Jeffrey J. Higa

Age: 55. Residence: Honolulu. Book: Calabash Stories (Pleiades Press, April 2021), a short story collection crafted in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Márquez that encompasses the working-class dreams and history of Hawai’i’s people in their ethnic communities. Agent: None. Editor:

Jenny Molberg.

AS AN undergraduate in the late eighties, I read many how-to craft books on writing fiction, most of which could be reduced to one idea: “If you are not writing every day, you are not a real writer.” So when Tillie Olsen came to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for a campus visit in March 1989 and told us, “I was silent as a writer for many years,” it struck me then, as it does now, as not only an affirmation, but also a statement of great compassion. Here was this acclaimed writer who had always considered herself a writer despite not writing for twenty years as she raised her four children and took care of her family. That simple statement has given me permission to consider myself a writer and has provided comfort during the dark years of not publishing and output as low as one short story every couple of years.

I used to think that talent was the driver of a successful literary career, that if I had more talent or more insight into publishing, then I could achieve more. But I’ve learned that talent matters far less than two other characteristics I possess: persistence and indifference to rejection.

In my MFA fiction cohort I am the only one still publishing. I wasn’t the best writer or the most widely read or the most productive. The most ambitious writer in our group (who no longer writes) once asked me, “If you are not writing for a million people, then who are you writing for?” I couldn’t answer her then, but now I see that I write because I truly want to see stories about my culture, my history, and my community out there in the world. I keep writing because no one else is writing those stories.

Through the years I have developed the ability to reject my rejections. My disappointment about a rejection lasts only as long as it takes me to note in my calendar: “Today, so-and-so journal rejected X.”

It took me eight years to publish my first short story. After twenty-five rejections from “prestige publications” across the country, I decided to focus on journals closer to home, Hawai’i and the West Coast, where there would be more familiarity with my culture. Only after Bamboo Ridge accepted the story did I realize that it hosted the ideal readership for my story. I had written characters in a style that was similar to the kind of stories their readers and I had grown up with. Ever since then I view rejection as the editor determining that my submission and their readership is not a perfect fit—not a failure inherent in my work or in me as a writer. This kind of hubris turns out to be quite helpful.

It took me twenty years to publish my first book, Calabash Stories. In the years prior to publication, I had a few nibbles from agents, but in the end nothing worked out: One had a baby and didn’t return to publishing, one wanted me to get in contact only when I had a novel completed, and one told me, “I wouldn’t know how to market your work.” Feeling agentless and shut out of the bigger publishers, I decided to enter the fiction contests that award book publication, which I found in the classified ads in Poets & Writers Magazine. I made a list of the eight most prestigious contests and submitted to all of them. I got three rejections and withdrew from four when I won the Robert C. Jones Prize from Pleiades Press.

For those of you on the older end of the “emerging writer” spectrum, know that publication breeds confidence. To increase your chances, research the markets before submitting, submit to the markets that seem a good fit, and, most important, just keep submitting. There is a readership out there for your work, and you owe it to yourself to find it.

Age: 53. Residence: Austin, Texas. Book: An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir (Heyday Books, April 2021) details the dramatic experiences of a Native American woman living with the Indigenous people of Bolivia and the complicated realities of helping across cultures.

Agent: None. Editors: Emmerich Anklam and Terria Smith.

IN LATE 2018 I completed the manuscript that I began a few years earlier while in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. My book is a Native travel memoir, something I hadn’t seen before, and I was nervous about sending it out into the world. But I knew it was time. I committed to submitting the manuscript or a related essay every two weeks to someone somewhere; I called it my Always Be Submitting campaign. Heyday Books was the first query I sent. Most of the responses I received were either mild interest, rejection, or dead silence. Heyday Books responded with excitement and asked for the full manuscript. I was delighted when they offered to publish the book. From the first conversation with the editors, I knew they got it and understood the significance of the story.

I used to think that the only way an author could publish a book was to either self-publish or sign with one of the big traditional publishers. But I learned that those two options are merely the ends of the spectrum. The range includes small presses, hybrid publishers, contests, and university presses, and within each of those categories there are different sizes as well as pros and cons. Researching the options and speaking to authors who had been published helped me make an informed decision about which ones to pursue.

