The LEAP Lab

Connection Unboxed, By Casey Lee

May 6, 2025
Imagine a casino buffet with every type of food you can imagine. Then you get told to make a menu from that food. That menu is for a wide variety of people. People with different tastes. That is what it is like selecting stories for the Watershed Review as a student editor. The stories we encounter reflect a buffet of experiences–strange, painful, beautiful, and grotesque. Here are just a few flavors I encountered during my time as an editor:

Book murder. Toxic relationships. Old lady stories. Gas station stomach monster. Quarantine. Pregnancy. Yard sales. Squid mouth. Drug addiction. Loud apartments. Call centers. Haircuts. Delusional grandma. Grieving grandmother. Emojis. Ayahuasca. Restaurants. Interdimensional owls. Mud People.

As you can see, we read a wide range of stories. We read a lot of stories. Then we discuss these stories in painstaking detail during our editorial meetings. Everyone shares their opinions. We vote. We argue. We select. We re-select. We publish.

We publish what we feel are the best stories.

How do you know if something is good? Without experience, we relegate to personal preference. You just think about whether you liked what you read. How do you decide without considering personal taste? How could I ever recommend green peas when I pick them out of every dish like I’m still sitting in a highchair? This is what we call bias. It is almost impossible not to have it when you read. Usually when I read, my brain automatically forms an opinion. I believed I knew what a story should look like. Two boxes were constructed from my opinions. The “good” box and the “bad” box. I was trying to box up creativity. Typing that makes me realize the ridiculousness of the oversimplification. Reading from a place of personal enjoyment is the hallmark of a novice editor. I needed to move past this level of reading. Past personal consumption.

To help me move past these biases I developed a three-step system to evaluate each story.

First, I read purely for enjoyment without making any notes. Second, I tried to uncover the message the author was trying to tell us. Third, I evaluated the story for publication, considering edits and overall merit. Even with this system, I found myself wrestling with personal preferences and preconceived notions about what a story should look like. I realized my narrow expectations were holding me back from fully experiencing a story.

I needed to let go, to allow stories to take me wherever they wanted.

I stopped caring what they looked like. I stopped worrying about how the story was told. Instead of figuring out where the author should go, I became a guest within the narrative. I let the storyteller guide my hand through their adventure. Writing is a creative endeavor where time, space, and people are curated. Don’t get stuck on how a story is told. Don’t get stuck on the type of story that is being told. Don’t get stuck within genre specific expectations.

Instead, get stuck inside the story.

There were a few stories where my feet sank into ankle deep mud thanks to my strong connection to the writing. These stories made this list for publication. Instead of divulging details and spoiling their stories, I will share the common themes I found throughout my choices. Let me show you how my over-analytical brain blended instinct in selecting stories for publication. Through this process, I developed a few guiding principles that helped me navigate the sea of stories and identify those that truly resonated with me.

Readability. I am reading after all.

The pace of my selected pieces kept my attention. We shouldn’t get lost along the way. The pace might speed up or slow down, but we should understand why. My imagination craved vivid imagery. Transport me somewhere else, I want to forget that I’m sitting in the library next to the kid who hasn’t showered in three days. My favorites guided my imagination instead of micro-managing it with detail overload. I loved connecting with characters. I needed to hear them and understand them. They possessed realistic dialogue not dripping in cliches. Characters need to jump out of the page and occupy the seat next to me. The writing was beautifully crafted on all accounts. I can pinpoint specific lines that burned into my memory. However, I ran away from pieces that contained dictionary vomit. While readability kept me engaged in the moment, my mind craved a deeper message that stayed with me long after I finished reading.

Understand the message. Ask why.

Why did they write this? Why did they want us to read this? Why did they choose this format? Why did they choose this point of view? Why did they tell this portion of the story? Why did they choose this character as the narrator? Why did they end here? Why did they use this description? Why? Why? Why?

These questions will linger as you uncover stories that make you think beyond the page.

As I asked these questions, I found that the stories which lingered in my mind most often carried a deeper message, one that unfolded gradually and made me think beyond the page. Not one that slapped you in the face but gave you enough that you had to extrapolate your takeaways to discover that message. After reading them I continued to think about them and enjoyed the contemplation that came post-read. The stories resonated with me, occupying my thoughts beyond the day I read them. My favorites explored the grey area of life. Who are we to define what is good and bad in the world, I love when people delve into the complexities of human motivation. In the end, reading is about the connection we forge with the writer’s words, their vulnerability laid bare for us to witness.

Open yourself to the endless possibilities of connection through creativity.

Thanks to the formulaic introduction by Submittable, I gained a connection to these faceless strangers. Their words peel away the layers of vulnerability to show me a glimpse inside their souls. I was a privileged guest in their kingdom of creativity. Most importantly, each of these stories stirred my insides until I felt something. My brains and heart sparked by digital transcription born of some stranger’s creativity. Authors are the only ones allowed to play with my emotions. Please, play away. That emotional connection is what drives us as editors to make decisions.

But how do we make those choices with so many stories to consider?

