April Writer's Buzz Podcast

Writer's Buzz: Break Into Print

Saturday, April 24, 10:00 AM to Noon
Tattered Cover LoDo, 1628 16th Street, Denver

We know: sometimes it feels like you need to be magical, lucky, or loaded with Benjamins to get published anywhere. Or have access to some secret network of friends and colleagues who'll teach you the secret handshake. But many poets and writers first see print between the covers of literary magazines, and Lighthouse invites you to meet the esteemed editors of five of the best around: Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, upstreet, Shadowbox, and Wazee. Each editor will recall the story of a specific unsolicited submission that made it into their pages, from the letter (or email) crossing the transom, to the published piece launching back out in the world. Come with questions and leave with new ways of looking at the process of getting into print.

The Panelists and Their Publications:

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher's literary nonfiction has appeared in numerous journals including New Letters, Cimarron Review, New Ohio Review, Water~Stone Review, Puerto del Sol, and Palabra. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and essay finalist for the National Magazine Award, his recent honors include a New Letters best essay award and a Pushcart Prize special citation. He is co-editor of Shadowbox literary journal and creative nonfiction editor at upstreet. He received his MFA from Vermont College and teaches literary nonfiction at Lighthouse, Regis University, and the University of Denver's University College.

Shadowbox lives online and you can read more about it here.

upstreet, based in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, is an award-winning annual literary anthology containing the best new fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction available. Independently owned and published and nationally distributed, upstreet was founded in 2005 by Vivian Dorsel, formerly Managing Editor of The Berkshire Review, who selected the members of the editorial staff for their love of the written word, their high standards of literary judgment, and their desire to offer a voice to prose writers and poets who might not find publication opportunities in more mainstream journals. upstreet number four was awarded the Bronze Medal in the Anthologies category of the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

Stephanie G'Schwind is Director of the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, and editor of Colorado Review and the Colorado Prize for Poetry Series. She also directs an internship that trains graduate-student interns in basic publishing skills. Previously, G'Schwind worked as a copyeditor at Group Publishing and production coordinator and freelance copyeditor at Indiana University Press. She holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Communication Development from Colorado State University.

Launched in 1956, Colorado Review is a national journal of contemporary fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction. Published three times a year, Colorado Review has a circulation of approximately 1,000, is carried by university and public libraries across the country, and is distributed to chain and independent bookstores and newsstands nationally. The journal receives over 9,000 manuscript submissions each year. Work published in CR is regularly recognized for its excellence by the Pushcart Prize and the Best American Poetry, New Voices, Nonrequired Reading, Short Fiction, and Essays series. CR was recently awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to provide gift subscriptions to Colorado’s rural public libraries. The journal’s editor-in-chief is Stephanie G’Schwind; the poetry editors are Donald Revell, Matthew Cooperman, and Sasha Steensen; the book review editor is Dan Beachy-Quick; and graduate students from CSU’s English Department serve as editorial assistants and associate editors.

Roger Wehling is poetry editor of Wazee, an online art and literary journal. A veteran of numerous workshops at Lighthouse and the Iowa Summer Writer's Festival, he recently completed his first book of poems, Things To Do On Earth. His poems have been published in Copper Nickel and Trail and Timberline.

Jake Adam York’s books of poems include Murder Ballads, winner of the Elixir Press Prize in Poetry, A Murmuration of Starlings, winner of the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry, and Persons Unknown (forthcoming from SIU Press in October 2010). He is also the author of a work of literary history, The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Third Coast, Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Northwest Review, and DIAGRAM. He is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado Denver, where he collaborates with colleagues and students to produce the journal Cooper Nickel. He also serves as a contributing editor for Shenandoah.

Copper Nickel is a semi-annual literary journal published by the students and faculty at the University of Colorado Denver. Founded in 2003 on the basis that the best student work is worthy of publication in the best journals, students set out to produce one of those "best" journals, publishing students alongside professional authors. Submission is open but selection is competitive, publishing only about 2% of submissions each year. Work considered includes stories, poems, essays, photographs, art, lists, letters, and recipes. Copper Nickel is recognized as a national literary journal, but unlike other national journals the staff is 96% undergraduate students.