Our new Fiction Editor, Anthony Yarbrough, on what kind of writing he’s looking to publish.
What makes good writing is, ironically, incredibly difficult to articulate. “You know it when you see it” only gets you so far, considering that what I might enjoy isn’t necessarily what you might enjoy. As a writer, I’m sympathetic to the struggle of measuring your own work – the product of much private toil and scarce feedback – against published work that lives intimidatingly, monolithically out there, in the world. Published writing can seem effortless, as though it were conceived whole and complete. The seams that indicate the labor and frustration and uncertainty of creative endeavor have been expertly disguised, or artfully exposed. As creators, how are we to measure the efficacy of our labor? How can we know whether our own material is ready to be published?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a succinct answer to that. I have many half-finished thoughts in my notebook to prove it. As Blue Mesa Review’s incoming fiction editor, however, I can try to describe what kinds of stories catch my eye for publication, as well as identify certain features of work that I don’t feel is right for us right now.
I’m someone who enjoys a balanced diet of literary fiction and nonfiction, in addition to genre work. My own work could slot variously into any of those categories, or somewhere between them. I say that not as a preamble to a plug for my own projects, but as a way of qualifying the following statement: while genre fiction is, as an art from, just as viable as literary fiction, I’m not as interested in publishing genre fiction in Blue Mesa Review. That being said, if your genre story explores the southwest’s unique social, cultural, regional and historical features, then please send it our way. I’m also interested in pieces that probe the boundaries between genres, so long as they’re written from an authentic and personal point of view. Otherwise, before you pay our submission fee, I strongly encourage you to consider searching out publications that specialize in publishing genre works.
Before I mention authors I love and am currently reading, I have to admit I’m not sure whether this exercise will help anyone understand what I’m after. I look at my stack of recently read books – Michel Houellebecq, Peter Nadas, Kate Braverman and Marilynne Robinson – and don’t see an obvious connective tissue between their works. I’m in awe of Braverman’s sheer linguistic power, and am humbled by Robinson’s empathy. I admire Houellebecq’s satires of contemporary society, and wish I could emulate Nadas’s intense and meticulous rendering of interiority. But the throughline among them remains elusive.
Now, if I lean over that stack and survey the numerous stacks of books against my living room wall, I see a record of personal interests I explored throughout my twenties. I’ve sought out impenetrably literate modernist and postmodernist works (you know the ones), and read them with the pleasure of someone wanting to be edified but not pandered to. These works share space with comics anthologies and intricately designed graphic novels, hard sci-fi and classic horror, bleak noir and gushing romance. About half of my collection was written by American authors, and the other half was written by writers from every major continent. (I can see this with just a glance since I recently sorted everything according to region and author, and in the process distressed my cats by throwing our living room into sudden disarray.) I suppose this is all to say that I try to read with an open mind and little expectation other than to be entertained, educated, or enlightened by other perspectives.
Therefore, it’s only appropriate to conclude with a few words on perspectives I am looking for. I’m interested particularly in publishing marginalized voices, especially those from BIPOC and queer communities. I’m looking for writing that speaks to authentic, lived experience, especially when those experiences expose the fissures and contradictions of our deeply frightening world’s status quo. Ultimately, however, I believe in the wisdom of the writer to follow their own intuition. In that spirit, I encourage you to submit to Blue Mesa Review the language inside you that generates its own rhythm, language that is beholden only to itself.
