Many Stories, Many Styles

Avery describes itself pretty effectively on its website:

"Twice yearly, we publish a dozen or more new short stories from established, emerging, and previously unpublished writers. Working closely with artists and graphic designers, we produce a handsome book, each edition of which we hope stands as a notch in the evolving recent history of what young and innovative writers are doing with short fiction."

The sixth issue of Avery Anthology is something I would have picked up off bookstore or newsstand shelves based on the cover alone. It’s printed in green and black, with a drawing of two young girls standing back to back, one holding an inhaler and the other a firecracker. It’s the same image that faces Cara Ferraid’s story inside the journal, a piece called “With Good Intentions,” and it’s immediately striking.

The art throughout this issue was drawn by the talented L.A. Johnson. Each story has a matching illustration, and this gives the journal a streamlined, consistent feel. Though the art is gorgeous, my favorite journals are the ones that feature multiple artists in a single issue. As there is no submission option for art and the websites for previous issues do not seem to list the artists' names among the contributors (e.g. the Avery 6 site does not name L.A. Johnson), I can only assume that the editorial staff solicits the art for each issue. While this is a perfectly valid editorial decision, I feel that not accepting art submissions is a missed opportunity for any journal.

The Avery website says, “this time around the more attentive reader may notice that there is a comfortable kind of patience that threads these stories together,” and I agree. Each story’s protagonist seems emotionally lost in some way, from Greg Pierce’s Gretchen in “Goat Milkers” (arguably my favorite story in this issue), who befriends the Russian man that she jerks off for money, to Cara Ferraid’s unnamed Worst Mother of All Time, who feels guilty for favoring one daughter over the other. Each character is accurately described as possessing “an astuteness…about those more difficult parts of our lives,” and they all provide readers with entertaining but thoughtful stories.

I must admit that I blazed through the first seven stories. The issue only has twelve stories, and I was unable to put it down through over half of its selections. That’s an impressive ratio for even a long-standing, established journal, let alone one relatively new to the scene like Avery. It surprised me, though, that the stories I considered “better” were all grouped together in the beginning of the issue. Once I was just past halfway, I found the pieces slightly lacking—they’re fantastic stories, but to me, some felt incomplete or stagnant.

In “The Sound a Voice Makes,” Lindsay Howald Patton introduces readers to Winston, a quiet young security guard who is unable to bring himself to stop an abusive man staying at the hotel he works at. This story is written well and engaging—I was cheering Winston along as he sorted through his past and his memories, encouraging him to make a move. However, he was too trapped in his own thoughts to be able to move the story forward, and this lack of action hurt the narrative, despite its poignancy. I expected Winston to make a change, for the abuse to propel him forward and encourage him to improve himself, but in the end he remained the same.

Jacqueline Vogtman’s “All the Way to Diamond Beach” is a quiet piece about a girl who eats not food, but trash that contains other peoples’ sadness. The storytelling drew me in, but this was the first story I came across that seemed particularly experimental. I was not expecting the journal to switch tones from traditional to experimental, and the shift threw me off.

Ann Packer’s “Dwell Time,” the very last story, started off strong and was one of my favorites—until it ended. The protagonist spent the whole story trying to decide how to handle the demons left over from her new husband’s divorce, but then the story ended unresolved. This often works well, but I craved a resolution here. Also, editorially speaking, leaving readers hanging is sometimes not the best way to close out an issue.

I also must mention my disappointment with the proofreading. I read the issue casually, not with a particularly editorial eye, and I spotted at least four glaring issues of spacing and punctuation. As a writing and publishing professional, I feel these kinds of mistakes have no place in literary magazines.