"Connect With the Local Literary Community." An Interview with John Winkelman, Editor-in-Chief of the 3288 Review
Having grown up in West Michigan in the 90s—a time when literary culture in the area was hard to find—I was pleasantly surprised a few years back to discover the 3288 Review, a beautifully designed journal full of thought-provoking essays; lyrical, image-driven poetry; and short stories built around characters with strong roots in the upper Midwest. At the helm of the magazine is John Winkelman, one of the directors of Caffeinated Press (the publisher behind the journal). A writer himself, Winkelman is based in Grand Rapids, Mich., and has served as chief operations officer and editor-in-chief of the 3288 Review for nine issues.
Interview by Susan DeFreitas
You only accept submissions from current or former residents of West Michigan, or frequent visitors to the region. What was behind your decision to establish a literary journal with a regional focus?
All of us at Caffeinated Press are writers, and we wanted to create an outlet specifically for writers with strong connections to the region. West Michigan is home to many talented writers and artists, but we can become lost in the crowd due to our proximity to Chicago, Detroit, and other larger population centers. Just as the Midwest has a literary voice, and the Great Lakes region has a literary voice, so does West Michigan.
At first we opened our doors to anyone from anywhere, but this was always done with the caveat in our guidelines that, where there was a toss-up between works of equal merit, we would choose the one which had closer ties to our area. As the journal became more well-known we saw an increase in the percentage of submissions from our region. Finally, with the opening of the submission window for our Autumn 2017 issue, we decided we were ready to narrow the focus to specifically West Michigan talent. And so far it looks like our faith in local talent was well placed.
The 3288 Review is associated with Caffeinated Press. Can you tell us a bit about the journal's relationship with the press and with the annual Brewed Awakenings anthology?
At the beginning of Caffeinated Press, before we had received much in the way of long-form submissions, we put the call out for submissions for the first of our annual Brewed Awakenings anthologies. We didn’t know at the time that it would have a volume II or III. We received, I think about two dozen submissions, eight of which ended up in the anthology. Not long after Brewed Awakenings was published we decided to kick off the journal, but being local and new we only received about a dozen submissions for issue 1. Not all of them were ready for publication, and we had a deadline, so we went back through the slush pile for Brewed Awakenings I and looked at the submissions which hadn’t been included in the anthology. We contacted the authors of those stories which we felt had merit and would be a good fit for the journal, and when they agreed, we added them to the contents. Thus was issue 1 published.
Since then we have occasionally traded submissions between the two publications. If a story is a straight-up genre piece, we will send an addendum with the rejection note asking if the author would like to be considered for the anthology. And occasionally an anthology submission will just feel like it would be a better fit for the journal, so we offer that opportunity to the submitter.
Between the two publications, we offer opportunities to a full range of writing styles while still maintaining some level of focus in each product.
Establishing (and running) a literary journal is often a labor of love. What inspired you to establish this one? And are there aspects of the work that have surprised you?
We at Caffeinated Press are all writers and poets and artists, and above all we are readers. And we live in West Michigan. While it is much improved from the early nineties, when I first became involved in the local literary scene, our area of the state still has quite a way to go when it comes to visibility for, and appreciation of, local and regional artistic expression.
This is particularly true of writers. Visual artists have art and photo galleries, but the written word has to be read to be appreciated. That takes time, and usually requires publication. We started the 3288 Review in order to showcase local talent. We wanted it to be the magazine we wished had been available when we first started looking for publication venues. In large part, I think we have succeeded. Many of our contributors have been published for the first time in our pages, and our feedback has been almost entirely positive.
I think the biggest surprise as a publisher was how much work is involved in running a lit journal. Starting in the second year of publication, the 3288 Review received an average of about 250 submissions per issue. Each had to be read, vetted, responded to, and in the case of the accepted work, published and paid for. Writing almost a hundred acceptance letters a year takes time. Writing almost a thousand rejection letters a year takes a lot of time.
We certainly weren’t expecting to be so popular with submitters right out of the gate. I think the fact that our journal title appears at the beginning of lists of journals (“3” comes before “A”), combined with our status as a paying market, gave us visibility far out of proportion with our experience and reach.
We weren’t surprised by the fact that West Michigan has a lot of talent, but we were taken aback at the sheer talent of many of our contributors. It was both gratifying and humbling to read a name associated with an accepted poem and discover that the contributor was nationally known. Being a writer, I am familiar with imposter syndrome, but to experience it as a publisher…is quite a new experience.
Unlike many literary journals that are associated with universities and run by grad students, your editorial team has remained somewhat steady over the years (though I understand some changes are currently afoot). Can you tell us about how the tastes of 3288's editors have helped to establish its voice and style? And can you tell us a bit about the new editors stepping into the saddle now?
We have been fortunate in that our editors stick around for at least a year. That gives us time to work together and learn from each other, but also brings in fresh minds who can offer their own opinions on the contents of the journal. In the beginning, it was myself as poetry editor, Caffeinated Press president Jason Gillikin editing fiction, and Elyse Wild, who served as our nonfiction editor. Jason’s background is in journalism, Elyse’s in nonfiction, and mine in poetry. Other members of Caffeinated Press pitched in when time allowed.
Before we opened up for submissions we set some base rules: No overtly religious works. No works glorifying violence. No poison-pen editorials. Experimental works welcome, but must be approachable by a general reader. Genre fiction only with a light touch (magic realism rather than fantasy, gothic instead of horror, etc.)