To my surprise I learned that revision can be fun. Yes, I really just said that. Once I knew the book was being published, I was eager to get it out as soon as possible. But I came to love the revision process. Deep conversations with the editors about what I was attempting to say and their suggestions for strengthening the writing were incredibly satisfying. Those eighteen months between signing the contract and publication were full of hard work, and I’m glad I had the time to make the book as good as we could make it. And as a writer who is always trying to improve, I know that the process of revising made me a better writer.

What I tell unpublished writers over fifty, especially Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and other people of color, is that there have never been more options or a better time to put your work out into the world. You still have to work your butt off to make your writing as strong as it can be, but there are opportunities that didn’t exist even ten years ago. There are publishers and agents looking specifically for writing in every genre by people of color. Editors putting together anthologies now understand they need to diversify the authors featured if they want their books to be relevant. My book is about events that happened when I was in my twenties, but I don’t know if anyone would have published the book back then. Publishing in my fifties, after I’d established a career, gave me options, resources, and a network of supporters I did not have when I was younger. Right now there is a young writer imagining what life was like in the 1970s or 1980s for the book she is writing. Good for her, but you don’t have to imagine it because you lived through those years. You have a perspective that no internet search for “8track tape” or “pet rock” can match. I want to read that story from your perspective, so please write it.

As a writer who is always trying to improve, I know that the process of revising made me a better writer.

Age: 54. Residence: Troy, New York.

Book: The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press, May 2021), a hybrid memoir of one adoptee’s quest for her past, weaving a personal and cultural history of adoption as it relates to ideas around guilt, shame, identity, and memory itself. Agent: None. Editors: Kristen Elias Rowley and Joy Castro.

IBEGAN shopping my memoirin-essays in 2015, after my thesis adviser at the Bennington Writing Seminars, Benjamin Anastas, told me I had a publishable manuscript. I got excited thinking that meant it would be published. Naiveté is fun! I was forty-nine.

After some fruitful attempts with about ten agents who asked to see the full manuscript, I gave up and put the book in a drawer I called “my panic room.” It stayed there for nearly three years.

Fast-forward through a couple years of life changes—a divorce, a new job, surgery for a broken ankle, and a pandemic. (You know, things were going pretty well.) One day, hobbling around on my walker, feeling extra sorry for myself, I thought, “I’m not getting any younger, and I don’t want to die without trying my hardest to get this book into the world.” So I got up every morning at a god-awful hour and wrote, sketched, and made art.

I had no agent, but thanks to friends’ recommendations and my own research using the Small Presses database at pw.org, among other resources, I assembled a list of presses that might be a good fit for my work. I began noting submission deadlines and contests for presses that took unagented manuscripts and experimental work, like Graywolf Press’s nonfiction prize, Coffee House Press, and Ohio State University Press. It was important to me that the presses represent diverse voices and writing styles because my book is not linear and has a surrealist art aesthetic. Claire Vaye Watkins calls it “genre fluid,” and my friend David Fratkin says I’m “aesthetically bisexual.”

OSU Press was one of the first I submitted to; it had three imprints open for manuscripts, including Mad Creek Books. I felt embarrassed that the same editors would see me in the queue three times and think, “Desperate!” but I pushed aside that nagging fear.

It took one week from slush pile to acceptance and another year to publication. Kristen Elias Rowley, the editor in chief, e-mailed an acceptance on a Sunday, Mother’s Day, saying she didn’t want to wait until Monday. She and Joy

Castro, the series editor, understood my book and my voice from the get-go. Surround yourself with people like this. You deserve fierce support.

I wrote the most honest and vulnerable book I had inside me. I wrote it as if no one would ever read it, but now they are. If you write memoir or essays or creative nonfiction that represents your voice and your truth, know there are people who will tell you to hush, who question your reality, and say, “That’s not the way I remember it.” These people are likely closely related to you. Have faith that positive feedback eclipses the negative tenfold. Listen to those positive voices. Set strong boundaries with the negative ones. Believe in your voice.

Don’t let fear stop you; don’t let impostor syndrome win. When I begin to spiral into negative thinking, I rewatch a YouTube video of Benedict Cumberbatch at the 92nd Street Y in New York City reading visual artist Sol LeWitt’s letter to sculptor Eva Hesse. Sol and Eva were friends and muses. They exchanged letters and supported and inspired each other, especially as self-doubt was a constant companion. One letter in particular that Cumberbatch reads cuts right to the heart of things. “Just stop…grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!” writes LeWitt to Hesse (via Cumberbatch). I share this video with everyone.

