Dennis James Sweeney: How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses

How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses – Dennis James Sweeney – New World Library – Paperback – 9781608689361 – 216 pages – $18.95 – February 25, 2025 – ebook versions available at lower prices

This book is described by its publisher as “A comprehensive guide to getting published and building a literary reputation through small presses and magazines — and taking ownership of your own publishing life.” While I am very familiar with publishing marketing lingo, I think this description, while literally accurate, actually undervalues Sweeney’s book. He does offer us much more than just a “guide to getting published.” By talking to writers as a colleague and exploring his own journey as a writer, he turns what could have been a mechanical self help guide into something much more interesting and engaging.

I’ve been on both sides of the process this book is about – as a writer submitting work for publication and more often as a publisher and editor, combing through submissions of all kinds and qualities. This book provides much more than simply guidance, tools and support for writers. In it, Sweeney personalizes what is so often a depersonalized process, and helps writers see themselves as active agents in a complex ecosystem with many levels and activities. And in many ways, he reveals the process of “submitting” one’s work as an almost spiritual practice, not just a means to an end.

All of the podcast interviews I do are unstructured and informal – I like to start without notes or an agenda and see where the conversation goes. Talking to Dennis was truly a pleasure, and I think we ended up having a wonderfully organic and interesting conversation about the independent literary world, contemporary writing, and the role of the writer in that community. Whether you  are already a published author, or a publisher or magazine that works with author submissions, this book has a great deal to offer you.

Dennis James Sweeney is a writer and teacher. His books have been published by small independent presses, including Autumn House Press, Essay Press, Ricochet Editions, and Stillhouse Press, and his writing has appeared in Ecotone, The Southern Review, Witness, and The New York Times. Sweeney lives, writes, and teaches in Amherst, Massachusetts. Author website here.

But the book here.

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Iris Jamahl Dunkle: Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb

Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb — Iris Jamahl Dunkle — University of California Press — Hardcover — 9780520395442 — 416 pages — $27.95 — October 15, 2024 — ebook versions available at lower prices.

“The new history is coming, if you dig through the archives with a new gaze.”—Iris Jamahl Dunkle

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Jon Wlasiuk: An Alternative History of Cleveland

An Alternative History of Cleveland – Jon Wlasiuk – Illustrated by Libby Geboy – Belt Publishing – Paperback – 9781953368799 – 244 pages – paperback – $19.95 – October 15, 2024

This is a terrific book published by the very fine independent Belt Publishing (now part of Arcadia Publishing, a company that specializes in books about locales). Belt has long focused on books about the midwest, specifically the rust belt from which its name derives. One of its goals has been to dispel myths about the midwest and its places, not just for outsiders, but for the people who live there themselves who often do not realize the depth of the places they inhabit.

Jon Wlasiuk’s Alternative History of Cleveland is unusual and surprising. Based on the title of the book, I was expecting to be reading a Howard Zinn style political history of the city, but what Wlasiuk has done is to write a much more inventive, somewhat personal, and thoroughly engrossing narrative that takes us from the geological underpinnings of northast Ohio, through the comings and goings of indigenous peoples, and into the modern historic era, weaving together ecology, sociology, geography, arts and culture, to open our eyes to a place that so many have failed to fully comprehend. The theme throughout is that city and nature are thoroughly intertwined, and there are many people today working to make Cleveland a better place for people and nature to thrive together. Wlasiuk’s vision of the city and its environs is one that all of us can relate to, wherever we ourselves inhabit the earth. It’s a wonderful book I can highly recommend.

Talking with Jon about this book was rewarding and enjoyable for me – I hope you will feel the same after listening to this episode.

Jon Wlasiuk was born in northwest Ohio and earned a PhD in environmental history from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has taught at colleges throughout the Great Lakes region, and now lives in the Slavic Village neighborhood.

Illustrator Elizabeth (Libby) Geboy was born and raised in Wisconsin, and lives in Colorado. Her illustrations translate favorite subjects in the natural world, specifically food, flora, and fauna into art.