Our editors have eclectic tastes. Our reading habits and preferences average out to an approximation of what we find in our submission pile. For instance, Jason prefers more formal poetry, and I go more for beat and spoken word. Thus we will get a mix of styles.
When Elyse moved on to a full-time job at a regional magazine, I took over as nonfiction editor, and we brought Leigh Jajuga of Litmus Press and Open Palm Print as our poetry editor. Leigh was great! She has substantial experience in the world of lit journals, and we learned a lot from her.
At the end of 2017 I took a break from Caffeinated Press and the 3288 Review, and life took Leigh in other directions after a year of working with us. Fortunately, at the beginning of 2018, two new editors joined our team, Lisa McNeely and KT Herr. Lisa is the president of local literary arts organization Write616, and KT has been involved in the Grand Rapids poetry scene for many years. The next issue of the journal will be the first that they have edited, and from what I have seen of their work, it will be one of our best.
What are some of your favorite pieces that you've published over the years, and why?
Wow, that’s a difficult question to answer!
From our first issue, “Learning to Swim with Daddy” and “Visitation,” by Lisa Gundry. Lisa’s poetry is beautiful, powerful, and jarring. She was the first contributor we nominated for a Pushcart, and “Visitation” ended up in her collection A Crowd of Sorrows, which was the first book of poetry we published at Caffeinated Press.
“A Place Called Place: Surrounds” by Chila Woychik, from issue 1.2. I was familiar with creative nonfiction, but this was my first exposure to lyric essays. Woychik edits a journal dedicated to the form (the Eastern Iowa Review) and is a wonderful writer.
“Maquillage,” a short story by Addy Evenson, from issue 1.3. This one blew me away. It is written in an experimental, minimalist style, almost like a series of short prose poems. “Maquillage” is not like anything else I have read. It feels like it could have come from the writers of Oulipo.
In our Autumn 2016 issue we published Russell Brakefield’s poem, “That High and Lonesome Sound”; Brakefield included the poem in his book Field Recordings, which was inspired by the work of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. The poem is written in six small sections, each an almost-ekphrastic exploration of an instrument—fiddle, guitar, dobro, etc. Each section leads into the next, and the last calls back to the first like a song performed in the round.
I have been a fan of the poetry of Jack Ridl since I first heard him read back in the mid-1990s. When I discovered we had accepted two of his poems, I felt a profound sense of, “Ah! We have finally made it.” Ridl’s poem, “Walking His Dog After Dinner,” contains everything I love about his work—attention to small details, beautiful use of language, and the wisdom of hard-won experience.
This is tangential to publishing, but I must add our extensive collection of interviews to the list of favorites. While still figuring out the shape and content of the journal, we kicked around the idea of interviews but judged them too time-consuming, considering our small staff. Then in issue 1.1 we published an interview editor Elyse Wild had conducted with David J, former bassist for Bauhaus. Our readers loved it! That lit a fire under us, and we have to date conducted over three dozen short interviews with our contributors, and one long-form interview with artist Debra Reid Jenkins, which we published in our Autumn 2016 issue. For me, this is the best part of being a publisher--connecting with the writers, boosting their signal, and getting to know them as real people.
Though payouts are small, the 3288 Review is a paying market. How is it funded? And can you share your thoughts on monetary compensation for writing (which many literary journals don't offer)?
The 3288 Review is funded through sales and, when that doesn’t cover expenses, through direct monetary investment by the owners of Caffeinated Press. Over the run of the journal we have tweaked our payment guidelines to allow us to continue to pay contributors while not taking up an excessive portion of the overall Caffeinated Press budget.
We feel that it is important to compensate writers for their time and efforts. Fortunately, our production and operation costs are not excessive, so we have funds available for our contributors.… That being said, there just isn’t a lot of money in the small publishing business, and the calculus of how much to pay journal contributors can be surprisingly complex. Do we want to run a long short story from one person or a dozen poems from half a dozen poets, thus likely increasing our sales to friends and family, but also increasing our production costs? If we lower our payments we can afford to pay more contributors per issue, but with lower payments we may get fewer submissions, which in the long term would lower the quality of our product, thus making it less likely people will want to buy it. And around and around it goes.
I don’t say this to diminish publications which don’t offer financial compensation. The worth of a journal is measured in how well it connects writers with readers. Financial compensation attracts more writers, which on average will probably boost the quality of the words on the page, but that doesn’t mean that the words will be read by more readers. By that measure, most online-only, nonpaying publications of any quality blow print journals completely out of the water. What is a circulation of 1,000 per year compared to 500 online readers a day, every day?
Finally, what advice would you give to a writer hoping to be published in your journal?
Write from your heart. Read well. Connect with the local literary community. Grab a recent copy of the journal. Never stop practicing.
Susan DeFreitas has never been able to choose between fantasy and reality, so she lives and writes in both. A first-generation American of Caribbean descent, she is the author of the novel Hot Season, which won the 2017 Gold IPPY Award for Best Fiction of the Mountain West; her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has been featured in the Writer’s Chronicle, the Huffington Post, the Utne Reader, Story Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and High Desert Journal, along with numerous other journals and anthologies. In 2017, the Oregonian named her “One of 25 Oregon Authors Every Oregonian Must Read.”