Reading is our opportunity to see the author, the blood of their creativity dripping all over the pages. If it all fit inside one box, creativity would cease to exist. Allow yourself to become an explorer, immersing in the craftsmanship of a wordsmith. Keep an open mind. Then simply decide if the journey was worth it. Did you want to keep reading? Did you ponder some existential question? Did you reflect on your life? Did you want to share the story? Did you simply smile?

In the end, reading is about connection, becoming a traveler within the author’s world. That is how I decided if the journey was worth it. Here is what I look for:
- I want to feel.
- I want to hear.
- I want to see.
- I want to connect.
- I want to contemplate.
- I want to share.
Lessons from Queering the Literary Magazine, By Autumn Conklin

May 6, 2025

As someone whose identity lies somewhere outside looking in—being queer, leftist, and nonbinary—there is something stirring in seeing the perseverance of literary magazines in their ﬁght to preserve art, poetry, politics, writing, and philosophies that go against the status quo. Indeed, it seems that LGBTQ people are often at the forefront of literary change, as were the iconic lesbian couple Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson who ran the radical magazine The Little Review from 1914-1929. According to the article” Jane Heap and Her Circle” by Linda Lappin, these women slipped under the radar to explore and push the boundaries of the literary magazine medium, with their life experiences guiding them into publishing information about new art movements like Surrealism and Dadaism, political systems such as anarchism supported by their friend Emma Goldman, any and all taboo topics (such as printing visuals about masturbation, which landed them in court), and feminism. Jane Heap’s parting words in the ﬁnal issue were: “we have given space in the Little Review to 23 new systems of art (all now dead) representing 19 countries,” showcasing their ability to feel the pulse of new and upcoming movements and to document and give a voice to others.

After researching more into this issue, I found that there is little institutional support for queer literary magazines, even today: the article “Insitutional Queers & LGBTQ Literary Journals: A Provocation” by Julie R. Ezner from The Lambda Literary Reviewstates that “in the United States, there is not a single LGBTQ literary journal that has a sustained, formal relationship with a university or other cultural institution.” Most queer magazines are independent, self-sustaining, and remain non-censored, displaying the resiliency of queer folk to have their work and others in the community published, even if their efforts are “short-lived.” The argument Ezner makes is that without any queer university magazines that “the absence of these labors and visions from LGBTQ literary culture diminishes it[s staying power], making it more fragile and requiring a reinvention of skills, people, and ideas with frequency rather than the beneﬁts of sustained output.” While I do agree that there needs to be ﬁnancial support and pointed efforts from the government and universities toward queer lit mags, I do not think this curtails the hard work that LGBTQ people do from within preexisting literary magazines, nor does it take away from the difﬁcult and absorbing work of independent queer lit mags.

In being an editor of the Watershed Review for Chico State, as well as for Flume Press, I have had the privilege of overseeing which author’s works to accept, with one of our magazine’s primary goals being to amplify voices that otherwise might not have the opportunity or means to, as well as hosting a multitude of writers from differing backgrounds, cultures, sexualities, genders, and countries. I take great pride in being queer and having the ability to hold space for other LGBTQ writers and poets from within the magazine; forming a community both with a readership base as well as internally, is one of the most important aspects of being part of an editorial staff. Though the arts in nearly all forms throughout history have relied upon patronage, even current institutionally supported lit mags are struggling to stay aﬂoat during an intense shift toward online-only publication and social media. We may look to our persistent queer foremothers, Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, who created a community of support driven by their shared intellectualism, alternative lifestyles, and bonds of friendship for each other, for ways to keep not only queer literary magazines, but all lit mags current and alive.

At the end of the day it is our decision and duty as editors to help make way for others, whether it be through community building, shining a spotlight on emerging writers and creatives, or through innovation of form and content. The future of in-print lit mags lies in focusing on content and patronage of writers by engaging an audience online, while most importantly inviting readers of all types into the communal aspect of reading together. Being queer is about living and speaking freely and ﬁnding one’s own interdependent community that supports one another through thick and thin, whether it be ﬁnancial hardship, cultural pushback, or political upheaval. Allowing queer writers and editors speak out for themselves and others in the literary landscape is one of the paramount achievements that contemporary literary magazines can learn from, while allowing to build upon the work of those that came before.
When I Grow Up I Want to be a Writer: Advice I have after working as an editor on a literary magazine, By Emma Peterson

May 6, 2025
Picture this: I am in third grade, I can’t reduce a fraction, I have a college-level Accelerated Reading score because they were not monitoring what I was reading at all, and I just got my ass chewed for correcting my teacher’s pronunciation of the word foal while reading Misty of Chincoteague (she pronounced it fowl.)

Many third-grade girls would have let that go. I, however, had just learned of Jo March and that my third-grade teacher was an Apostolic Pentecostal. You may be asking, “What does that have to do with anything?” And I will tell you, the very next day after the foal/fowl incident of 2009, my third-grade teacher assigned a Halloween creative writing assignment. I saw my opportunity, and I was going to blow her fucking mind. A few days later came the class Halloween Party and our reading. I requested to go last. After twenty or so stories about ghosts, goblins, and ghouls, it was my turn. It is important to note that as a child, I suffered greatly from night terrors and sleep paralysis, very scary stuff…so that’s what I wrote about. For three handwritten front and back pages, I detailed how a demon would come into my room, command me, and then thrash me against the wall if I didn’t listen. I even took great care to make my handwriting more deranged as the story went on to really bring it home. I read my story flawlessly, exactly the way I practiced in the mirror. Miss Fowl went pale, and my classmates went apeshit. Within a day, I was being asked to tell more stories at recess and to speak with my teacher after class. My first taste of literary greatness.

