Benefit from “The Best American Series” even if you didn’t get in (this year!).

I would die happy if ....

First off, you get to read a great deal of high-quality writing.

Secondly, in answer to the always-asked question by students in my Get Published classes, How do I know which magazines to submit to:

If you believe the marketing, which I do, Best American publishes “The Best.” The editors search name publications and highly-regarded literary magazines. The bios of included writers usually show long lists of  publications for which the odds of getting into are longer.

However, each volume in the series includes pages and pages of also-notables in the genre.

Holy gold mine, Batman. Mine those lists for anything new:

1. Writers new to the series (Edwidge Dandicat, Adam Gopnick, et. al.; not so helpful to your purpose);
2. Writers new to also notables,
3. Publications new to the series; and
4. Publications new to also’s.

For Writers New To:

1. Look into the magazine that published the piece that got into Best American.
2. Read the entire issue. As you are reading, be aware of any of your pieces that come to mind. Send it.
3. Read the new writer’s bio, looking for the names of smaller magazines in which the new authors also published.
4. Ditto.

For Magazines New To:

1. Ditto.

Learning from Amy Bloom’s story: the smaller you go, the more likely your acceptance.

Unless your piece appears in a name magazine, where you publish is far less important than it used to be. You can promote any link to your friends, family, and readers. You can drop any link into letters to agents and editors.

As long as the writing is top-notch. If the writing is not the absolute best you can do, the rest is commentary.

Holy Bad Sushi, Batman.

Spams?

Yesterday’s Best American post garnered a record 19 spam. (Spams?)

At least I think they were spam. Seven were in Cyrillic script. It is possible that contemporary Russian writers have a thing for The Best American Series.

Only one offer for sex. I must be getting old.

How to get nominated for “The Best American” Series 2012

Amy Bloom's career launched by "Best American"

Amy Bloom’s career jumpstarted with consecutive publications in The Best American Short Stories. Six years ago, at the Centrum/Port Townsend writers conference, she told a group of us how it happened:

Bloom said she so hated the idea of rejection that she sent her manuscript to the smallest literary  magazine she could find: a women’s collective in Alaska. It became her first-ever fiction publication. They nominated her piece for Best American. 

First publication to Best American rarely happens.. So rarely does it happen that Ms. Bloom said she didn’t like to tell the story as it disheartened many not-yet-published writers – especially when followed up by the fact that her second-ever piece published also got picked for Best American.

While few of us can craft a sentence in the way of Ms. Bloom, we can all get ourselves nominated for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American Series. You can nominate yourself.

Perhaps more advisable, you can get readers and friends to nominate you. The most effective would be to have an editor nominate you. So … ask.

Eggers: Best American Non-Required Reading

The end-matter of most volumes list the submission requirements (PLUG to buy last year’s edition). As e-mail submissions are not allowed, provide your nominators with hard copies of your publication, and pre-addressed and stamped envelopes.

Here are the editors, by book, for the 2012 Best American series:

• The Best American Short Stories: Tom Perrotta (novelist)
• The Best American Essays: David Brooks (New York Times op-ed columnist)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading: Dave Eggers (editor of McSweeney’s); introduction by: Ray Bradbury
• The Best American Travel Writing: William T. Vollmann (author of 17 books)
• The Best American Science and Nature Writing: Dan Ariely (author of The Upside of Irrationality)
• The Best American Mystery Stories: Robert Crais (best-selling mystery novelist)
• The Best American Sports Writing: Michael Wilbon (co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption)

Amazon, Nancy Pearl bringing out-of-print back.

Pearl-based Original Librarian Action Figure by Archie McPhee.

Seattle resident and World’s Most Famous Librarian Nancy Pearl and a small-ish Seattle bookseller are bringing out-of-print back. At least, some out-of-print. Nancy’s favorite out-of-print.

