Spotlight On…Literary Magazines
Can They Help a Religion Author’s Career?

By Juli Cragg Hilliard -- Publishers Weekly, 6/28/2006

The high school teacher sent stories to literary magazines. She valued any feedback, so “when I received a rejection with such a response, I was joyous to have some direction for revision and then to send it on elsewhere.”

Her work had shown up in various literary journals for six years by the time she submitted stories from a manuscript to the Missouri Review in 1998. What Susan Vreeland didn’t know was that the fiction editor of the Missouri Review, Greg Michalson, was also the fiction editor of a small Denver-based book publisher, MacMurray & Beck, and in 1999 he published the manuscript as Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Penguin bought the paperback rights, and Vreeland has been with Penguin ever since. She writes full-time now and is working on her sixth novel. For this bestselling author, the link between a literary magazine and a book contract couldn’t have been any more direct.

Writers on religion or spirituality have the same kind of opportunity. In the universe of literary journals, relatively few focus on themes of faith. Among the most established are the 1989-founded Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion and 30-year-old Parabola: The Search for Meaning. And as in the more general publications, the editors of some newer literary magazines say they also showcase new voices writing about religion and spirituality in a way that can get writers noticed.

Competition to be published in a literary journal is so fierce that the very fact a writer gets in indicates to agents, publishers and anthology editors that the work is quality, said Laurie Klein, contributing editor at Rock & Sling: A Journal of Literature, Art and Faith. The twice-yearly magazine requires that the material “bump up against Christianity in some way,” said Klein, who co-founded it with fellow editors Laurie Cowger and Kris Christensen. All are writers who found themselves caught between the religion market and the literary world. Said Klein, “We wanted to create a hallmark of quality writing while being unafraid of broad differences in spiritual experience.”

Donna Stein, publisher of the multifaith Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, told RBL that journal publication adds to a writer’s credentials and piques the interest of editors. A writer herself, Stein said agents have contacted her after her work has appeared in a literary magazine. Tiferet solicits submissions from name authors for each issue, providing another boost for the unknown writers whose work appears alongside theirs. Coleman Barks gave Tiferet an original poem and serves on the advisory board.

Contest prizes are another resume-builder. Rock & Sling runs a poetry contest with a July 30 deadline. Tiferet’s annual contest has poetry, nonfiction and fiction categories and a Dec. 31 deadline.

Mima'amakim doesn’t run contests but does provide a platform for poetry, prose and traditional art across the spectrum of Jewish religious experience. Jake Marmer, who is co-editor-in-chief with Chaim Strauchler, said the journal is taking a sabbatical after six years of publishing—it will return in 2007—but continues to host Web forums and blogs. All of the editors were Yeshiva University students when they began Mima'amakim. They saw that Jewish pop culture and academic periodicals existed, but there was nothing then specifically for creative work. (Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture was founded in 2002.) “If you are visible you have a chance to become more visible,” Marmer said.

Any time a writer’s work gets published, it is helpful, Rock & Sling’s Klein said. “You never know who’s going to pick up that journal out there, and who they will know.”