When your first book comes out, realize that it has a longer shelf life than the weeks leading up to and following publication. Don’t exhaust yourself by “keeping up with the literary Joneses.” Do what is authentic for you and for your book. That may mean taking a break and stepping away. That’s okay. Your mental and physical health is more important.

The process of writing and art making is rife with rejection. Don’t reject yourself.

Age: 53. Residence: Saint Paul. Book: Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions, June 2021), a poetry collection about a middle-age Black man who navigates personal and community grief while agitating for a more just and empathetic world. Agent: None. Editor: Daniel Slager and Lee Oglesby.

IN MAY 2020 I was laid off from my nine-to-five job. The next day my dear friend the poet Su Hwang sent me thoughtful feedback on my poetry manuscript, “Worldly Things.” Because I was without a job, I had the gift of time to consider her notes and make my own revisions. Two weeks later I started submitting “Worldly Things” for publication consideration. In September 2020 I received a call from Milkweed Editions telling me I’d won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. I was stunned, elated.

Elated because I felt myself arriving at a long-desired destination and, at the same time, making the initial steps in what I imagined would be a new and exciting journey. Stunned because I had a difficult time becoming a poet. It took me years to feel comfortable calling myself a poet. I couldn’t shake the idea that I had to meet some litmus test—a degree, a sufficient number of publications at the right places, completion of a book, and so on. I confronted selfdoubt even though I had the benefit of time with a wonderful mentor, Juliet Patterson, who often encouraged me in my writing.

My progress seemed slow to me comparatively. I started writing poetry in 1999 while working a full-time job and trying to be an attentive husband and father. Early in 2000 I took a class taught by Juliet. In 2002, a few months after my daughter was born, I took about six years away from writing, resuming my work with Juliet in 2008 and working with her once a month until 2018. Counting my leave of absence, I spent about sixteen years writing in the margins of the day, going to workshops and literary events when I could, meeting with Juliet, learning art and craft with her, and trying to find my voice in poetry.

I persisted in selfdoubt even though I completely believed in “Worldly Things.” With help from people like Juliet and Su and with the support of the generous literary arts community in the Twin Cities, my book felt like a fine way to introduce myself as a poet. As I sent it out I hoped readers would see its promise. I wasn’t entirely sure they would. I don’t have an MFA, and I write outside the academy. My approach to poetics favors simplicity in language and syntax coupled with subtle complexity. At times that approach seems to run counter to the prevailing mode, the current preference for a more lyrical approach. I also wondered if my voices and my experiences would be seen and valued by readers and contest judges. A portion of the stunned elation I experienced was realizing others saw the book as I did.

Looking back on the travels and travails that allowed me to arrive at the finished manuscript, I think they were beneficial for me. As Maya Angelou wrote, I “Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now.”

A few things I learned along the way: to love myself, to not say no to myself, to live and love my life outside of writing, to love my process and my journey, and to believe in my work. I try to send work where I want to see it placed and ignore imaginary prerequisites. I urge others to claim titles early— poet, novelist, essayist, playwright—and inhabit them as fully as they can. Over time, owing to my other priorities, I learned to maximize the moments my days allow; a little bit here and there adds up to a lot.

Finally, perhaps most important, earlier this year I learned you are never too old to be a young writer.

I try to send work where I want to see it placed and ignore imaginary prerequisites.

Age: 71. Residence: Washington, D.C. Book: Silent Winds, Dry Seas (Doubleday, August 2021), a novel that follows Vishnu Bhushan, an ambitious boy with an authoritarian father living on Mauritius, a small island in the Indian Ocean, and the cultural, political, and familial turmoil that engulfs him in his struggle for independence and success. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon. Editor:

Robert Bloom.

THE agent at the writers conference, leafing through my sample ten pages, frowned. “I want to see Vishnu’s alienation in America.” “My narrator is more alienated on his native island than in America,” I replied. “I’m not writing about immigrants facing problems in America. My novel is a coming-of-age story, of an individual, and of his country. It’s about his relationship with family and neighbors, the struggle for independence, ethnic riots, and corrupt politicians. As for America, Vishnu figures out how to use and beat the system.” As I concluded my reply, I recalled what another agent had said: It’s hard these days to sell the coming-of-age story of a man.

