Matt Bell is the author of the forthcoming short-story collection, How They Were Found. He edits the literary journal The Collagist and is serving as the 2009 editor of Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web series. Matt took time from his busy schedule to talk with us about writing, literary magazines, and what his future has in store. We’d like to thank Matt — for this interview and his contribution to the literary community. Now, go on with ya and read this post. It’s the online equivalent of literary street cred.

Dark Sky Magazine: You are editing Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web series. Talk a little bit about this, about Dzanc Books and its purpose.

Matt Bell: Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web series is a yearly anthology compiling the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction published in online literary journals. Now beginning its third year, the mission of the Best of the Web series is to promote and expand the reach and prestige of online literature by offering this annual glimpse into the best writing the internet has to offer.

This year’s guest editor is Kathy Fish, an incredibly accomplished fiction writer who’s been great to work with so far. I can’t wait to see the rest of her nominations and to work with her on make final selections for the anthology.

Beyond the lists assembled by Kathy and I, the rest of the content considered comes to us via editor nominations. Any editors reading this who haven’t yet nominated for this year’s book can visit the link about to do so.

DSM: What can you say about the stories you are reading? Does 2009 seem like a particularly good year?

MB: I think it has been a strong year, but then I think almost every year is. It seems like every day there’s another article or blog post about how fiction is dead, or how no one’s reading poems, or whatever, but I just don’t believe it. Obviously, the people writing those articles are completely out of touch with what’s going on in the most interesting publications and presses, because I think there’s an incredible amount of fantastic and innovative work being done across all genres.

DSM: Publishing in print and on the Web are different animals. But they seem finally to be leveling off in terms of reputation and respect. Do you agree?

MB: Absolutely, but that has less to do with what online magazine have been or are becoming that with mainstream acceptance, whatever that’s worth. Many of the best online magazines have been around for almost ten years now, and their quality has always been there. Look at a magazine like Failbetter. Dive way back into the archives, and you’ll see how great the work has always been: The 2001 issues of Failbetter published work from Sam Lipsyte, David Hollander, Greg Ames, Peter Markus, Dawn Raffel, Matthew Cheney, Pamela Ryder, Amanda Davis, Myla Goldberg, and Heidi Julavits, among others. And that’s just a selection of the fiction. There were other stories, plus poetry and interviews and art, and most of it by writers just as interesting and accomplished as the ones I’ve listed. How many print literary mags had issues that good in 2001? How many print magazines in their first year have issues that good ever?

The point that always seems to be made by those trying to de-legitimize online journals is that anyone can start one. Well, sure, that’s true. But anyone can start a print mag too, so I’ve never really understood that. Both manners of publishing have their advantages and drawbacks, and both have practitioners who excel and those do not. I personally make almost no distinctions between the two.

DSM: Let’s talk about literature-based Web sites. More and more are popping up. How does an online litmag develop authority, lasting power?

MB: I think that in the end, online magazines will build their authority through the same means most print magazines do, which means there are a lot of different ways to get there. The best and most honest way is, of course, to consistently publish great writing. Sooner or later, that’ll get you noticed even in the absence of any other kind of efforts.

At The Collagist, I’m obviously trying to do my best to publish great writing, but I’m also trying to create a wider community around the magazine. That takes time, but we’ll keep working on it through a variety of activities. For instance, we’re doing interviews with most of our contributors for our blog, as well as inviting contributors to read their works for our podcast. This lets us highlight our contributors’ works again, and also hopefully gives readers an opportunity to interact with the work in a new way. In less visible ways, we do what we can to promote and present our contributors as best we can, and also to treat submitters as well as possible by doing what we can to be both friendly and timely. These kind of interactions are what making submitting and being published by a magazine memorable, and we know that submitters and contributors will do as much to spread the word about The Collagist as anyone else.

DSM: Would you say the Web is saturated, or bountiful, when it comes to litmags?

MB: This is another one of those arguments I hear all the time: That there are too many literary magazines. What does that even mean? That there are too many people writing and reading and wanting to publish fiction and poetry? How can that be a bad thing? Literature isn’t a sports league with too many teams diluting the quality of play. Do the people making this argument really believe that if there were just less magazines, then their own favorite would somehow automatically be more successful? That seems naïve at best.

I feel like I’m being grumpy about this, but again, it goes back to what I mentioned above, about the doom and gloom forecasts that no one reads anymore, that no good books are being published, that there are no great young writers. Just like those arguments, this one is so obviously flawed, out of touch, and perhaps petty that I do my best to ignore the kind of people who make it. Much better, I think, to do what we can as writers and editors to build each other up, to elevate the literary publishing and emerging writer worlds together. We can spend our time tearing each other down in the hopes that the survivors will seem that much stronger, or else we can work together to broaden not just the reach of our own writing and publishing but also that of those around us, in the hopes that we’ll all rise together. I already know which I’ve chosen, and I think most people I know have chosen the same.

DSM: Which do you follow regularly? Why?

MB: Online, I read a wide variety of magazines, but some of my favorite journals include: elimae, Wigleaf, Guernica, Failbetter, Memorious, FRiGG, DIAGRAM, SmokeLong Quarterly, JMWW, Everyday Genius, Necessary Fiction, Storyglossia, The Quarterly Conversation, Night Train, Lamination Colony, NOÖ Journal, and Juked. I hate to even make a list like this, because I’m sure I’m leaving off places I read all the time simply because they won’t immediately come to mind, but those are all ones I visit regularly and read most if not all of what they publish.

And those are just the magazines that publish exclusively online. Some of the best online supplements from print journals come from Conjunctions, Hobart, Barrelhouse, PANK, Keyhole, American Short Fiction, and Monkeybicycle. Those are all places whose web content is must-read material for me, just as their print versions are.

One new online magazine I’ve found really interesting is matchbook, which publishes flash fiction besides small essays by their writers. It’s an interesting idea, and I’m looking forward to reading more.

DSM: You’ve made your name with your own writing. Any news? What are you working on now?

MB: Things are going well! I can’t complain. In major news, I’m in sort of a slow period. My collection How They Were Found won’t be out from Keyhole until next fall, so that’s still a ways off. I’ve got stories upcoming in a number of magazine, including Conjunctions, Willow Springs, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and PANK. As far as current projects, I’m working on a first draft of a novel as well as a novella-in-shorts, parts of which have been accepted at Gargoyle, Sleepingfish, ml press, Everyday Genius, Wigleaf, and Featherproof’s new TripleQuick Fiction.

DSM: And the future? Give us the five year plan.

MB: I’ve never been much of a planner, so the future’s hard to see. Writing-wise, I just hope to keep growing and keep working harder. I hope I keep finding the books I need when I need them, and that I keep meeting new friends among the writers and readers around me. It’s an exciting time to be a reader, a writer, or an editor, and I’m sure the next could of years are going to be just as great for everyone involved. I’m looking forward to finding out.

DSM: Anything else you’d like to share with readers?

MB: How about some book recommendations? Here are four books released this month that I think everyone should read, including one novel, one story collection, one memoir, and one poetry collection: Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez, Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler, The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot, and The First Risk by Charles Jensen. All books I highly recommend, and that I think are among the must-read books of the fall.

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Matt Bell is the author of two chapbooks, The Collectors (Caketrain, 2009) and How the Broken Lead the Blind (Willows Wept Press, 2009), as well as a full-length fiction collection titled How They Were Found, coming Fall 2010 from Keyhole Press. His fiction has been published or is upcoming in Conjunctions, Willow Springs, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and many other magazines. He is also the editor of The Collagist and can be found online at www.mdbell.com.

Tagged as: Literature in the Media, New Literature Online

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