Pub Crawl: Freight Stories

I’m a student/tutor/writer, and my wife is a nurse practitioner, and we get along famously. But we’re both pretty competitive—not at all without ego—and at times we have mused about what types of conflict would occur if we both worked in the same field, even on the same team. I imagine that it would be both difficult and rewarding, and for this reason I marvel at couples who are able to engage in the creative arts together. The fine literary journal Freight Stories was created by two authors with careers of their own, who also happen to be married.

Many thanks to editors Victoria Barrett and Andrew Scott for taking the time to chat with us about Freight Stories, publishing, matrimony and their own creative work.

RM: You two started Freight Stories in 2008, after being co-editors of Puerto del Sol for a couple of years. How has editing an independent literary journal been different from editing one housed in a university MFA program? Are there different ways in which you approach submissions?

AS: While in graduate school at New Mexico State University, we were the managing editors at Puerto del Sol. Kevin McIlvoy was the editor-in-chief at the time, and he is a tremendously careful and caring editor, and he was a good mentor for us. One difference, of course, is that we don’t have a built-in financial structure to rely upon, though several prominent literary journals have lost most or all of their university funding recently. After finishing the MFA program in 2002, we wanted to start a literary journal of our own, but the costs were prohibitive.

I don’t think we approach submissions in different ways. It’s important for us to read work on its own terms, and to give each submission a lot of slack early on as we attempt to do that. We learned how to do that while editing for Puerto del Sol. 

VB: The biggest difference to me is infrastructure, specifically staff. As Andrew points out, Freight Stories isn’t buoyed up by an institutional budget. At Puerto del Sol we had a work-study provided to assist with daily clerical work, which was a big part of our managing editor duties. We also had a built-in pool for volunteer manuscript readers looking to add an associate editor line to their CVs.

Without those deep resources, we’ve had to be frugal with both time and budget. This has meant scaling back some elements of our operation—fewer issues per year than we originally intended, for example. But it has also meant more freedom and control. The 40ish years of Puerto del Sol’s history were a powerful force behind our work there, but Freight Stories represents our vision alone. I’m not sure I could go back, at this point, to editing someone else’s journal.

RM: Another literary journal whose editors I had the opportunity to interview, Caketrain, also was founded and edited by a married couple, Amanda Raczkowski & Joseph Reed. They told me, “We do our best to not allow Caketrain to affect our personal lives, but when you work on a project as much as we work on Caketrain sometimes it becomes difficult.” Would you tell us some of the dynamics of running a literary journal with your spouse?

VB: Andrew and I have natural abilities and roles that complement one another. I’m a budget geek who’s also a bit more inclined to explore, for example, how to do the tech stuff. Andrew’s a much stronger force in communicating with authors, especially in persuading them to trust us with their best work. The subtle differences between us worm right down into the process of preparing manuscripts for publication: I line-edit voice-driven, lyrical stories most effectively; Andrew is spectacular at considering a good story’s narrative arc, pacing and character development, and helping authors sharpen and enhance the vision they brought to their story in the first place.

So, sure, every endeavor contains the possibility for conflict. But I think we have far less than most other pairs of people—married or strangers—who partner on a serious endeavor. We have the same educational backgrounds, have been a couple for 12 years and have been working together in some capacity for eight of those years. The kinks are pretty much worked out by now. I suppose the only real difference now is that we can do everything Freight Stories requires without ever leaving our house.

AS: Collaborating with anyone else on a project takes a lot of patience and clear communication. But I only want to work with the best. How convenient, really, that I live with such a talented writer—and that she is also one of the best editors around. We also share an office and a commute for our university jobs. A visiting writer once said to me, “I couldn’t share an office with my wife.” But we’ve renovated a house together, so working together as editors is pretty easy, by comparison. 

RM: What have been your favorite story collections of the last year? How do your tastes differ?

AS: It’s hard to pick favorites. I’m teaching a class for which I have adopted three story collections, so maybe that reveals my tastes as a reader of short fiction: Barb Johnson’s "More of This World or Maybe Another," Dylan Landis’s "Normal People Don’t Live Like This" and Tracy Winn’s "Mrs. Somebody Somebody." Were it already in paperback, I would have adopted Robin Black’s "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This." An extremely high percentage of my favorite short story authors are women, actually. That wasn’t the case when I first began reading seriously. If I permitted to reach back a couple of years, I am still in awe of Paul Yoon’s "Once the Shore" and Donald Ray Pollock’s "Knockemstiff," too.

VB: I’m not sure I’ve read but one new story collection this year, and that was Jennifer Egan’s "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which never quite claims the title “story collection,” incidentally, and which I liked a lot. I’ve read a lot of individual stories—Robin Black’s are terrific—but I’ve not been in the mood to read a collection as a whole in a really long time. I did read Janet Peery’s "What the Thunder Said," though that was published in 2008. I found myself completely transported by it, staying up all night, unable to put it down.

It’s hard to say where our tastes diverge. As I mentioned above, we have different talents as editors, though that’s not really a reflection of our tastes; we both have to like a story an awful lot to accept it in the first place. Historically, I could say that I was much more interested in work by women writers than Andrew, but as he mentioned, that’s not true any longer. We both deeply love a wide range of fiction—our tastes are so broad that we have a tremendous amount of overlap.

RM: Andrew, I heard through Facebook that you have a new story collection coming out soon from Press 53, which last spring released "Miracle Boy," the story collection of one of my all-time favorite writers, Pinckney Benedict. Please tell us about your collection, and how you hooked up with Press 53.

AS: My book is called "Naked Summer." It has nine stories, starting with a swift two-pager and ending with the nearly novella-length title story. I have known of Press 53 for several years now, and they’ve published many writers whose work I know and admire—not just Pinckney Benedict, but also Darlin’ Neal and Becky Hagenston, and I’m looking forward to the new book by Michael Kardos. Kevin Watson, the publisher, has made it a press that champions short stories, which I appreciate for a number of reasons.

RM: What are some of your pet peeves in regards to submissions? How can those of us who want to see our work in Freight Stories not piss you two off? How can we thrill you?

AS: Not pissing off editors is easy. Just follow the submission guidelines and send your absolute best work. Thrilling editors is much harder. But a story with a big heart and so-so prose usually wins out over a stylistically fancy story with no substance. We can help make a writer’s prose better, but it’s hard to work with a lifeless piece, and there are always more submissions in the queue.

VB: I try not to have pet peeves, which are more or less collections of anti-darlings, annoyances you nurture and caress until they plague you everywhere you look, present or not. If writers care about their work and they’ve taken a look at Freight Stories so they know a little something about us, I’m happy to take their work seriously and give it the time it deserves. That means don’t send us poetry, spell-check (at a minimum), what have you.

To thrill me, reach big. I don’t have formal preferences beyond precision and care in the presentation of the work; Freight Stories considers all shapes and forms of fiction because Andrew and I love all shapes and forms of fiction. But regardless of form, a story or novel excerpt that doesn’t work hard to reveal the world—inner and/or outer—of its characters in a new light, a light that illuminates something in the world beyond the page, is hard to love. Work that does reach far and wide, even if it’s imperfect or maybe even doesn’t quite accomplish what it sets out to do, though, is easy to fall for.

You can submit your fiction to Freight Stories at freightstories.com.  

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