Necessary Stories
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Twitter Suzanne McConnell (interviewer) is the Fiction Editor of Bellevue Literary Review.Ronald Spatz is the Founding Editor of Alaska Quarterly Review. Here is the second half of their conversation, part of a series in which journal editors interviewing other journal editors.
Ronald Spatz: Would you share some information about the founding of BLR?
Suzanne McConnell: What distinguishes the BLR has to do with its founding. The publisher and editors who began the journal are doctors. Two – our editor-in-chief Danielle Ofri and Non-Fiction Editor, Jerome Lowenstein – are also writers.
It originated out of a conviction of the narrative as healing, and that doctors need to hear patients’ stories. Those convictions permeate the BLR. In 2000, Dr. Lowenstein was directing a program called The Patient Narrative, requiring med students to write about an encounter with a patient; Dr. Blaser followed suit, and then approached Drs. Lowenstein and Ofri with the idea of a magazine. They found a superb fiction editor and poetry editors and the BLR was launched. Next fall we’ll celebrate our tenth anniversary.
Our doctor editors are associated with Bellevue Hospital. We are granted office space there. We hold our readings in the wonderful old rotunda. Our covers come from its photo archives. Bellevue is the oldest teaching hospital in the U.S., so we have some splendid covers.
Ronald Spatz: When did you join the BLR?
Suzanne McConnell: I’m a relative newcomer. I published a story in the BLR in 2004, became a reader, and then in 2006, the overburdened Fiction Editor, Ronna Wineberg, asked me to join the staff. Eventually I became the Fiction Editor and she the Senior Fiction Editor.
Ronald Spatz: When did you attend the [Iowa Writers’] workshop? Does that experience also inform your editing?
Suzanne McConnell: I attended the workshop from 1965-68. I worked part-time (waitressing, mainly) and took a semester more than the usual two years’ time to get my MFA.
That experience does inform my editing, but I’m not sure exactly how. Going to the workshop was a huge leap for me too, in the opposite direction. I’d only written one story, in a creative writing class I took the last semester of my senior year at the University of Arkansas, and I’d majored in Sociology. That story won first prize in the University’s short story contest, and changed the direction of my life.
I grew up in San Diego and had moved to Arkansas in my junior year, when my parents moved there. The Iowa Writer’s Workshop introduced me to sophisticated East Coast people. I’d never been surrounded by so much talent, ambition, intelligence, and dedication. I’d never been around artists of any kind. To paraphrase the Leonard Cohen line “the holy game of poker” from “The Stranger Song,” which I first heard someone sing in Iowa City, it was as if I’d joined the holy game of writing.
Perhaps that’s what informs my editing, that sense. And now, I see, I’ve just demonstrated what writing can do: help you discover your truths.
Ronald Spatz: Yes, that is the ideal, isn’t it? That brings to mind an interview we published with Grace Paley in 1989. (“Against Despair: An Interview with Grace Paley.” Alaska Quarterly Review, Volume 7, No. 3 & 4.) Grace ended with advice to writers: “Be truthful. I mean, don’t lie. But, what l always tell a class first is ‘keep a low overhead.’”
How does BLR select their manuscripts across the genres and styles?
Suzanne McConnell: Our website asks for work that touches upon “relationships to the human body, illness, health and healing.” But we “encourage creative interpretations of those themes.” Good fresh writing still becomes a top priority. Most stories submitted fit our themes. But not each is heart-stopping or uniquely well-written. We strive to balance the most sobering realistic stories with others that are humorous and inventive.
If a piece points out a social, humanitarian, or medical issue or situation that we’ve not seen addressed before, or that is particularly germane to the current climate, and it has an engaging story line, we are willing to work extensively with that author. For example, we just accepted a story– a diamond in the rough – written by a physician, set in Haiti, which captured the catastrophic atmosphere and hope of those people; it was worth the extensive editing that the author and I had to do to make it shine.
Ronald Spatz: Yes. Some stories and voices need to be told and heard.
To read the first part of this interview, in which Suzanne interviews Ronald, click here.
Suzanne McConnell is Fiction Editor for Bellevue Literary Review. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Provincetown Arts,The Huffington Post, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Saint’s Ann’s Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Calyx, Green Mountains Review, The Little Magazine, Kalliope, The Fiddlehead, Personal Fiction Writing, Poets & Writers, Cape Women, A Sense of Place,and Discovery Channel Publishing’s Travel Series, among other venues. An excerpt from her first novel won Second Prize in So To Speak's '08 Fiction Contest, and the novel, Fence of Earth, a finalist for the James Fellowship for Novel in Progress, is now available for publication. Her website is www.suzannemcconnell.com
Ronald Spatz, executive editor and co-founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review, is a nationally recognized literary editor. Spatz has an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. His fiction has appeared in a range of national literary journals (i.e., Fiction, New Letters, Transatlantic Review) and anthologies (i.e. In the Dreamlight, Inroads, The Third Coast), and has been recognized by individual artist fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. He is currently Dean of the University Honors College at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is also a full professor of Creative Writing and Literary Arts and the founding editor and project director of the statewide Web site, LitSite Alaska (www.litsitealaska.org).
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