Aptly calling it the Book Lust Rediscoveries* line, Amazon plans an annual reprint six of Pearl’s most loved, out-of-print titles.

A career librarian, Pearl gained international attention when she pioneered the “If All Seattle Read The Same Book” program. Cities all over the world have re-created Pearl’s idea. Her real fame, however came when Archie McPhee**, the also-famous, also-Seattle purveyor of toys, gifts, and novelties, used Pearl as the model for its Original Librarian Action Figure  “with amazing shushing action!”  (Pressing a button causes the figure to raise her finger to her lips. Sssshhhh!)

Get some of that Deluxe Librarian Action.

Archie McPhee’s website states, “Nancy Pearl’s likeness made history as the best selling Librarian Action Figure of all time, but the true collector needs this Deluxe Edition.” Nancy Deluxe  comes with “a reference desk, computer, book cart, multiple book stacks and some loose books, including a tiny plastic replica of Nancy’s latest, Book Lust 2.”

*Pearl’s best-selling Book Lust came out in 2003.  Her Amazon line, Book Lust Rediscoveries, currently lists two titles: A Gay and Melancholy Sound by Merle Miller; and After Life by Rhian Ellis.

Only Nancy knows

**In the early- to mid-90s, Yours Truly wrote catalogue and packaging copy for Archie McPhee.

On a note slightly less likely to reverberate through the book world: Not since the Oprah madness of the 90s have we so intently wondered: What will the next one beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?!?!?!?!

How I Got That “Mahatma”: Dinty W. Moore discusses short nonfiction with NOT ME.

Dinty Moore: some call him Mahatma.

River Teeth Journal just posted an interview with Dinty Moore. In founding and editing Brevity: A Journal of Concise Nonfiction, Moore has played a large part in defining what we think of as short (or flash) nonfiction.

I interviewed Moore circa. 2006, during his tour to promote The Accidental Buddhist. This is not that interview.

I wish I had been blogging in 2006. About Childhood has a running feature called How I Got That Story, where I interview authors about the path to their first book. (Search on How I Got That Story.) Had I been blogging in 2006: a) I’d probably have a book out by now; and b) I would post that interview.

Since I wasn’t, why … Ladies and gentleman, I introduce to you … someone else’s conversation with Dinty Moore!

Why did you choose 750 words as the maximum for Brevity submissions?

I felt a 500-word maximum was too short and 2,000 words too long.

The adage “show don’t tell” is something many readers expect from memoir, yet in more than a few Brevity essays – such as “Sam at the Gun Show” by Greg Bottoms – telling is prominent.

The writer who is sensitive to word choice and rhythm and the power of the intimate detail can do a lot of telling. There’s a difference, too, between telling and explaining. I advise my students to show the most, tell a little bit, and never explain.

What’s imperative for a short piece that’s different in a longer piece?

Everything is dialed up in a shorter piece. The first paragraph of a brief essay has to do what the first chapter of a memoir does.

What assumptions do others seem to have about flash nonfiction?

Many assume a flash piece is an excerpt from a longer work. Sometimes a significant moment out of a chapter or a long essay can stand alone, but we’re getting more and more pieces that clearly could never work in the longer form because the energy of the piece hinges on the rapid fire sharing of information, and the urgency of having to fit it into a {750 word.–Ed.} frame is what makes it powerful.

What are some other journals you recommend for short nonfiction?

Sweet, Blip, Alimentum, Fringe Magazine, Defunct, South Loop Review, Flashquake, 400 Words, Underwired Magazine, 751 Magazine, Diagram, and The Sun’s “Readers Write” section.

The above is a highly edited version of the original article.

Winner: Grub Street Nonfiction Book Prize

Dinty W. Moore, is author of Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, as well as the memoir Between Panic & Desire, winner of the Grub Street Nonfiction Book Prize in 2009. Moore has published essays and stories in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Harpers, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Gettysburg Review, Utne Reader, and Crazyhorse, among numerous other venues.