Publishing woes

As a follow up to the post about the writers Anthony Carelli and Maaza Mengiste, I thought it would be interesting to post about book publishing. Both writers had odd starts in their literary careers since neither of them were published in the ordinary way. During the discussion portion after their readings, Carelli and Mengiste both mentioned that although both of them did send their writing out to many different sources that isn’t how they got published. Carelli sent his poems to an editor of the New Yorker, who not only published a few of his poems in that prestigious literary source but also asked for a manuscript of Carelli’s poems, which were published for him. Mengiste approached an agent of a fellow writer during a book talk, offered over her manuscript and voila.

These may be rare occurrences, but it may give us some hope for the future.  

Signed,

Jenna, editor - the Mill the blog.