Zyzzyva scales back as it pushes forward
Bay Area literary journal adapts to the pandemic as it celebrates 35 years of publishing emerging writers
Laura Cogan distinctly remembers issues of Zyzzyva sitting on the glasstopped coffee table in her family’s home. Her parents would buy copies of the San Francisco literary journal from a little bookstore in Sausalito, each issue a heavy block with zany art on the cover, coaxing Cogan, even when she was too young to read, into its pages.
“I just found it appealing as an object,” says Cogan, who decades later is Zyzzyva’s editor. “(And I) found it romantic that there was this literary journal publishing locally and publishing contemporary writers.”
As a oneman operation by founder Howard Junker, Zyzzyva published new works by literature’s foremost writers, from Raymond Carver and Amy Tan to Alice Walker and Haruki Murakami, whose first Englishlanguage publication appeared in Zyzzyva.
In the past decade, led by Cogan and Managing Editor Oscar Villalon, the nonprofit triannual journal has expanded — building an online presence and creating a robust slate of live events and writing workshops taught by acclaimed authors.
Along the way, Zyzzyva, which recently celebrated 35 years with April’s issue No. 118, has become among the most esteemed literary publications.
That storied history was meant to be toasted in recent months, as grand plans — including a big fundraiser — had been made to celebrate the journal’s milestone anniversary.
“That’s all out the window,” says Villalon, a former book editor at The Chronicle. “We’ve had to pretty much hold for all the obvious reasons.”
While the coronavirus pandemic has nixed gatherings in the short term, the depressed economy for bookstores presents a rocky future for Zyzzyva, known as an essential portal for emerging writers in the Bay Area. As the journal scales back and pushes forward, can its crew of three uphold its legacy?
Since it was founded in 1985, Zyzzyva has provided a counterweight to the mainstream centers of writing on the East Coast.
“You think of 1985, the late ’80s and early ’90s; this is before the internet as we know it,” Villalon says. “If you weren’t around New York City, if you weren’t around basically the capital of publishing, it was very easy to get lost.”
The journal focused on publishing West Coast writers and provided a different palette of American literary voices.
“It was really hard to see my experience or my life in those (other) journals and magazines,” says Ismail Muhammad, a writer and contributing editor for Zyzzyva. But in a weathered copy of the journal he found in a bookstore, he stumbled upon a Wanda Coleman short story about South Los Angeles, where he is from — where he had never seen fiction centered.
Often, the publication has served as a launchpad. Villalon points to writer F.X. Toole, whose writing career emerged at age 69 when his short story “The Monkey Look” was published in Zyzzyva and, garnering the attention of a literary agent, led to the short story collection that inspired the 2014 Oscarwinning film “Million Dollar Baby,” directed by and starring Clint Eastwood alongside Hilary Swank.
Most distinctly, the journal has been centered on the Bay Area. Issues always feature the work of local writers and artists, and practically every prominent Bay Area writer has appeared in its pages. Zyzzyva has also long welcomed emerging writers of color, a need accented by recent national conversations around racial justice, including a reckoning over inequity in the publishing world, amid protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd in May.
“Zyzzyva has been doing this work of spotlighting diverse voices for years, especially after Oscar and Laura took over. They can be a model for how other journals can walk the walk,” says Muhammad, who is Black and, along with
“Zyzzyva has been doing this work of spotlighting diverse voices for years, especially after Oscar and Laura took over. They can be a model for how other journals can walk the walk.”
Ismail Muhammad, writer and contributing editor for Zyzzyva
several others, recently resigned as a board member from the National Books Critics Circle over concerns of racism within the board. (The latest Zyzzyva issue features a short story from Bryan Washington and an interview with Margaret Wilkerton Sexton, both acclaimed Black writers.)
“Before anybody in New York was willing to respond to my email or publish anything I wrote, Oscar and Laura gave me an internship and let me write whatever I wanted for the website,” says Muhammad, who began at Zyzzyva as an intern and was brought back in as a contributing editor in 2017.
Cogan and Villalon say they want to continue to lift historically marginalized writers, including by potentially taking a survey of the diversity of books being reviewed.
“You also want to find emerging voices,” Villalon says. “That takes more work. You have to dig deeper, suss through all those submissions.”
The other challenge facing its spare inhouse crew — Cogan, Villalon and Editorial Assistant Zack Ravas — is the coronavirus recession, as local bookstores have shut down, sales have decreased, and events and commerce shift online. As a result, Zyzzyva will only publish two issues this year, instead of the usual three (the next edition is scheduled for September).
“Ultimately we need to make some sacrifices, and that’s just the reality of the situation,” Cogan says. “But if we can keep the organization going, keep our staff intact and keep supporting our writers and artists, then that’s what we’re going to focus on.”
Cogan still expresses excitement at the continual creative expansions within Zyzzyva — publishing more nonfiction and author profiles and interviews, along with themed issues that face the urgent questions of increasingly unprecedented times. The live reading events, Villalon notes, have also successfully pivoted online.
The journal — which Villalon refers to as a vocation — will adapt as needed, he says, just as the creative community in San Francisco has done amid increasingly challenging times.
“As long as there’s a literary community to serve, then we have a purpose,” Villalon says. “As long as the writers are here, as long as the artists are here, as long as the poets are here, then we’ll be here.”