Grim Reapers and Grand Weepers: Great Storytelling Wanted
Robert Stapleton is the founder and editor of Booth. He received his MFA from Long State Beach, and his fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Word Riot, Everyday Genius, and others. Robert teaches English and Creative Writing at Butler University in Indiana, where he lives with his family.
Interview by Robin Yang
When Butler University started an MFA program five years ago, they asked if I’d like to fire up a publication that students could work for. They didn’t know I’d secretly harbored this notion for a decade, all while teaching high school and college—though I did advise publications at virtually every school I’ve been a part of, beginning with my own experience as an MFA student at Long Beach State. They gave me creative freedom while supporting the project with all kinds of resources. It’s a dream gig, really.
What’s the significance of the name? Does it have anything to do with the hot air balloon on the homepage?
Initially we struggled with the right logo to represent Booth. We didn’t want it to be too on the nose, but also wanted a clean icon to embody everything we liked about the name. There are all kinds of booths that speak to human connections: telephone booths allow for a strangely private moment in a non-private setting. Restaurant booths foster community and ritual bonding. Voting booths connect the citizenry with the possibilities of governance and representation. Photo booth, ticket booth, isolation booth, I could go on. And we love publications that suggest place or geography: Tin House, Grand Street, Boulevard. In addition, Booth Tarkington is from the neighborhood. We have his desk at our MFA house, and occasionally we offer a Booth Tarkington Writer-in-Residence position.
Once we settled on Booth as a name for the project, we worked with various local designers, though we were muddy with our directions. Despite that, Amy McAdams came up with the balloon, and I knew immediately. It’s got a kind of retro carnival feel. The balloon basket is a neat extension of a booth. And the suggestion of flight is the perfect metaphor for our favorite published pieces, the carrying to a strange and fresh land.
Where does Booth’s voice fit into the growing lit mag world today?
At the heart of the future and past. More than anything else, we want great storytelling. Our website champions simple design and a classic reading experience, free of ads and the common annoyances of the web. And offering new material once a week, right on the home page, prizes the work we publish and, hopefully, keeps our readers engaged with us.
Our print issues vary from issue to issue with their aesthetic footprint, largely because I love so many elements of design and want to offer new and unfolding experiences for our readers. I take special care with the print issues and drive our designer crazy with my obsessive fingering of any scratch or scrape I find along the way.
You publish one piece a week online as well as a biannual magazine. Why this format?
We believe both online and print venues are distinctly exciting reading experiences. And we want it all.
Who or what determines whether a piece will go online or in the print edition?
I work with 15-20 MFA students, and they are terrific readers who understand the literary climate on any given day. They filter, screen, and push things forward to our monthly roundtable discussions, where we discuss and vote. These are terrific, craft-based conversations on what merits publication. The students enlighten me in all kinds of ways, but ultimately I decide what goes in and what goes where.
Booth accepts “fiction, poetry, non-fiction, comics, lists, and other expert miscellany.” What’s your miscellany of expertise?
When we host our roundtable discussions, we consider three elements: concept, execution, and gravity. We love items rich in concept, but not if they don’t deliver on the other two. Examples of expert miscellany that deliver on all three elements include Kit Frick’s “The Breaking-Up Game,” Alexander Lumans’ “Phys. Ed. 112 Syllabus: You and Your Apocalypse,” Josh Wilker’s “Three Cards,” and Michael Bazzett’s “from The Book of Time.”
What do you look for in your submissions?
Great storytelling, distinctive voices, both classic and inventive forms, the right surprise, gravity + comedy, grim reapers and grand weepers, monsters with or without mud-stained Wiffle bats, characters crossing state lines in plateless El Caminos, and anything carried by a rich sense of tension and heart.
Do you read with a certain reader in mind?
No. Only ourselves. I tell my students that if they’re not falling in love with something they’re writing, that their reader will not—can not—also love it. So we read Booth submissions hoping to fall in love, which is not to say that every piece a writer comes to love and submits we will accept. Of course, there isn’t enough paper in the world for that to be manifest.
You have a great Twitter presence. How has Twitter and social media in general affected how you run Booth?
Thanks. Our Fiction Editor, Beth Bates, initiated our Twitter account, and she alone runs it. We all pitch in on Facebook. We do get traffic from these sources, but these vehicles have not changed anything about our operations.
Tell me about the contest Booth is holding right now.
We offer up a new contest every year, and this year the Booth Story Prize looks to honor short stories, 500 - 750 words. We love everything Roxane Gay does—and are thrilled she’s the final judge this time. In addition to reading the finalists, she’s going to come down to our MFA house and hang out with our staffers to discuss her read on the finalists. $20 gets you an entry + a two-issue subscription to one of the most electric print journals out there. Don’t believe me? Check out this review.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Same advice everybody else offers: Read, write, sweat it out. Repeat.
Robin Yang graduated from Princeton with a BA in English, and her life resembles Avenue Q in exactly the way you'd expect. She's been published several times in a teen fiction magazine. She currently lives in North Carolina with not enough books and too many pairs of headphones.
