Kartika GoogleGroups

We created a GoogleGroups for Kartika Review with the hope that the forum will enable APA writers to network with each other and open communication lines.

Visit our GoogleGroups page at http://groups.google.com/group/kartika-review.

Any member may start a new discussion, add pages, and upload files. Please join and help us get started. We’d love to see you take charge!

E-mail the group at kartika-review@googlegroups.com. Messages from new members will be moderated, however. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, but don’t want it to be made public on the GoogleGroups, e-mail the editors privately at editor@kartikareview.com.

We look forward to your participation.

Please…

It’s long been our goal at Kartika to find our way from an online format to book form. And so–we (well, not WE but more like Sunny, our beloved, intrepid founder and Editor) ventured to organize (format, compile, etc., etc.) and order a proof copy of a Kartika anthology of our first year’s published work.

And LOOK! It’s up there! (*hop hop*)

We’re not sure where to go from here. We certainly can’t, at this point in time, afford to give even our published writers and interviewees free copies of the magazine. We’d have to charge all of you (we feel badly about that, but even now, we’re running on virtually zero funds–good that we can keep costs so low in this economy but not so good for expansion possibilities. And rewarding our writers with free copies and paying for stories is TOP of our list for a day when we can get funding). Would you buy a copy? Would you subscribe? How many of you would subscribe? We’d like to sell the anthology for $15/copy.

It’s an amazing and beautiful anthology with nearly fifty writers highlighted in its pages.

If we can get this anthology off the ground, if you buy it…I think we can then take the next step of publishing regularly in book form.

What do you think? We need your support. The writers need your support. Our community needs your support. Would you please buy a copy?

(Please).

Ruminations and Pushcart Nominations!

Until I became fiction editor at Kartika, I had no empathy for the editors who ruminated on the slushpile. I only thought, “Blah blah blah, yah it’s so BIG.  Blah blah blah, it’s so HARD.  Blah blah blah…just read my story, dammit! (And accept it for publication!)” Ha. You may be thinking the same thing.

(Oh but please! Read on! Juicy stuff ahead!)

It’s not real until you do it yourself: rummage through the slushpile of literary submissions, read every single story, until you find the gems, the ones that sparkle more than any other. Every story is hours if not weeks if not months if not years of hard work, of emotional investment, and there I am, rifling through your pages  and your words looking for something that shines. (Am I starting to sound like a choosy kleptomaniac?). It’s exhausting thinking about the work the writers have put into the pieces and it’s exhausting doing the work. But in the end, even in some cases a few days before the issue’s deadline, a few stories always catch the light.

(Please! Read on! Juicy stuff ahead!)

As of November 28, I have sent responses to all fiction manuscripts submitted to date. If you haven’t received a response on the status of your FICTION manuscript, you may email me at fiction AT kartikareview DOT com. If you received a “no thank you” from us, I’m sorry for possibly putting a gray cloud on your Thanksgiving weekend…and if you received an acceptance, well, I am excited about seeing your story in our 1st Anniversary Fall/Winter double issue. (due sometime in December!)

(Juicy stuff imminent!)

Speaking of our first year anniversary–this means an entire year’s cycle of issues full of stories and poems and essays and interviews showcased in Kartika. In addition to choosing fiction pieces for Kartika’s issue (did I mention: our First Anniversary Fall/Winter Double Issue!)…we also went through our 2008 issues to come up with Pushcart Prize Nominations.

Reviewing the literary work published in Kartika was like looking at an ENTIRE slushpile of gems. Heaven. But in the end, we had to make our choices.  Kartika Review’s Pushcart Prize nominees are (in no particular order)…

• Fiction: Sheba Karim, “Qiyamat” (Winter 2008)
• Poetry: J. L. Koh, “Childhood Punishments” (Winter 2008)
• Fiction: Kelly Luce, “Cram Island” (Summer 2008)
• Poetry: Jason Koo, “There Is No There, There” (Summer 2008)
• Fiction: Jimmy Chen, “The Search for Namable Things” (Spring 2008)
• Essay: Gemma Guillermo, “Slaying Monsters” (Spring 2008)

If you missed them the first time, you can read their work in our archives.

We hope you stick around with us for another good year.

And keep up the writing…and keep submitting your work out there!

Kartika System Failure 9/09/08-9/16/08

Kartika Review experienced technical difficulties from September 9, 2008 to September 16, 2008. Everything kartikareview.com-related crashed, including our e-mail accounts. Thus, any submissions sent during this time period was never received by our editors.

If you submitted during this time period, please resend your manuscript. We apologize for the inconveniences caused by the system failure.

Thank you.

Sunny’s Review on Issue 3

Issue 3 of Kartika, our summer edition, cannot be passed over. I can’t believe the talent I see in our small but steady lit journal. After reading this issue at least twice now, I have much to say about every piece.

