As the creator and director of Poets & Writers’ Publishing Seminars Program, Amy Holman addresses the needs of writers (including herself).  She teaches writers what they need to know about matching their work with the right editors and agents.  In a recent email interview, Amy described the goals and successes of the publishing seminars program.  Her answers to my many questions will inform you about the history, development and value of her online (and sometimes in-person) seminars for organizing your effort to successfully submit and publish poetry and fiction.

Sheila:
How would you describe the mission of P&W’s publishing seminars?

Amy:
The publishing seminars teach writers how to be like detectives and figure out which magazines and publishers would have an affinity for their work and which would not; which publishers are receptive to new writers and which are not; how to effectively pitch their book manuscript to publishers and how to help promote their books to the niche markets they know the best. There’s a lot of focus on writing workshops, the creation of the work, the perfecting of the work so that it will meet the standards of publishers. But publishers are not all alike in their viewpoints. And sometimes writers just go for the best of whatever is out there, or what they have heard is the best without having any idea why something is considered best, or who is making that determination.

Sheila:
How did you design your program to help writers answer their questions about what publishers are right for their work?

Amy:
The seminars started in the classroom in November 1995 with four “Poems Into Print” classes taught in collaboration with Poets House, a wonderful organization that happens to be on the floor below Poets & Writers. Then in January, we offered “Fiction Into Print,” taught by the writer, David Surface, and “Keys to Successful Publishing,” a ten-week class I taught to poets, fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers. I still keep in touch with some of the participants from those early classes. Everyone from the first Keys class went on to get work published within months after the class in anthologies, magazines both small and specific and academically based, from Baseball Monologues to Virginia Quarterly Review. The classes developed over the years, and then we added the option of e-mail seminars in fall of 1998, and the program was called Literary Horizons until last July when it was changed back into Publishing Seminars.

 The e-mail seminars give us the opportunity to reach writers outside the city and those in the city who might not be able to go to a class at a set time each week. I’m the only one teaching now. I love both classroom and e-mail environments. I like how I can have participants from Hawaii, France, Wyoming, Ohio, and California take my seminars. Currently, I teach seminars in how to publish, how to pitch a book manuscript, and how to promote a forthcoming book, and one each in poetry and prose (fiction and creative nonfiction combined). I cover beginning and emerging writers’ needs. I want to come up with more specialized classes.

Sheila:
What results make you feel the most successful in helping writers?

Amy:
When they write back with success–magazine acceptances, getting through to an agent, getting a book accepted. One guy who was despondent over the slow process of publishing got a two-book deal. Also, lately, I’ve been attending book parties. I often close a class by saying “invite me to your book parties.” The first one was Andrea Carter Brown who had a chapbook that won the Sow’s Ear Poetry Prize, and she told me that she just followed everything I said in the “Poems Into Print” seminar–sent to magazines for awhile, got her acceptances, and then submitted for chapbooks. That was thrilling.

Sheila:
Can you explain how writers sign up for and best utilize the service?

Amy:
The seminars will begin again in the fall. The e-mail seminars are easy. They cost $75-$85, with early bird sign-ups that lop off $15, usually, and we take credit cards, checks, money orders. The seminars are conducted through e-mail as a cut and paste in the body of the message, not as an attachment. A class like “Publishing Your Prose,” for instance, would take place over five days, with a section of the text sent each day. The recipient can read it at any time. Some classes have homework. When questions are asked, I copy the question, give my answer and send it out to everyone.

I co-hosted a publishing conference for NY State writers with Nathalie Thill of the Adirondack Center for Writing in Blue Mountain Lake, NY on June 13-15th.  I’m really excited about this because it’s the first Poets & Writers conference. It was made possible through a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (which was why only New York State writers could go) and was on the writing life. The headliners were Joe Connelly, Nick Flynn and Sigrid Nunez. In addition, the NYSCA has funded one-day publishing seminars in the last few years and they’ve been a successful way for me to bring the teachings of my program to, as they say, “writers in under-funded counties.”

Sheila:
I’d like to know more about Poets & Writers and your history as a writer and now seminar director.  There must be many ways that writers can benefit from the work of P&W.