Buy the book.
Belt Publishing

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B.A. Van Sise: On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues

On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues – B.A. Van Side – 978-0-7643-6814-1 – Hardcover – 176 pages – September 28, 2024 – $50.00 – Schiffer Publishing

“…breathtaking testimony to the demographic richness of the U.S. and the beautiful diversity of its linguistic landscape.”–Booklist  

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Oliver Radclyffe: Frighten the Horse (A Memoir)

Frighten the Horses – Oliver Radclyffe – Roxane Gay Books – 978-0-8021-6315-8 – Hardcover – 352 pages – $28.00 – September 17, 2024 – ebook versions available at lower prices

This is flat out a remarkable story told by a remarkable person. We live in a time when people are so often simply categorized into identities, as if the naming of a version of self somehow explains who a person is. Labels do not tell stories: gay, straight, queer, trans. All are too reductive to have any meaning whatsoever. Every person is a complicated being, and most of us contain multiple versions of ourselves. Sometimes those versions simply do not make sense.

Oliver Radclyffe started out life as a relatively protected and very privileged girl in England, who married a man and had four children, moved to a wealthy Connecticut suburb and had what seemed to be a perfect life. But his inner life was far from resolved and the tensions of an emerging self could not be reconciled until he eventually came out as a lesbian, risking a great deal in order to establish an identity that reflected his inner being.

But that turned out to be a way station on his ultimate journey. There was still more work he had to do before his ultimate transformation to being a man, one who is also an active parent, still learning from his children, still in the process of becoming. As we all should be.

Aside from this being an incredibly engaging story that takes place in the same town I grew up in, the courageously deep and honest sharing of his story was for me a journey toward understanding, both for the writer and for me, the reader. By exposing so much of his story and his struggles to become himself, Oliver has created what is truly an essential guide to understanding the trans experience. Even for the many of us who believe in the multitude of human identity and being need to understand as fully as possible what it actually means to be a trans person. If you are fortunate enough to have a trans person in your life, this book should be the next book you pick up.

While I am certain that every person’s story is unique and that Oliver is not a stand in for every gay or trans person, female or male, knowing so much about his ongoing journey to becoming his authentic self is incredibly valuable for others, whether we are ourselves gay, straight, trans or something else.

I can’t recommend this book enough. Go read it right now. Let me know what you think of it.

This review blurb says it all for me: “The finest literary telling of the experience of gender transition that I’ve ever read. It’s a terrific, expansive story because the focus of this warm-hearted man always returns to his children. He’s simply a wonderful parent, and that’s what keeps the reader turning the pages.”—Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw

Author website
Buy the book

Author photo by Lev Rose Water

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Publishing Talks Interview with Ken Whyte of Sutherland House

I began Publishing Talks a number of years ago as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Most of these interviews originally involved the future of publishing, books, and culture, talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.

Later this series broadened to include conversations to go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.

These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met or worked with during the many years I have been in the book business.

More recently, I’ve been talking to book folks about what is going on in publishing today, quite often about the changes in marketing and promotion that have marked all media industries as social media has overwhelmed traditional media, creating an extremely complex and constantly changing environment.

One thing is certain about publishing – there are no final answers, but there are many really important questions that we should be asking all the time.

I recently had the opportunity to (virtually) meet and talk to Kenneth (Ken) Whyte, founder and president of the Toronto based Sutherland House publishing company. I discovered Ken through his excellent and thoughtful newsletter called SHuSh, where he writes about a wide range of book industry matters as well as people and books he is connected to or has published. Ken started in journalism and magazine writing and publishing, wrote nonfiction books himself, and then started Sutherland House. One might reasonably question why any sane person would start a commercial publishing house in the current troubled media environment, but Sutherland House appears to be successful and is clearly well run and intelligently managed. I thought it would be interesting and valuable to talk to Ken about his thinking about books and publishing. He is an innovator and clearly a smart publisher who has figured out how to sell books.

We talked about a wide range of subjects and concerns that will be of interest to anyone who follows current publishing and media trends. We talked about the current state of Canadian publishing, which is simultaneously similar and very different from the US publishing scene. And we talked as well about many of the challenges and opportunities that exist for publishers and authors in Canada and the USA alike. We talked about AI and its actual uses in publishing, consolidation in retail and how publishers must navigate markets, author income issues, ebooks, book pricing, changes in the overall media landscape, and much more.

From the Sutherland House website:

At Sutherland House, we believe in the power of a distinct aesthetic, and each of our publications reflects the unique essence of our brand. From inception to launch, every title undergoes meticulous market testing to ensure its resonance with our discerning readership. All of our books are simultaneously published in both Canada and the United States, supported by robust sales and distribution channels in both countries. 

Kenneth Whyte was editor-in-chief of Saturday Night Magazine, founding editor of The National Post, editor and publisher of Maclean’s, president of Rogers Publishing, and founding president of Next Issue Canada. He is the author of The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise and The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of Willian Randolph Hearst.

