Creative_Nonfiction_-_Summer_2015.pdf

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2nd annual
READERS’
CHOICE
THEME
WAITING
Because the truth takes time
SUMMER 2015
56
ISSUE
PLUS:
The art of immersion; finding solace in
memoirs of loss; tiny truths; and more
$10.00
From the Editor
LEE GUTKIND
What’s the Story?
today
—as is pretty much the case on any given day, week, month—I am waiting.
An editor working on a manuscript I submitted in late April said she would
need three weeks to get back to me. Three weeks later, she wrote again, telling
me she was headed to Europe on vacation but would get to my work in two
more weeks. I am waiting.
Back in October, at the Creative Nonfiction office, we submitted a detailed
letter of intent to a national foundation, proposing a project and a special
themed issue. We waited. Three months later, the foundation requested a full
proposal, giving us two months to work on it. We complied—and waited some
more. Two months after that deadline, they asked for a revision, due in three
days. I worked all weekend, grudgingly, yet encouraged by the invitation, and
made the deadline—and now we are waiting again. Meanwhile, other proposals
are pending, both here at Creative Nonfiction in Pittsburgh and at Arizona State
University, where I teach, and we are all waiting to see which projects will find
funding and which we’ll have to let go, at least for now.
In December, the contractor remodeling the new CNF offices explained
that the work to be done on the outside of the building would have to wait
until spring; you can’t pour concrete in Pittsburgh in winter. We had thought
we might move in February, but no dice. We waited. Then, in April, we
learned that some special work was required on the natural gas lines that will
eventually heat our new digs—so we are waiting some more. We may not
move until September.
Meanwhile, as I write this piece—on the hottest day of the year so far—my
air conditioner has failed. I called the AC repairman, but I am not the only one
in the city with a coolant problem on this stifling day. I must wait for three days.
I walked up to Starbucks, and the line was nearly out into the street. So I waited.
Fifteen minutes later, the guy in front of me couldn’t decide what to order, so I
waited while he asked the barista twenty questions about the breakfast choices and
the oatmeal toppings. And then I waited a little longer while the barista brewed a
fresh pot of Verona Roast—dark—to fill my order.
Back at Creative Nonfiction, we are always waiting for submissions for
upcoming special magazine issues and for anthologies for our In Fact Books
imprint. There’s always a time, early on, when we worry: submissions are
slow, and maybe no one will be interested in or inspired by the theme, and
then, in the month and the week and then the day before the deadline, the
pace (we hope) picks up. Right now, submissions for a “marriage” issue are
trickling in. (The deadline is in August.) So we hope, and we wait.
And then, of course, it’s the writers’ turn to wait. When submissions come
in for a themed issue, like this one, they go to screeners, who will narrow
down the potential manuscripts by about 60 percent. For a typical issue of
Being able to publish
great work is what
makes all the rest of the
waiting worthwhile.
Continued on Page 2
EDITOR
READERS
(CONTINUED)
Lee Gutkind
MANAGING EDITOR
Hattie Fletcher
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Chad Vogler
COORDINATING EDITOR
Marjorie Stewart
Héloïse Thomas-Cambonie
Nicole Tryling
Valerie Van Selous
Melanie Viets
Alexa Winchell
MARKETING DIRECTOR
What’s the Story?
Continued
the magazine, we receive around five hundred to six hundred
essays; for this “waiting” issue, we received 665 submissions.
The screeners read them all carefully and trade them off—each
essay has two readers—so it is a long process. Meanwhile, we
wait, and the writers wait. Then, an assistant editor narrows
down the field to maybe fifty—that also takes time. Then
our managing editor, Hattie Fletcher, reads the fifty and, for
a magazine issue, narrows it down to about fifteen, while I
wait, and eventually she passes that batch over to me. Then she
waits. And the writers wait.
And while all of the above is happening, we are also waiting
for students to register for classes in our online school so that
we can assure teachers they will have assignments, and, if it is
the beginning of the year, there’s also our annual conference
to plan and wait for.
Which is all to say, there’s a lot of waiting going on at CNF,
but what we wait for most of all is compelling, informative,
enticing narrative essays—like the ones in this issue of
Creative
Nonfiction—our
fifty-sixth over twenty-one years of publishing.
Being able to publish great work is what makes all the rest of the
waiting worthwhile.
As it happens, one of the writers in this issue reminds
me of a long wait I had some years ago. It was when
Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather
was being considered for
publication. One of the outside readers had been delayed by
some personal problem. I don’t remember anymore what
the holdup was, but I remember two things about that
experience. First, the waiting drove me crazy. This was my
first collection of essays—I had published many narrative
books before, but nothing so personal—and I really wanted
this book to be published. I was excited and anxious, more
so than usual. What I also remember is the incredibly
good editing advice I got from this reader when she finally
weighed in; she suggested a simple but key restructuring
of my book that made the entire collection significantly
better. I was delighted, as was the publisher. The long and
anguishing wait was worth every minute; the book was
published in 2003, and it is still in print—with a note of
acknowledgment to this terrific reader.
