"ONE IN TWO HUNDRED": The Crazyhorse Journal Project
Faculty Mentor Anthony Varallo and Student Amy Sauber, Editorial Assistant in Prose
Anything can draw me into a story. It can be a line of dialogue, a sentence that jumps straight into scene, or a character speaking with a strong, commanding voice. I’m looking for a fast start. I also want the story to answer some simple, but important questions: who are these characters? What is going on? When/where is the setting? What is the conflict? I don’t need to know all the answers right away, but I expect that the answers will arrive, eventually.
—Amy Sauber, in response to an assigned essay on story beginnings
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| Amy Sauber and Anthony Varallo at the SURF Poster Session, August 2007 |
Two hundred and nineteen manuscripts, one promising story. These, the results of our summer-long project, reading fiction and essay manuscripts for issue number 72 of Crazyhorse, in addition to researching other literary journals, comparing different editorial approaches. That we only found one potentially publishable submission after reading so many manuscripts wasn’t a disappointment, though. Rather, through the weekly process of reading and commenting on unsolicited submissions, I saw Amy develop her own critical sensibility, sharpening her editorial eye, defining what drew her to a story, or, more often, what kept her out. Short stories, it seemed, could lose a reader several different ways. No “formulas” for success emerged. I was impressed by Amy’s enthusiasm, as well as by the quality of her written comments for each manuscript, inscribed, at my insistence, on the submission envelopes. These comments, together with our editorial discussions, form an extended dialogue between editor and writer, and mark not so much the end of a literary apprenticeship as a beginning.
—Professor Anthony Varallo