Within fifteen years, my elementary school friends still bring that story up to me; my third-grade teacher still avoids me in the grocery store…but now I’m scared of Submittable — what the fuck?

I have dipped my feet in many things, but writing has always been wrapped around my spine. So when did it become humiliating to let someone else read my work? If I had to place a time on it, I would say it was somewhere around the time the blindfold was cinched around my face. Somewhere around the time that people started telling me I may as well concede to starve. What it means to write for a living is a secret so dirty it cannot be spoken, so it isn’t. But here is the thing about me: I love dirty secrets and I have spent the last five months working on a lit mag and am ready to spill my guts to you.

Dirty Secret Number One: There is no perfect piece of writing (but you should try.)

I will hold on to a poem until it grows stale in my cold, dead hands because there is just some little thing that I don’t like about it. Then, by the time I find whatever it is I don’t like, I hate it. The truth of the matter is there is no one way of thinking about any creative endeavor. The thing you are beating your head against could very well be something that someone else never forgets. This is not to say that you should submit unpolished work because you shouldn’t it’s a waste of your time and a waste of the editor’s time. It is okay to be unsure. It is even okay to think it’s a total turd, but that turd better be polished to a shine. There were several times over my course on The Watershed Review that we read a piece that really divided the class, but what made the deniers concede was the clear and obvious fact that the author made a clear and conscious effort to submit their best work. On the flip side, there have been pieces that we loved but were poorly edited and didn’t follow our submission guidelines to the point of annoyance that we passed on.

Long story short: do not let a phantom mistake tell-tale heart you into not submitting your work and on the same hand do not fall victim to the succubus of mediocrity. At any point, your best effort will be better than at least fifty others that got submitted prematurely and with no editing.

Dirty Secret Number Two: Read the fucking magazine before you submit.

I know that many of you are thinking, “Yeah, duh.” But this isn’t as common as you may think. At the beginning of the semester, we were assigned to read “Art Nowhere Else: Thoughts on the Literary Magazine”. This article blew my mind in the way that I think about publishing to lit mags. It describes the niche readership of most magazines as “rooms” and what they publish as what they decided to hang on the walls. So, that being said, you can rationally assume that the Sistine Chapel wouldn’t hang Pollock next to the Michelangelo. Both greats. Different vibes entirely.

Much of what I am telling you is a how-to on how not to waste time. Submitting your literary realism piece to a mag that exclusively publishes fantasy is a waste of time.

Dirty Secret Number Three: Write what feels right.

There is a lot of discourse online right now about what it takes to publish since the advent of BookTok and things of the like. The main takeaway from many of these conversations is that the only things being published/sold right now are those BookTok pushes to the moon. While there does seem to be an influx of crap novels (thank you, anti-intellectualism), this difference is only so apparent because the crap is what we see. Let me begin to move on quickly before I hang my bias (and/or bitchy opinion) too far out in the wind.

Just because what we are seeing is the sludge doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for your work. There are hundreds of beautiful, provoking, brilliant pieces published daily. Do not

let the internet convince you that to write for a living, you must forsake everything you hold literarily dear. Or maybe the crap novels are your jam…in which case, what a time to be you. Write exactly what you feel like writing and I promise there is a readership for you.

FIND OPEN CALLS:
- New Pages
- RumbleWrites (GOD SEND)
Dirty Secret Number Four: The editors of every magazine are just people.

This one was one that I didn’t believe until I saw it. I had some kind of vision of a lit mag team smoking cigarettes and being literati in some dusty, underfunded corner of a university. I will admit that at least one of those things is probably true of any given magazine, but usually not all. There are so many characters working to put publications out I promise at least one person on a team will argue in favor of your work. Many times that argument will even sway the rest of the editing team.

It’s interesting to watch other people’s reading habits and editorial biases unfold.

Everyone has a niche. Mine, for example, is language over plot (much to the annoyance of my peers). Jaedon’s is formatting. Casey’s is felt ideas. Hudson’s is character work and so on and so on. There is no one reader, so while it is important to think about whether or not your work fits in the publication, do not get stuck writing for who you think the editorial team may be.

Dirty Secret Number Five: “Not everyone is an artist, but everyone is a fucking critic.” (Including your friends. And you. And me.)

The final dirty secret is tough love from me to me and then me to you. Yesterday, the aforementioned Felt-Idea-Casey read the beginnings of this piece and asked me, “Who are you writing this for?” It struck me that it’s me. I am writing this for me. I am writing this for the girl who fills the notebooks and whose friends request her to tell the story because “you tell it better.” I am writing this for the girl who now, as a grown woman, reddens when someone from her hometown asks her what she is going to school for, knowing that they’re going to give a sympathetic “ohhhh” when she says it.