That reader was the incomparable Judith Kitchen, for many
years a good friend to Creative Nonfiction. Judith’s impact
on the field of creative nonfiction—as a teacher, a writer, an
editor—was significant. She died of cancer less than a year
ago, not long after submitting an essay, “Any Given Day,” to
us for this “waiting” issue. It is our great honor to publish it
posthumously here.
Matt Spindler
SECTION EDITORS
Stephen Knezovich
ART DIRECTOR
Alice Bradley
cnfonline
Seth Clark
DESIGNER
Dinty W. Moore
Pushing the Boundaries
Casey Kovach
COPYEDITOR
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
Kristina Marusic
Shannon Swearingen
EDITORIAL INTERNS
Jill Patterson
BUSINESS MANAGER
Patricia Park
OFFICE ASSISTANT
Sara Button
Destiny Johnson
Brady Langmann
READERS
Woody Shaffer-Carr
EDITORIAL BOARD
Angie Andrewes
Stephanie Bane
Terry Barr
Brigette Bernagozzi
Becky Bosshart
Lauren Calabrese
Barbara Davis
Chelsea Denard
Michael Don
Lisa Dopke
Melissa Grunow
Caitlyn Hunter
Julia Jenkins
Catherine Johnson
Avery Keatley
Linda Kobert
Jennifer Latson
Emily Laubham
Heather McDonald
Katie McGrath
Kara Norman
Kim Olsen
Maggie Pahos
Dusty-Anne Rhodes
Chelsea Ritter
Ryan Shek
Morgan Stien
Erin Stewart
Dinty W. Moore
Patricia Park
Lea Simonds
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Diane Ackerman
Buzz Bissinger
Edwidge Danticat
Annie Dillard
Dave Eggers
Jonathan Franzen
Tracy Kidder
Rick Moody
Susan Orlean
Francine Prose
Ruth Reichl
Richard Rodriguez
Rebecca Skloot
Gay Talese
WEB SUPPORT
ZAP Solutions
PRINTING
Broudy Printing
o. XXX-XXX-000
Copyright (c) 2015 by the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. All rights
reserved. Reproduction, whether in whole or in part, without permission
is strictly prohibited. Subscriptions for individuals are $50 for eight
issues or $32 for four issues. Subscriptions for domestic libraries are
$80 for eight issues or $40 for four issues. Canadian subscriptions are
$70 for eight issues and $50 for four issues; other foreign countries are
$99 for eight issues or $60 for four issues; both payable in US funds.
Digital subscriptions, available through zinio.com, are $25 for four
issues. Postmaster: Please send address changes to the Creative Nonfiction
Foundation at the address listed below.
Address correspondence, unsolicited material, subscription orders, and
other queries to The Creative Nonfiction Foundation, 5501 Walnut Street,
Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Telephone: 412-688-0304;
fax: 412-688-0262; email: information@creativenonfiction.org; Internet:
http://www.creativenonfiction.org. Manuscripts will not be returned
unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Creative Nonfiction (ISSN #1070-0714) is distributed in the U.S. by
Ingram Periodicals Inc., 1240 Heil Quaker Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37058-
7000, 800-627-6247; Media Solutions, 9632 Madison Blvd., Madison,
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in Australia by Speedimpex Australia Pty Ltd Unit 3/123 McEvoy Street,
Alexandria NSW 2015 Australia. Creative Nonfiction is indexed in the
Humanities International Complete (Whitston Publishing Company).
For questions about subscriptions or to place classroom orders, please
contact Chad Vogler: vogler@creativenonfiction.org, 412-688-0304
To advertise in Creative Nonfiction, please contact Matt Spindler:
spindler@creativenonfiction.org, 412-688-0304
ABOUT THE
ILLUSTRATIONS
Born in 1979 in New York City,
JENNIFER NAGLE MYERS
is a visual
artist and director based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work locates itself at
the intersection of video, performance, drawing, photography, and
sculpture. In this charged space she examines personal and political
narratives whose common refrain is “everything is connected,
everything is at stake.” Her work is at www.punkypip.com.
About the illustrations she created for this issue, she says: “These
drawings are linked to the work I am doing now in my studio,
where I am using drawing to invent a new language for myself.
A language of form and line that turns feelings, or phrases, into
distinct and repeatable symbols and characters. For this issue,
I took the essential phrases from each of the essays and began
drawing them over and over, waiting for a clear and definite form
to emerge. This took time. Once I had waited long enough, the
phrase became a symbol. The jet-black Chinese ink was a nice
juxtaposition to the concept of waiting, because with this medium
everything is instant and indelible. There is no waiting, except for
it to dry. Once you mark the page, you cannot go back. The process
was a dance between waiting and being extremely present.”
THIS ISSUE OF
CREATIVE NONFICTION
WAS MADE POSSIBLE
BY SUPPORT FROM:
This project is supported in part by an award
from the National Endowment for the Arts
This publication is funded by Pennsylvania
Partners in the Arts, a program of the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts,
administered in Allegheny County by the
Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.

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