Ask anyone involved with literary publishing what’s the biggest, most wearying task they face. Sooner or later they’ll confess.
Sooner, actually.
It’s the seemingly endless, the truly endless slog through the so-called “slush pile.” There we find the unsolicited manuscripts that appear by the tens and dozens and, yes, thousands. Each manuscript represents the hopes of an author out there somewhere, in this country or beyond, who dreams that this will be the one, snatched aloft in the trembling hand of a grateful editor with a cry of “Eureka!”
I’ve spent thirty years sharing those same hopes with every story, every novel manuscript I’ve launched into the ether. As I read the unsolicited submissions that come to my desk I try never to forget the author who stands silently behind each one.
This burden is shared by journals and commercial magazines and book publishers too. Except here’s a dirty little secret: most commercial publishers don’t bother to read the slush pile anymore. It’s not in their interest, not in their mission. It’s not necessary to finding what they’re after. They can rely on literary agents to do the weeding for them.
The new reading period at KR began September 1, and over the course of the next five months we will receive thousands and thousands of unsolicited manuscripts. And we will read each and every one.
It’s not easy.
Often, late at night or on a silent weekend afternoon in the office, the reading poem after story after memoir can become bone wearying.
Until a few years ago I glanced at every single manuscript myself after it had been opened and logged, assigning the submissions to different readers, keeping many for myself, all for fear of making a mistake, sending back a gem that we ought to publish.
I now accept that we will make mistakes. So much of what comes in is truly wonderful and deserving. But with a small staff and loyal cadre of contributing editors to read the submissions, which grow in number every year, mistakes are inevitable. All I can do is shrug and accept that, and hope that we don’t make the more grievous error of publishing something in KR that’s not up to the highest standards, what we’re always striving for with all our might.
So why do we do it? Truth is, we could publish a wonderful journal with just the material that comes from authors we know or whom we’ve published before.
We do it because it is in our interest, is in our mission. It is necessary to finding what we’re after.
There are few feelings in the world as good–and I’ve experienced this often enough now, sometimes when I’m weariest and at the end of my rope–as reaching toward the sky with my trembling hand (okay, I know this is a little over the top, but hey) and crying “Eureka!” It does happen.
Last year, you may recall, two out of a total of twenty short stories that received the prestigious O. Henry Prize were first published in KR. That’s quite an achievement, given that we were up against the toughest competition in the world. But what’s more astounding is that both those stories were unsolicited. Both came from the slush pile. Eureka.