You will never please everyone, so give up trying. In Ottesa Moshfegh’s recent “Writing Advice #4″ she says, “The secret to writing a compelling first sentence is to chill out about it.” The secret to writing anything is to chill out about it. Some of my worst work has come from pining over something for weeks. Alternatively, some of my best has come from the shit I have voice-to-texted quickly into my notes app while driving.

I feel that almost everything I have waxed to you here has been a double-edged sword…and I am going wield that sword again. While I urge you to chill out, I also urge you to take yourself and your work seriously. To be the best, you have to want to be the best. (Before I lecture to you, know that I am still directly speaking to myself as well when I say all of this.) I had never suffered greater secondhand embarrassment in my life than in beginning creative writing at my junior college. Before the fateful workshop, one of my classmates had bragged about being the best writer in their high school. Then, followed that up with the fact that they had written their workshop piece the night before and “didn’t feel the need to workshop, but oh well.” I am not exaggerating when I say this was the biggest steaming pile of shit I had ever read. I’m pretty sure you could smell it from the hall. It was clear to me and everyone else that this person had gotten an A on a few creative writing assignments in high school English and began resting on their laurels. Never, and I mean ever, be this person. Writing is a skill, and skills are to be honed. There is always going to be someone hungrier than you, and if you want a seat at the table, you better bring something to it. Read more, write more, create more. Keep a notebook everything around you is far more interesting than the shit you could make up. If you have to, do the artist’s way (cringe).

I look at myself in the mirror as I say this. If you want to see good shit on the shelves, write it. I am blown away by some of the things I have read from the undiscovered, unpublished, underrated. Do not worry about what people who would never get it anyway have to say. Write for the version of you that just wanted to tell stories, write for the version of you that is too embarrassed to share your work on Instagram, write for the version of you that just wants to read a good fucking book.

To make a long damn story short:

And, I have an incredible amount of faith in the future of art. It is the one thing that cannot die. Keep writing, keep noticing, keep creating, and if you get the chance, submit to Watershed Review.
Echoes, Harmonies, and Resonances: An Interview with Rob Davidson

December 6, 2023
By Layla Hutchings

Late in the semester, we reached out to Professor Rob Davidson to share his thoughts about the writing life and his path to publication. Here, he offers his hard-earned writing tips and a story about what it looks like to reconsider a draft well after you see it as done. Professor Davidson reminds us of the importance of finding your writing community and trusted others to read your writing.

How do you get into the mindset of writing? Are there any rituals or habits you have to start the writing process?

I’m generally a morning person and I like to get to my desk early. For me, writing has nothing to do “being in the zone” or feeling inspired by the muse or anything like that. In one sense, I see writing as a job or a type of work I have tasked myself with doing. My habit is to sit in the chair whether I am “in the mood” or not. I work for a set amount of time. I don’t write every day. During the school year, when I am teaching, I write five days a week for shorter amounts of time. When I am free from teaching, I typically work six days a week for longer stretches.

How do you go about getting your works published? What happens if your work gets rejected? Do you try to get it published elsewhere or do you put it back in the drafts? If you’d like, share a memory you have of your work getting published or rejected.
When I have a new short story or essay ready, I look for journals who I think might be interested. There are quite a few out there, both online and in print or some hybrid. Aspiring authors should be reading those journals, seeing who is publishing who, what’s selling, and so forth. I also read the Pushcart Prize anthology every year, an excellent overview of the small press and literary journal marketplace. Over the years, I have discovered amazing writers there: Lia Purpura and Karen Russell, for example.

Most journals accept multiple submissions (the piece is under consideration at more than one journal). I typically send a piece out to 6-10 journals and then wait to hear back. When a journal rejects a piece, I don’t fuss about it. I send it back out. If a given piece gets rejected by 12 or more journals, I re-read it and consider revisions.

Sometimes an editor makes a suggestion. I sent a 17,000 word story entitled “Criminals” to Howard Junker at ZYZZYVA. He loved it, but asked if he could trim it down. He cut 7,000 words out of the story and rearranged some bits. It was a heavy edit! At first, I freaked out and nearly pulled the piece. After I calmed down, I read it again and realized his edits were really smart. He published the piece and then, when I included the story in my book The Farther Shore (2012), I restored some of what he cut.

When putting together a collection, which stories do you choose? Is there ever a time where a story has thematic similarities with the others but doesn’t make the cut?

Each of my short story collections has what I call a “governing metaphor,” a shared set of ideas or themes that, in my mind, unite the stories. They aren’t linked stories exactly; more like stories that contain echoes, harmonies, and resonances. This governing metaphor typically emerges after I’ve drafted about half of the book. Once I know what that theme is, it helps me shape the second half and things come a little faster.

That sometimes means I have drafted a story that doesn’t fit. So, yes, there are “orphans” on my hard drive. Pieces that never found a home, sad little buggers.

Sometimes it’s out of the writer’s hands. The editors of my first two collections (two different editors at two different presses) cut stories from the manuscript they’d accepted. My protestations were futile.

Where can we find some of your work, both on campus and elsewhere?

