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.