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Publishing Talks Interview with Leah Paulos Press Shop PR

Publishing Talks began years ago as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Most of these interviews originally involved the future of publishing, books, and culture, talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.

Later this series broadened to include conversations to go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present.

These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have met or worked with during the many years I have been in the book business.

More recently, I’ve been talking to book folks about what is going on in publishing today, quite often about the changes in marketing and promotion that have marked all media industries as social media has overwhelmed traditional media, creating an extremely complex and constantly changing environment.

One thing is certain about publishing – there are no final answers, but there are many really important questions that we should be asking all the time.

I recently had the opportunity to (virtually) meet and talk to Leah Paulos about some of these questions. Leah is the Founder and Director of Publicity at Press Shop PR and Book Publicity School, and has worked in books and media for over 25 years. Leah has spoken on book publicity at Columbia School of Journalism, CUNY Graduate Center, and as part of her regular workshop series, Book Publicity for Literary Agents. She’s been a magazine editor and a writer, before shifting careers and becoming a book publicist in 2006. She launched her own business, Press Shop PR in 2012 and has worked on campaigns for over 300 authors since its launch, including for ON TYRANNY by Timothy Snyder, MARCH by Rep. John Lewis, and WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSE by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

In 2023, Leah launched Book Publicity School to bring professional PR support directly to authors, as so often today, book publishers require their authors to lead their own publicity efforts. With workshops and coaching programs, Book Publicity School provides authors with tools, strategies, and know-how to effectively advocate for their own work.

With an ever increasing abundance of book product in the market, every author and every publisher is desperately trying to figure out how to reach readers. Our creativity and ability to innovate are constantly being challenged. We need more conversations like this one to help spur us advance our thinking. Authors and publishers alike want to know what works, what doesn’t. And what is on the horizon. Since everything is changing all the time, the only way to keep up is to talk to as many people as possible about what they are doing and what they are observing. I hope this conversation will therefore be useful to writers, publishers, and readers as well.

Please ping me if you have any questions or ideas spurred by this discussion.

Press Shop PR website

Book Publicity School website

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Kevin Baker: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City

The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City — Kevin Baker — Knopf Publishing – 9780375421839 – Hardcover — 528 pages — $35.00 — March 5, 2024 — ebook versions available at lower prices

I am guessing that anyone who knows me well will be aware that baseball has been a lifelong passion. I’ve written baseball poetry and stories, interviewed former players, and talked to writers about baseball many times over the years. I’ve read hundreds of baseball books, and published a few as well.  Among the legion of great baseball novels, Kevin Baker’s Sometimes You See it Coming is one of my all time favorites. And of all the nonfiction baseball books I’ve come across, his newest book, The New York Game is among the very best.

In this The New York Game, Kevin tells the history of America’s greatest city through the lens of America’s greatest game. He is a masterful story teller, weaving together multiple strands of cultural, political, economic, and geographic history to create a brilliant tapestry from the beginning era that baseball was invented in the New York City environs, through its glory years, ending with World War II (and leaving us waiting for the sequel that will cover the 80 years since).

One element that sets this book apart from so many other books about baseball history is that Baker seamlessly writes about the often overlooked stories of Black and Hispanic baseball players and particularly the crucial importance of the Negro Leagues in American sports history. Race and sports reflect back all the flaws and foibles of the American experiment in sometimes painful and jarring ways. Understanding (and facing) how baseball – its ownership, management, players, and fans – dealt with race and racialism over the course of American history is crucial to understanding who we are today.

Even readers who think they know all about New York City baseball will learn from this book, and will enjoy Baker’s stories about the game, always cast in his fast-moving, highly literate style. There are so many stories, vignettes, portraits and analyses, it is impossible to list them all, not just the already famous, but many figures even those of us who have studied baseball or grew up in New York will have heard of before.

I’ve interviewed Kevin twice before for Writerscast, including for his excellent socio-political economic book about modern New York City, The Fall of a Great American City. (co-published by City Point Press and Harper’s Magazine in 2019).

I cannot recommend this new book more highly, even for those who do not identify as baseball fans. Not only will you gain a deeper understanding of the history of our largest and most dynamic city, you’ll be entertained throughout by a master storyteller. It’s one of those rare books you will have trouble putting down once you start reading.

Author website

Buy the book.

Writerscast interview with Kevin about The Fall of a Great American City

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Sarah Neidhardt: Twenty Acres A Seventies Childhood in the Woods

Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods – Sarah Neidhardt – University of Arkansas Press – Paperback – 320 pages – 9781682262276 – $29.95 – Published March 7, 2023. Audiobook and ebook versions available at varying prices.