In Chico, the campus bookstore has copies of my most recent books, Spectators (2017) and What Some Would Call Lies (2018). Look in the “local authors” or “faculty authors” section. I believe The Bookstore in downtown Chico also has copies.

The Chico State library has copies of my books and students can check them out for free! And so does the Bayliss branch of the Willows public library. It’s an old Carnegie library, with a fireplace and wood paneled walls—perfectly charming. I sent them a complete set of my books, gratis. I want my books in a place like that.

All of my five published books are in print and can be purchased online. For online purchases, please consider bookshop.org, a nonprofit that shares a portion of its sales with independent bookstores around the nation. We need to sustain brick-and-mortar indie bookstores!

At what point did you decide to be an author and what was your path to publication?

I studied creative writing as an undergraduate and was very motivated, but I don’t suppose I fully committed to being an author and publishing until after I graduated. During that time, I began writing with sharper intention and dedication. There were no more deadlines, no more grades. There was no one asking me for a short story. I realized that if it was going to happen, I had to want it to happen. But I had no writing community.

The Loft is a nonprofit writers’ cooperative in Minneapolis. That place rescued me. I took workshops there, met a gaggle of other ambitious and talented writers, and found my groove. Community is so important! Out of that period came my first published short story, which in turn became my writing sample for Purdue’s MFA program. The rest is… you know.

Rob Davidson is the author of six books, including Welcome Back to the World: A Novella and Stories, forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2024. His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Arlington Literary Journal, The Normal School, and elsewhere. Davidson’s honors include a Fulbright, multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, and an AWP Intro Journals Project Award in fiction. He’s twice been appointed Artist in Residence at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. He teaches creative writing at California State University, Chico. Please visit www.robdavidsonauthor.net
A Meditation on the Posthumous Stewardship of Words, By Benjamin Vandersluis

November 25, 2023
When my uncle Bruce died in March 2020, my family elected me to be the steward of his unpublished writing. The decision was not a haphazard one; during the last several years of his life I had bonded with my uncle through our respective literary endeavors. Indeed, the first piece I ever published was written as a direct response to my uncle’s work. I believe my literary relationship with my uncle helped me to better understand him as an intellectual and as an author. It thus came as no surprise to me that I had been given the role of stewarding his work in the wake of his passing.

Still, inheriting my uncle’s work felt somewhat bewildering and daunting. From a technical perspective the prospect seems simple: I have the rights, so I can now go and publish his work, right? But hidden within this premise is the ethical conundrum that my uncle’s death has permanently severed him from the ongoing existence of his work. If I revise, submit, publish, or otherwise use Bruce’s writing, I do so without his direct consent. As such, I have found the role of stewarding Bruce’s work to be fraught with many ethical considerations as I strive to honor Bruce’s original wishes, intentions, and values.

In many ways this is a sticky wicket I am still learning to navigate. I have my uncle’s writings stored in a Google Drive folder that I’ve left largely untouched for the past two years or so. I’m nervous to look at the contents of that folder because I know, whatever actions I take, stewarding these words will not be simple. That Google Drive folder intimidates me like a Jenga tower: even if I touch only one small piece, I’m worried the whole thing will fall on me.

Nonetheless, I am slowly making progress. I have designed and published a chapbook of my uncle’s poems called The Chandler Letters, an undertaking made possible because of my closeness to that particular piece of writing. The process required almost no editing on my part since my uncle had slowly revised those poems to perfection over the course of a decade or more. I am glad for that. The thought of intentionally changing my uncle’s words still makes me uneasy. As for the design process, I found it to have a therapeutic quality, a sort of quiet catharsis, the dormant aftershock of grief. With every design decision—from typeface to cover design and paper selection to binding methods—I found the opportunity to be a part of my uncle’s vision for his work. At every step I would ask myself: Would Bruce be proud of this? Is this what he would have wanted?

As I’ve started down this path of posthumous stewardship, I am starting to see key principles emerging that will help guide my path going forward. I may not know what the future holds, but I am comforted to know that future decisions will be guided by the following principles:
1. Go slow. A rushed decision is unlikely to be the best one.
2. Do not profit. The goal of posthumous publication should be to honor the author, not to seek financial gain, however small.
3. Do not add. These are the words of the original author, not the words of the steward.
4. Avoid alterations. Make small changes with extreme care, and only in ways that preserve and respect the spirit of the author’s work.
The bottom line is this: although I own the rights to my uncle’s work, his work is not my own. Any and all decisions about which pieces to publish, where to publish them, and how to edit them, ought to be made with my uncle’s wishes in mind. They are his words, his spirit, his memory—not mine. I am, after all, only a steward.

I hope this short blog has been helpful. I know that when I first inherited my uncle’s work, I had a difficult time finding anyone else dealing with the same challenge. There are a few articles that address this topic from a legal perspective and a publisher’s perspective (you can find those articles at Sidebar Saturdays, Writers Weekly, Chautauqua Journal, and The Carolinian), but my hope in this blog has been to address the emotional labor and ethical responsibilities of posthumous publication. If you are in the position of stewarding the works of a loved one, I hope this has given you a place to start.
The Secret Ritual that Got Me Through the First Semester of ENGL 419 and Other Musings, By Reilly M. Hall

November 25, 2023

There are 57 stairs from the first floor of the Arts and Humanities building to the third. I know this because I used to count them on the way up to my ENGL 419: Chapbook Production class. I would breathe and count. Breathe and count. Before breathing and counting became my ritual, I was a novice to the editing world. It wasn’t until I was inducted into that class that I became aware of the rigorous and time-consuming standards of the publishing selection process.