Here’s a sampling of my impressions:

unsolicited advice!

Woo! The release of our issue #3 is nigh–! Right now, we’re getting the last of the contracts signed, and gathering biographies from writers whose pieces have been accepted for the upcoming issue.

Issue #3 holds a special spot in my heart, because it’s my first issue as fiction editor with Kartika. I’ve experienced what it feels like to find a gem in the slushpile (my heart goes, “Wow!”)…and also finding the pieces that have been near misses (I urge those writers to PLEASE submit other pieces to us). It’s been a pretty amazing time.

I’ve gotten some insight as a writer from being on the other side of the process–being an editor, the person who is the arbiter of writing…and I’d like to share some advice with you on submissions and cover letters.

If you’re interested in submitting to Kartika…

1. Please realize that we are an “Asian American Literary Journal.” We publish Asian American literature.
And we’re fairly liberal with that definition–Asia, to us, includes the Middle East. Asian American Literature doesn’t mean you have to be an Asian American writer–but in that case, the characters or subject matter should be Asian American. But some aspect of you and/or your piece should fall under the banner of “Asian America.” Even if your piece is fantastic, if your piece doesn’t pertain to Asian America whatsoever, that piece is a definite NO, at least at Kartika Review.

2. Check out our masthead. Address your email to the appropriate editor. Fiction for fiction, Poetry for poetry, Essay for essays. You get the idea. It’s just nice. Some of us like it.

3. Your cover letter: short and sweet. I personally would like to know if you have an MFA (if so, where?). Or if you have prior publishing credits (if so, where?). But that’s basically it. You don’t need to tell me what your story is about, or how great you are. Please please please don’t boast (i.e., hold off on the adjectives when describing your own work and/or achievements). Your manuscript will speak for itself.

4. I’m not a stickler for punctuation or anything…but do check your cover letter for misspellings.

It’s a fairly short list. But I hope it’s helpful.

And keep writing!

Update: As of July 21, I have sent responses to all manuscripts submitted to date. If you haven’t received a response on the status of your manuscript, you may email me at fiction AT kartikareview DOT com. Apologies and thank you to those of you who may have waited upwards of 3 months for a reply.

Lessons from a Blog about Blogging about Blogging

Finally! I just finished my final final of Sophomore year a few days ago, and I’m still bouncing off the walls! Well, not really because I was so exhausted after our two weeks of “Reading” period followed by two weeks of Finals period that after my last test/paper/presentation I walked around Cambridge with my newfound freedom and promptly fell down on my bed fast asleep. If you are also going through college, or if you remember your college years, I’m sure you remember what a drag finals period is, and how much free time you have afterwards. I haven’t been doing much but eat and sleep, and I feel like such a slob.

If that first paragraph doesn’t interest you, please bear with me; I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned from the article “Exposed“, written by Emily Gould, which I read this morning on the New York Times magazine website. I can’t believe she wrote ten pages on blogging. Basically, if one can summarize a ten page article (and I think this particular one can be summarized with only a few words), then the article reads: Sometimes when people blog, they don’t share their thoughts so much as seek gratification from strangers at the expense of their personal lives and the feelings of the people around them, some of whom they might care about and love.

I think that’s an interesting lesson, but it was still a ten page blog about blogging published in the New York Times and I sucked up every word. Later, I realized that I wasn’t upset that I had read so much about presumably nothing really important, but I learned a lot about differentiating between egoistic blogging and meaningful blogging. If nothing else, it reaffirms the lesson that it’s better to be concise. Grammar, syntax, and prose, I have to admit, were excellent!

Then I got to thinking about why I was drawn to every word in that article that she wrote. It’s because I consider myself a blogger as well and on a very basic level, I identified with her and I feel that I project some of her identity and vice versa through our common activity: blogging.

In any case, how does this apply to an Asian American literary publication? All I have to do is write something and click “publish” to have it show here, right? Presumably there will be bloggers like me who, when they encounter a blog (we can call it an “article”) about blogging, will read the blog regardless of its value. Even if it’s ten friggin pages long.

I think that there’s a lesson there that also applies to Asian American literature and meaningful Asian American cultural representations in American society, of which we all recognize there is a huge shortage. People will read it and find significance in it. It’s a way of coming together and/or learning from each other’s lessons.

One thing that I wish I had, in high school, was a way to be comfortable in my art. I was very comfortable with mock trial (some of our coaches were Asian American), politics (some of the politicians that I worked with were Asian American), community service, etc. etc. The hardest thing for me to be comfortable with myself with, was art. Here I was in an arts school theater department advanced class, playing Judge Hawthorne in The Crucible, and I wasn’t sure about myself in a way that I never was unsure of in any other field. I think it was because you don’t really see any Asian Americans in really any productions playing major roles in classic American plays. If there are, most of the populace out there isn’t aware of them, especially the population out there that would most benefit from their experience.

