The Creation of A Stone Boat: An Interview with Signe Jorgenson, Part 1
Literary journals are a tradition that goes back over a century, of artists and authors (and those that fancy themselves both) coming together to create a journal with aspirations and projects unique to them and their desires. They desire to seek new creative talent, to bring an incomparable experience to the reader, and to provoke questions such as ‘What is art?’.
They are also, almost exclusively, in the red—or barely out of it. Many literary journals exist only as a single or as two issues, because of how difficult it can be to create them and continue to fund them. Stoneboat, has so far defied those odds. Though it has only existed for six years, publishing biannual issues, it has achieved an impressive qualification: it has somehow remained in the black. Between jumping into freezing water, making their workflow more efficient, and the stubborn work of making T-shirts, the professionals behind Stoneboat have kept the tradition of literary journals alive.
I spoke in email correspondence with Signe Jorgenson—Stoneboat’s co-editor-in-chief—about her experience with literary journals, the creation of Stoneboat, and just how one manages to sustain such an endeavor.
What were some of your first experiences with literary journals?
I first learned about literary journals when I was a freshman in college at UW-Eau Claire. I was enrolled in an introductory creative writing course and the instructor brought in copies of NOTA, the campus literary magazine. It was student-run and published only UWEC student work, but it was my first limited exposure to literary journals; it was the first time that I was made aware that publications existed solely for the purpose of bringing creative writing into the world. By the end of my college years, I became much more familiar with literary journals; I was a creative writing major, so I’d read pieces from literary journals in some of my classes, and I’d also begun submitting my work to journals.
I really became familiar with them in graduate school, however. I earned my MFA at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and one of the professors in my program is the founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review, one of the nation’s top literary magazines. Although I didn’t work for AQR, my roommate did. I learned a lot about the inner workings of a literary journal, from the submission process all the way through copyediting and publication, from hearing about her role with the magazine. Ron Spatz, the editor, also allowed MFA students access to AQR’s massive archives of lit mags from around the country. (This may have been temporary access granted for a class project; I can’t remember for sure). I spent some time looking through the journals to find the ones where I thought I might have a realistic shot of publishing my work, and that’s when I really became acquainted with the volume and variety of American literary journals.
What was the decision making process behind beginning Stoneboat? What things did you decide to have in place before launching Stoneboat?
Although I’m in a leadership role now, I wasn’t during the first few years of Stoneboat’s existence. I was a professor at a small liberal arts college when Stoneboat was founded. Some of the writing students wanted to revive the defunct campus literary magazine, and they needed an advisor in order to do so. Because I was the “new” professor, I was the one who got handed this task. I agreed, more to appease the tenure gods than because I really wanted to get involved and start a literary journal.
Within months, however, the students quickly realized that they weren’t interested in jumping through all of the institutional hoops associated with forming a student group. They also realized that they’d no longer be able to be involved after graduation if the scope was limited to a campus publication. They decided to create a “real” journal instead. At that point, I’d already agreed to be involved so I didn’t feel right about backing out (and again, didn’t want to upset the tenure gods by bailing on some highly regarded students).
I was secretly terrified because I had no idea how we’d fund things (luckily, we received an anonymous donation to print our first issue), and I was also unsure of what operating a literary journal entailed. I took on a support role at first and let the students figure it out, and I became increasingly involved over time. We also had a lot of help and support from Karl Elder, the Editor in Chief at Seems magazine (also Wisconsin-based!). I truly believe that without Karl’s guidance and his willingness to share his knowledge and contacts, Stoneboat wouldn’t have lasted beyond the first few issues.
In 2013, Rob Pockat—Stoneboat’s founder and Editor-in-Chief—had to scale back his involvement for a variety of reasons. I’d been unofficially running things by that point as he attended to some personal and health issues, so the editorial team agreed that he and I should share the EIC role. Rob wanted to completely pass the torch, but I didn’t feel right about that. Anyway, that’s the story of how Stoneboat ended up in the unusual position of having Co-Editors in Chief. He handles more of the visionary big-picture stuff, and I focus on the day-to-day execution.
As far as what we had in place before launching Stoneboat…nothing. Not even a single dollar of funding. (The students had planned to get this through the college’s student activities board.) If we’d known the resources we’d need, the networks and connections we ought to have in place, the infrastructure we should have created, and so on, Stoneboat never would have gotten off the ground.
What are some aspects of the process behind creating a literary journal? Can it be difficult at times trying to put everything together, and are there any interesting experiences you’d like to share about this process?
We’ve been publishing Stoneboat since 2010, and over time we’ve streamlined our process and solidified each editor’s role so that it goes relatively smoothly. We have learned how long each step in the process takes, and we’ve discovered some tools to make things more efficient.
For instance, when we first began, we received the bulk of our submissions through email. We used an Excel spreadsheet to track submission and we manually emailed each submitter. It was a nightmare, and prone to error because it wasn’t always clear who was responsible for tracking what and sending response emails. Additionally, each editor read every single submission, and we’d get together to have a conversation to discuss which pieces to accept and which to reject. Our submission pool was small enough at that time that we could handle that, but as the magazine grew, we had to rethink that.
After a few years, we began to use an electronic submission manager, Submittable, that tracks submissions, sends automatic responses to submitters to indicate receipt of the work, automatically assigns work to individual editors to read, and so on. We have also stopped making communal decisions about what to publish. Our poetry editor selects all of the poetry, and our three prose editors all have the autonomy to accept any piece that seems like a good fit for the journal. We often confer with one another and ask our fellow editors to read the pieces we’d like to accept, but we don’t require it. There’s no way on earth we’d be able to manage our reading load if each editor was still reading every single submission; having the autonomy to reject work without running it past the other editors is absolutely critical now. Even with each editor only reading 25% of the submitted work, we’re reading more now than we did back in the days when each editor read every single submission.
Tools like Submittable have made it possible to continue without expanding our staff, but they’ve also changed the way we do things. Since we don’t have to meet anymore, we rarely do. Now, our “meetings” are done almost exclusively through email. It’s a lot more efficient, and it eliminates the frustration of coordinating schedules, but there was something to be said for getting the entire team together in a room to talk about literature. That doesn’t happen anymore, because it simply can’t, but it’s a loss.
(Due to the length of the interview, it will be put into two separate updates for the purposes of a better reading experience on Tumblr)
Stoneboat Co-Editor in Chief Signe Jorgenson was recently interviewed by the UW Little Magazines Collection. Read part one of the interview to learn how things have evolved at SB over the past seven years.