It was the Fall of 2022 and we were a small class of eight. It was our task to read, discuss, and ultimately narrow down over 70 manuscripts until we chose our top ten and five runner-ups. I was eager with anticipation to begin reading other people’s work, but soon almost all of my free hours were spent reading six 30-page manuscripts every week. Like clockwork, my roommate would find me glued to my seat at the kitchen table pouring over my laptop late into the evening. It was all-consuming. Flume Press’s Chapbook Contest was something I had never heard of until I decided to pursue my Literary Editing and Publishing (LEAP) Certificate. ENGL 419 was a part of the required classes and it felt like a privilege to read other people’s work. While it was equal parts exciting and daunting to be a part of the judgment process, I soon felt in over my head.

Not long into the class, I quickly became aware of a prerequisite I had managed to skirt by: ENGL 415. Also taught by Prof. Sarah Pape, it was a course all of my classmates had taken. In that prereq. class, they helped read and select submissions for Watershed Review, and were familiar with the selection process, even if it was on a smaller scale. Not to mention, some of my peers were veteran poetry readers and writers. But poetry was a genre I was still relatively new to. As I found myself feeling less and less qualified to have a say in what made the cut and what didn’t, the more my evening ritual on the way to class became apparent. This somewhat neurotic behavior was a way to focus on what I could control, while keeping my small inner critic at bay.

I wasn’t acutely aware that I was experiencing symptoms of Imposter Syndrome at the time, but I now know that I was. What helped was finding fellow peers who weren’t very familiar with poetry, and together we leaned into an internal metric system that was more intuitive when judging submissions. Despite this, there were some moments when I knew for certain I had struck gold. When I first read the manuscript for Alive, Today, Again! Poems and Essays from the Middlelands by Kimberly Ramos, which later became the first runner-up of the contest, I knew I wanted to hold it as a book in my hands. Little did I know, six months later, I would be.

For the first time ever, the ENGL 419 class was split into two semesters. For me and my small group of classmates, this was wildly exciting. When Spring of 2023 rolled around, our class had nearly doubled in size and those from the first semester had a unique opportunity. We discovered which manuscripts from the last semester we would ultimately be creating and publishing. As we were split into two separate editorial teams, with mine working on Ramos’s work, we quickly found ourselves enraptured in an ongoing and enlightening creative process. We were all tasked with cover design, creating mock interior layouts, and deliberating which student-made posts would be used for social media promotion. By the end of the semester, we were privileged to hand-sew 100 copies of Ramos’s work. I learned how to create a near-perfect fold as my peers and I hand-folded each page and cover of every chapbook.

Looking back at the Fall semester, where I didn’t feel fully qualified, I can now see that time period gave me the confidence to take on more responsibility in the Spring. The rigorous process of reading and selecting submissions to be published, and later the privilege of working with a team to produce one of those works as a chapbook, is an experience I’ll never forget. Engaging in the ENGL 419 class both semesters was an invaluable look at what it means to be a part of the Literary Editing and Publishing process. This class has given me the opportunity to meet some amazing people, to work closely with Ramos, and see design choices that I collaborated on come to life. It taught me the value of working together and the painstakingly tedious process of editing with Adobe InDesign. It gave me invaluable tools I can take with me to hone in my future career. These experiences have taught me that I am capable and that I can trust my intuition and my work. I feel confident going forward, and know that wherever life takes me, if my next job is on the third floor—it’s okay to count the stairs.
LEAP Intern Spotlight: Literary Horizons, By Dylan Townsend

May 24, 2022

“What do you enjoy reading?”

It’s a question that you can generally answer off the top of your head. Science fiction, fantasy, romance—most people can call to mind a handful of genres that they consider their reading tastes. But literature is a broad, broad sphere. How many favorites are out there that you’ve never even considered picking up because they don’t fall into the band of genres you call your own?

As a student editor for Watershed Review for two semesters and Flume Press for one semester, I’ve read dozens and dozens of pieces that never would have crossed my path as a casual reader. College students are often bombarded by this kind of assigned reading when they take literature courses, but personally, very few of those pieces have spoken to me in the same way that submissions to Watershed Review and Flume Press have. In part, knowing that this is the work of a living, contemporary author makes the forced reading more palatable. Someone out there put their heart into this work and cares about my eyes on it, and this leaves me more open to broadening my horizons; not only that, but I want to engage with it as the author intended, which can be difficult with unfamiliar forms. When discussing poetry chapbooks, it led me to ask a simple yet hard to answer question: “How do I read poetry?” Going around the room, almost everyone had something unique to contribute. Ask what the poem is trying to achieve, how it makes you feel, and how it changes when read aloud. See how the structure of the poem on the page connects to the meaning of the poem (or doesn’t). Jeanne Clark, professor of poetry at CSU Chico, provided another important piece of the puzzle for me when she visited the class and explained how she evaluates poems by the first line, last line, and the beginning and end of each line. Each of these tools, and the experience of having to read so much poetry, allowed me to appreciate the artistry involved in a form I previously cared little for.