Like everyone here, I love the American classics. I love The Great Gatsby, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. etc. I love how we’re all working toward supporting our own Toni Morrison, Jack Kerouac, and what have you.

I am definitely making the same mistake Ms. Gould made. This is becoming a long winded way of me blogging about how much I really appreciate the topics which I blog about. Hey, at least I had a model with which to follow. At the very least, some college student out there with too much time in his (or her) hands might be moved enough to write a blog about it.

it’s ON!

I mentioned VQR’s insult critique of its slushpile in a recent post. Which was followed by a post filled with compliments on the slushpile. Only to be followed by a redaction and their apology. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing–their “slushpile diss” wasn’t great but I think their redaction is worse. The back and forth to me (read: indecision?) belies a lack of conviction about how they really do feel about their slushpile.  And the apology a bit unconvincing–what could have been a great and honest communication has now been withdrawn and closed (as neatly as possible) with an apology.

Back to the world of being polite.

But aha! Howard Junker offered his words on the subject, and that’s opened a new dialogue! He calls the VQR dialogue as “pious, pompous, cliched ranting.” (SMACK!) The gloves are off! It’s ON!

The VQR then responded with posts entitled Howard Junker has your back and further thoughts on Junker.

The editors are being honest with each other in a way that editors can’t be honest with writers (my guess). And the argument has turned a bit personal.

Editor wars: a spectator sport?

The uncanny commonalities

When I was an MFA student, I took my fair share of workshop courses. There were a few variables in the workshop format: we could be assigned the week for workshop, or we could sign up for workshop week…sometimes we workshopped one piece, other times two or three. Sometimes we were all instructed to say something positive before we launched into the guts of the critique. Other semesters, we launched in, head first as the writer in question gripped the arms of her chair. These guidelines all depended on the professor.

What did not vary was a bit uncanny: every week there was some sort of incredible link between the pieces being workshopped. Maybe one week both pieces featured elderly characters. Or they were both written in second person. Or they exhibit the same themes (maybe both are immigration-themed stories or both are bildungsroman stories). Like I said, it was delightful and predictable how often the pieces would be, in some way, linked despite the random pairing.

And so it goes with litmag issues. Verbsap’s Editor has mentioned sex and recreational drug use in submissions…and Howard Junker of ZYZZYVA has noted coincidental themes of Action/Adventure and Sex in recent litmag issues.

Other literary journals embrace the coincidental and make it purposeful. Ploughshares has regular, themed issues. So does Tin House, which just highlighted the theme of “Evil.” Glimmertrain courts submissions about “Family Matters” and Narrative/StoryQuarterly searched for Love Stories and is looking for first person narratives.

What am I looking at this week? Quite a few courtship stories–though unlike reports from the litmags mentioned above, it seems Asian Americans aren’t getting around to third base, let alone first (Hey!). There’s a lot of yearning but not a lot of “scoring” (pardon me). Is it Spring that brings about such desire?

Sex isn’t the only thing on writer’s minds–there are also pieces exhibiting the theme of ancestral connections.

And me? I’m yearning to spot the gems in the slushpile, whether sparkling, or in the rough needing just a bit of polish.

sharing the slush pile?

On the heels of the VQR’s blog post detailing editorial reactions to rejected submissions, here comes BookFox’s sharing of the slushpile.

The VQR apologized and later redacted the editorial commentary on the submissions (they’d also had a list of positive reactions to submissions, also later redacted). I am not so sure they should have apologized–part of me thinks that albeit at times brutal, the post was a very honest communication with readers.

The whole litblog atmosphere is going to open a lot more dialogue channels on submissions and editorial relationships. Before the advent of litblogs, you didn’t have any communication with the editor prior to publication–now you’re reading his/her thoughts and wondering, “Did he/she read my manuscript today?” You’re wondering if that particular post might be a reaction to your submission! You’re reading into their sense of aesthetics, you’re getting to know them, you’re building a relationship, even if you’re a lurker and don’t pipe up.

And in the case of the VQR blog post on rejections–you’re getting the feedback straight on.

One thing the VQR did NOT do was post the actual submissions. (Thank goodness). Bookfox didn’t post the actual submission either, but a cover letter from a rejected writer–in particular, a prison inmate (the actual subject of his post is that the litmag does not accept submissions from inmates–he explains why). Though I do worry about the ramifications he might face for publicly posting that letter!

Howard Junker of ZYZZYVA likes to post excerpts from cover letters on the litmag’s back cover. I have savored them for years. Some of them are funny some of them are charming! Sometimes I wonder if writers write oddities just to get on to that back cover. Those excerpts have encouraged me to keep my own cover letters short and unembellished.

Now–I wonder what kind of relationship we’re building here–who’s reading? Have you submitted work to Kartika? What opinions do you have on litblogs, and the sharing of the slushpile on litblogs?