Amy:
Poets & Writers is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1970. There are a few different departments. Poets & Writers Magazine is the most visible and an essential resource for creative writers with interviews, market news, grants and awards. The Readings/Workshops program was what started the organization. NYSCA is one of the chief funders of that in New York State. It is essentially a regranting program that pays writers to give readings and teach workshops across the state. There’s a companion program in California called California Voices. There’s my program, which also produces A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, which has contact information for over 7,400 poets, fiction writers and performance writers, and will become a web-based directory in the near future. Then, there’s the Friends program, for individuals who give to the organization.

I started the publishing program after having done some freelance guest lectures because there was a loss of funding in the department I was in at the time. We needed something that could make money. People always asked, “How do I get published?” “How do I find a literary agent?” So, the idea was to direct them to a very specific strategy. It fit the mission of Poets & Writers.

I learned what I teach from the exceptional poet and teacher, Elaine Equi, who was a friend when I took a writing workshop with her about ten years ago. She had such a generous, expansive view of poetry and introduced us all to experimental forms while also teaching us a kind of analytical way of assessing the style interests of poetry editors. It changed my life. And because I read a wide range of magazines so as to offer my students a spectrum, my writing has changed. I’m reading “outside of the box” that I would stay in, otherwise. So, now I suggest to writers to, now and then, push a little, read what is confounding at first, read exotic if you like traditional, and traditional if you write exotic. You never know where it might take you.

Sheila:
What is the most common resistance writers have when they begin to work on their own behalf for publishing?

Amy:
Well, don’t we all want that secret elixir, that genie in the bottle that will make something happen in an instant without any labor? Writers don’t like it when I tell them that they know their writing the best and so they are the best ones to find a home for it. It is great if a writer can get an agent to do the selection for them, but poets can’t get agents and not all fiction writers or creative nonfiction writers can, either. You can’t get an agent unless you have a book manuscript, there’s no interest in shopping individual short stories or essays. And you have to know your own style and the reading interests of agents to get the right agent for your book. So, this all boils down to the writer doing some work all by her lonesome. But I teach a quick method for evaluating style, so success can come more easily. No one wants to wait, or be rejected, but the fact is you have to wait and there will always be some rejection.

Sheila:
How do you encourage writers to overcome their resistance and participate in your seminars?

Amy:
I am of the mind that if you know the market, and you know the business, you are empowered, and empowerment makes you a stronger writer and person. But, if want to get published, you really have to read what’s being published. I open up their eyes to the huge bounty of literary journals, online magazines, small, university and mid-sized publishers, agents, and I also help them to be savvy about the business.

Sheila:
How have you become knowledgeable about so many places to publish?  It sounds like this must take a lot of time and contacts and that doing your seminar would be a great way to capitalize on all the work you have done!

Amy:
Initially, it did take a lot of time. And now and then I add magazines or publishers that I had not assessed. I analyze them using certain questions and that makes it go quickly while also giving me (and anyone else) a sense of their scope. I do teach writers how to do this in my seminars, but it’s true that I end up knowing more than they do because I am reading through a wider range of publications than any individual writer will do for herself or himself. So, yes, absolutely, writers benefit from all my hard work, and extensive reading!

Sheila:
Do you want to answer questions you wish I had asked?

Amy:
I will add that my ulterior motive in teaching writers how to get published is to get them to read more. I love it when I introduce a writer to a poem or story by a writer they may never have come across. That’s the best part, when we expand as readers. We are inspired as writers, and as human beings, by what we read, and we simply find new favorites. I did not get an M.F.A., but I have been learning all about poetry, fiction and nonfiction from the writers writing it now and getting published here and there in magazines and books. I’m partial to that approach to learning.

Sheila:
Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. Enrolling in graduate school and in professional conferences about publishing cost much more and often doesn’t provide as much focus on getting literary pieces into print.  Your thoughtful, researched publishing seminars seem to be full of important information provided in a format that is simple to use.  I believe learning from your program will certainly benefit those of us who have poems and short fiction ready for print.

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