Nonfiction was another genre that never interested me prior to working on Watershed Review. Since I was old enough to read, I have devoured science fiction, fantasy, and many other forms of fiction. My own writing has been almost exclusively fiction; I find it extremely difficult to write creatively about my own life. However, I found that the creative nonfiction writing I read often resonated strongly with me, even when my personal experiences came nowhere close to that of the piece. Specifically, the main thing I have discovered enjoyment in is nonfiction that feels intimate and unfiltered. Writing is unique among media forms in its ability to transmit emotion and thoughts with explicit precision. A conversationally-told story may be interesting and engaging, but a writer can take the time to decipher all the implicit parts of that story and portray the internal, personal lives of people in fascinating ways, all the more fascinating for being based on truth.

As a writer myself, all the submissions I have read have helped me reevaluate the way I write and consider my own work. Reading broadly in all genres has given me a better understanding of deftness of word and phrase; the same techniques that make a poem striking in its concise beauty can be applied to prose as well. If a scene doesn’t have the impact I am looking for, the culprit is often a lack of those intimate thoughts that make you understand and care about the individuals portrayed.

These insights I gained through this experience will continue to improve me as a writer, reader and editor, as well as provide a more thoughtful answer to the question:

“What do you enjoy reading?”
LEAP Intern Spotlight: Confessions of an English Major, or Four Years of English Classes in 750 Words, By Isabel Henson

May 24, 2022

May we never again write a five paragraph essay.

Do you remember it? The one we were taught in high school: Introduction, three concrete paragraphs, then conclusion? Some might have even shown it as a hamburger with each bun, lettuce, cheese, and patty paralleling a specific paragraph. Well, it sucks.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think it has its time and place between learning how to write and well…only during learning how to write, but anything past that holds no substance. No real weight. To stay placidly within that structure creates a kind of self bondage that doesn’t translate into the real world. It taught us how to organize thoughts: but only in one specific way. There are a myriad of ways.

Give praise where it is due.

I do concede that if it hadn’t been for that five paragraph essay, however, I don’t know if I would have ever ran far away from it, to the opposite point of the spectrum and found my passion.

Unpopular opinion: anyone who hates poetry is wrong.

Poetry can be the opposite of the previously mentioned rigid structure. Run ons that just keep on going and going and going taught me that they are not the hearsay that I was taught and instead they have purpose and create an urgency that can only be matched or stopped by the use of fragments. Beautiful little sentences. Two words. Sometimes. Only. One. These weave focus and pointed meaning. Let us come up for a swallow of air. Everything I was taught never to use are the breaths that contribute to the lungs of the poem.

It only takes one.

I always claimed I was a poet. Turned my nose up to any prose partially because I thought poetry was superior, but mostly because I had a disastrous writing experience at my community college that solidified my belief that I could never write fiction. Pair that with back to back heartbreaks and nothing can remedy the soul like a poem. And all was going fine until my last semester of undergrad where I stumbled upon a new medium to color my world.

You must know the rules to break the rules

But this also means pushing past one’s own creative comfort zone: willingly…or sometimes unwillingly. Writing does not live within a set of lexical walls and boundaries. It does not reside within a prescriptive fortress. It is formed from experience, from hopes and dreams, from fears and nightmares.

Now break the rules:

My very first class at Chico State was Literary Genres. I walked in ready to listen to the usual poetry/prose, nonfiction/fiction ideas and was instead confronted with the idea and possibility that literature is all around us. In the signs we read, in the syllabus we idly toss, in the posters held at BLM or Roe v. Wade protests. It was not confined to the historically straight male white cannon but moved fluidly in social media and also in the lyrics of J Cole.

Time and time again I encountered this stretch of norms and steered to uphold writing to the honor it deserves. Not by rules. By content, by ferocity, by impact.

So I consumed it all and took as many poetry classes as I could to move into the space I had been taught until

I was forced to take a nonfiction class.

And the only reason I took it was because my advisor “encouraged” me (basically told me) I should not take any more poetry classes. Maybe branch out a bit. Become a little more well rounded. Appalled and annoyed, I agreed and landed myself in a nonfiction creative writing class. Once again I assumed that I would hear the poetry/prose, nonfiction/fiction talk. Turned out to be one of my favorite classes at Chico State.

Is it cheating if I still love both?

My creative nonfiction professor told me one day that I don’t know where I had been hiding, or what this “I’m not a prose writer” nonsense I had been claiming, but that I had to recognize that I was one. But the best writers of the field are those that read everything and try their hand, even for fun at a different genre. The five paragraph essay, though dull and terrible, gave me one set of tricks. Poetry handed me many more. Research papers, term papers about Shakespeare or projects on Walt Whitman, and reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen or Mai Der Vang’s Afterland gave me more. How beautifully coincidental that the last class I take here mirrors the one that began my career. That I would work for the same Watershed Review that was handed to me during my introduction to this university. If there is anything we English majors take away, it is that we are taught to admire the complex ending. It does not come neatly tied with string but rather is up to interpretation and is full of twists, leaving it up to interpretation if it is the end or the beginning..

