   The problem with finding the right ones to publish, however, is that there’s only so much room in each issue and we, of course, want the very best selection for readers.  Short-shorts are facing stiff competition from longer stories that have the luxury of time and space to emotionally devastate and delight the reader.   This is not unlike the impact difference between short stories and novels.

Length alone doesn’t accomplish that perfect mix of intrigue, truth, and emotion, but it certainly gives the writer more flexibility.  Our most frequent reaction to the reasonably well-written short-short is, “But I wish there was more.”  More story, more emotion, more meaning, more impact.  More of everything.  A short-short faces the risk of seeming incomplete and anemic—as if it were a rough outline of a longer and better story.  Sometimes we get this sense because the story moves to emotional high points so fast that it reads as overblown.  Other times the story’s dearth of emotion makes it more of an anecdote and leaves little impression.

Short-shorts are not easier versions of short stories (a mistake I used to make when daunted by the empty page).  As John L’Heureux puts it, “The short-short story is an exercise in virtuosity that tightens the circle of mystery surrounding what we know.”  This was on the back cover of Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories.  I love the way he says this though I probably don’t understand it in full.  The first part, the idea of the short-short as a virtuoso’s playground, however, rings absolutely true.  Any misstep in a short-short is amplified just because there’s not much around it.  One false line of dialogue is ignorable in a longer piece, forgettable in a novel, but blaring and horrible in anything very short.  In this way, short-shorts are closer to poetry than not.  Everything counts.  And then, for The Greensboro Review, it has to be just as good as any of the longer short stories.  So standards are high.  They might even be ridiculous.

Now that I’ve terrified or angered anyone who writes very short pieces, some hope:  I’m just one person with my own biases.  It’s possible that I’m flat out wrong.  Here are three examples of shorter pieces I admire:

• “Fallen Nellie” by Brad Watson.  Appears in Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives: Stories.  (Preview in Google Books.)
•  “Day Ah Dallas Mare Toes” by Luna Calderon.  Appears in Sudden Fiction Latino.  (Preview in Google Books.)
•  “Sunday in the Park” by Bel Kaufman.  Appears in Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories.

What short-shorts have you enjoyed recently?

Thanks, Verse Daily!

Verse Daily has selected another gem from The Greensboro Review for its daily dose of good poetry. Check out Stephen Massimilla's "Etymology" from Issue 87 featured there today.

A sampling of other poems from the GR archives that appear on Verse Daily:

• "Earth-Eater! Earth-Eater!" by Byron A. Kanoti
• "Big Moon Over the Neighborhood" by by David Bruzina
• "Notes from a Journey" by David Krump
• "October" by Laura Van Prooyen
• "Spaghetti Western" by Tom Haushalter
• "Monument" by Natasha Trethewey
• "Real Live Boy" by Sarah Lindsay
• "An Artist Like Any Other" by Stephen Dobyns
  

First things first

Before we get into the behind-the-scenes, cutthroat world of The Greensboro Review, we've got something else at the top of our agenda:

YOUR WRITING!

We can't do our best work without your best work. So write it, print it, seal it, slap a stamp on it, and mail it to us by Sept. 15.

We're especially interested in submissions for our annual Robert Watson Contest, which holds a prize of $1,000 for the winners. More details here: http://www.greensbororeview.org/contests/

Only 3 days left, people. Get on it. We've got sharpened letter openers and we know how to use them.