Twenty Acres is a wonderful, rewarding family memoir that will resonate both for elder veterans of the sixties and seventies “back to the land” counter culture but most especially for their now adult children, of which author Neidhardt is one. She was just a baby when her quite intelligent, middle class, young, naive parents left Colorado Springs to move to an extremely isolated part of the Arkansas Ozarks, where despite being woefully unprepared and underfunded, they managed to build a cabin and set out to live their lives and raise their children away from the materialist world they came from.

Their idealism was quickly met with the harsh realities of country life, of course. Sarah Neidhardt’s early life with her struggling parents and her siblings was not easy, and the crushing poverty and difficulties they endured as a family are reconstructed by Neidhardt as a way to understand her early life in deeply rural Arkansas. Still, the book is filled with many joyful and humorous moments – it’s not an altogether dark story, but a complex one that is filled with the ambiguities and complexities of family life in any time or place.

This story is similar to other back to the land adventures I’ve read that did not end well, or ended with the participants deflated by the rigors of a life they were never prepared for, though it is different from some because of the relatively extreme isolation the Neidhardt family experienced. Communards had it better in some ways than those who set out on their own in places where the culture was so deeply foreign to their generally urban or suburban backgrounds and counter culture values. But the underlying conflicts of culture, education, expectations, and the challenges of rural life really are common for so many of the children of the counter culture, unwilling participants in what was generally a short-lived socio-political explosion that had long lasting ramifications for its youngest and most innocent participants (even as that era’s most deeply held values and beliefs have survived and become entwined in modern culture in so many important ways).

It’s been more than fifty years since the era of the hippies, and books like this one will help set down and explain the history of that brief period of time, when so many young people thought we could change the world for the better. Talking to Sarah about her book, her family, and the process of writing their story was rewarding for me and I hope for all who listen to our conversation.

Sarah Neidhardt has worked as a bookseller, secretary, paralegal, copyeditor, and stay-at-home mother. She grew up in Arkansas and Northern California and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and teenage son.

“Disillusioned with the modern world and idealistic about living closer to nature, Sarah Neidhardt’s parents packed up from Colorado–a place that some other back-to-landers would seek out–and moved to small, isolated Fox, Arkansas to attempt living completely self-sufficiently and off-the-grid. In this memoir, Neidhardt examines her memories from that time, and also pinpoints one of the most particularly problematic parts of the back-to-the-land movement, which is that many of its participants were anchored in privilege. … A memoir infused with both empathy and inquiry.”—–Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature

Author website here.
Buy the book here.

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Lee Klancher: The Farmall Century 1923-2023

The Farmall Century 1923-2023: The Evolution of Red Tractors and Crawlers in the Golden Age of International Harvester – Lee Klancher – Octane Press – Hardcover – 9781642341393 – 384 pages (11.8 x 10.5) – $59.95 – October 26, 2023

This fantastic coffee table book is a massive, well-researched, detailed, extensively illustrated, and very readable history not only of the International Harvester Farmall tractor, but of the people and company that built, marketed and sold it all over the world. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in tractors as motorized, wheeled devices, this story is compelling. Farming was once what the majority of Americans did for a living, and while the numbers of farmers has declined steadily during the last hundred years, the industries that emerged in the industrial age to convert American agriculture from horse to engine driven agriculture were a crucial part of the story of modern America and the world we fed (and still, to some measure still feed).

As a history of an important part of our agro-industrial economy, The Farmall Century is indispensable. If you are interested in American history, this book will captivate your imagination and make you think about the incredible ambition, ingenuity, inventiveness, and commitment of so many individuals who built these industrial companies, and you will also find reasons to think about the downsides of our industrialized agriculture too.

Lee Klancher probably knows more about tractors and farmers than anyone you will ever come across. He not only writes and takes photographs for his books, he is also the founder and operator of the leading tractor related book publisher, Octane Press, in Austin, Texas. I interviewed him about Octane for the Publishing Talks series back in 2016 because I think the kind of focused niche publishing he does is so interesting.

In any case, I love anything with wheels, and even though I did not grow up on a farm and have never driven a tractor, I had a great time reading Lee’s beautifully written and produced Farmall book. Talking to Lee about it was an additional pleasure. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Here’s a link to the book, and here’s a link to Octane Press, which is a fun site to visit also. There are plenty of tractor books there, but much more too, a great many treats, especially if you like wheeled vehicles.

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