Even a graduate still loves a cheesy happy ending.
LEAP Intern Spotlight: Graduate, Student, By Jenna Welton

March 2, 2022

Creative writing cradles the aspiring author in a cocoon of captivating craft elements and wild ideas. The undergraduate balances work and school, work, procrastination, and mind blanks.

Try to stay productive because undergrad is almost over. You’ve almost made it! Wildfires swallow the surrounding communities. Sit and stare at articles for hours without processing a single thing.

Sit bare naked and exposed in front of the laptop screen. There’s nothing to hide but no words to write. Barricaded by the barriers of a traumatized mind.

Wait and worry about those pre-requisites instead.

Let the pain dissipate gradually.

Graduate.

The virus hits right as the imposter syndrome was starting to subside. Second-semester spirals. Home becomes school becomes work which became a cage as we scramble searching for a separate space.

This is grad school—keep up the momentum. You’re a grad student—keep up the momentum. This is grad school? This is your kitchen, your living room, and your cat who won’t stop getting on top of the counter.

Summer swells with the exhaustion of the last semester and the scattered sentences of a thesis yet to be written. Autumn comes. Those page counts need to be reached soon if those deadlines are to be kept.

Those deadlines are being pushed back again.

A flash-fiction collection concept. Pages that seem to add up with every editing attempt. Try to expand on this. Please provide further explanation for your reader. We need more context. More inner dialogue, please.

Fluid short fiction flows from the fingertips with ease. A larger commitment comes with wordier literary works. Suddenly the piece has inner faucets that need tending to like those loose ends and pacing problems. You’d better revise any problematic plot holes or faulty character arcs as well.

Discussion Questions to Consider:

1. Who’s the killer of the story?

2. Which twists and turns are too trope-thick?

3. Is this influence-soaked work even yours anymore?

Piles of papers containing comments keep the thoughts flowing but at too rampant of a pace. The revision process returns once again. Try to reestablish what the work was hoping to accomplish before being dissected. Is it still the same story? Is it successful? What does successful art look like?

Wait. Worry about what happens after all this and after your defense.

Get it together and let these extra months be your saving grace.

Graduate.
LEAP Intern Spotlight: A Charge of First-Degree Writing: Almost Objective Notes from a Slush Reader, By Morgan Konefal

March 2, 2022

Twenty chapbook manuscripts. Hundreds of poems. Hours reviewing, pitching, and selecting pieces to share with a world. As an editor, this is the delicious bread and butter sprinkled with inspiration and cheddar cheese, lots of cheddar cheese. And believe it or not, depending on your astute knowledge of the enigmas of the publishing world, us editors are writers as well.

As verbally inclined artists, we are plagued (or blessed depending on your state of being) with a need to give a fraction of our jotted-down soul to anyone willing to hold it. Books. Zines. Facebook posts. A message in a bottle. Bathroom graffiti. A mother’s day card that only one person in the entire world willingly wants to read.

Most importantly (and subjective to both you and me) are the beautiful forms of poetry and the literature that falls under the umbrella term “short stories”. And as an editor, I am often asked by invisible and imaginary enthusiastic submitters: “How do I go from hopeful applicant to slapping Take That, Doubters! onto my list of published praised places?” My answer? Maximum effort. Purpose. Passion. Think you’ve got all the ingredients mixed without lumps or an accidental addition of Chemical X? Look into the mirror and interrogate your reflection with the following script before pushing the “submit” button.

Why are you submitting?
To get published.
Don’t we all?
I want to get published so I can go on and on and on and on and on and on
about it at the office Christmas party.
Wrong.

Why is this poem going first in the collection?
It’s the titular piece.
Is it the strongest one?
No.
Wrong.

Why does this character need to die?
Because I hate my mother-in-law.
But does it complicate the story? Does it produce that sweet, sweet nectar of
character development? Is there a lesson learned at her expense? Will the
reader be impacted? Think hard about it.
You mean is this only a way to force my readers to live out a fantasy that is
concerning as it is cliche?
Yes.
Yes.
Wrong.

Why
are
the
words
placed
this
way?

It’s a poetic, artistic choice.
Yes, but does the form make sense with the message? Are the white spaces a
way to denote the slowly melting polar regions in a poem about poisons
pouring into the elements? Are alignments given to show the divide between
two lovers as they realize their whirlwind relationship truly should stay in
Vegas?
No, it just looks cool.
Wrong.

Did Grammarly correct all your grammar mistakes for you?
Mayb.
Wrong.

Is this really a piece containing an idiosyncratic, beautiful voice that sings lyrics to awaken the soul of a nonbeliever? Did you really spend hours and hours rehearsing it before declaring it could not possibly have a higher potential for greatness? You’re really auditioning this work of magnificence because it means something to you and you hope it can to others?

Yes.

Congratulations, you’ve been selected for this edition of _______.

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