Challenged with the unmet expectation that I should deal with immigrants’ woes, and the perception that my novel did not accord with publishing trends, I subsequently emphasized to agents that I was writing about a unique country, Mauritius, that I brought to bear a unique experience, growing up on a multiracial and multilingual island unknown to Americans.

In the few years leading to that conference, I had faced another challenge: how to project a literary voice bearing my personal stamp after twenty-eight years of using the prose of international business, a prose that is precise and grammatically correct but bloodless. To the consternation of some former colleagues who wouldn’t see their work critiqued by “kids who could be my children or grandchildren,” I enrolled in undergraduate creative writing workshops at George Washington University (I benefited from a huge senior discount). This, combined with the competitive Jenny McKean Moore evening workshop for adults at the same institution, gave me the opportunity to learn from accomplished writers and provided different age groups to

“market test” the appeal of my writing. Finally, I submitted my manuscript to juried workshops led by masters of the craft at Aspen Words and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, the UNM

Summer Writers Conference in Santa Fe, Summer Literary Seminars in Vilnius and Tbilisi, and Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida.

It took me two years after I completed my manuscript to get an agent. My experience in youth had armed me with patience. Back in 1973, though I had been admitted to various MBA programs, I was the last one in my undergraduate class to hear about the financial aid I sorely needed; the summer was almost over, my student visa was about to expire, and I developed an ulcer from anxiety. When the offers came, however, they included one from a first-rate business school for a full scholarship covering fees as well as living expenses. Later, while completing my doctorate in international business, I was the last one in my group to secure a job offer. However, it was from a premier group worldwide, for a job aligned with my values. The memory of these events led me to repeat to myself almost daily: “Representation won’t come quickly, but when you do get it, you’ll sign with an agent of the top rank, and she’ll get you a top publisher.” Which is exactly what happened.

The lesson I took from publishing and life is not new. It was articulated by Benjamin Disraeli, a nineteenth-century British prime minister who found time to write a few novels. “The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”

My advice to writers: Respect the reader’s intelligence, time, and money. The reader can spend the hard-earned twenty to thirty dollars for a book, and the ten to twenty hours reading it, otherwise: on family and friends, movies, theater, music. If you aim at writing that instructs and entertains, that provides an emotional experience while illuminating the human condition, you’re never too old to publish that debut novel.

The J. Michael Samuel Prize will be given annually to LGBTQ writers over the age of fifty who are working in any genre but have not published a book or have a book under contract (up to one self-published book is acceptable). Application materials include a ten-page writing sample and a personal statement. The winner will receive $5,000. Submissions will be accepted between January 15 and February 15, 2022. lambdaliterary.org/awards

The Henry Morgenthau III Poetry

Prize is given biennially by Passager Books for a first poetry collection by a writer who is seventy or older. The winner receives $3,000 and publication by Passager Books, an independent press with a mission to “honor the voices of older writers.” The next deadline is January 15, 2022. passagerbooks.com/submit

The Off the Grid Poetry Prize is given annually by Grid Books for a poetry collection by a writer over the age of sixty. The winner receives $1,000 and publication by Grid Books, “a publisher of poetry and other editions foregrounding creative work that springs from the margins.” The typical deadline is August 31. grid-books.org/off-the-grid-press

The Speculative Literature Foundation Older Writers Grant is given annually by the Speculative Literature Foundation, a nonprofit organization with chapters in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, to a speculative fiction writer who is fifty or older and “starting to work at a professional level.” The winner receives $1,000. The typical deadline is May 31. speculativeliterature.org/grants/ slf-older-writers-grant

The Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, sponsored by Carlow University, is given annually to a woman poet over the age of forty who has not published a book in any genre. The winner receives $1,000, publication in Voices From the Attic, and travel and lodging to give a reading with the contest judge at Carlow University. The typical deadline is September 30. carlow.edu/about/madwomen -in-the-attic/dobler-poetry-award

The Robert H. Winner Memorial

Award is given annually by the Poetry Society of America for a poetry manuscript of ten pages by a writer over the age of forty who has published no more than one book. The winner receives $2,500. The next deadline is December 31. poetrysociety.org /awards/annual-awards/2022 -poetry-society-of-america-awards

The Debut 40 Residency is offered by Tin House to writers over the age of forty who have not yet published a book. The winning resident receives lodging in a private studio apartment in Portland, Oregon, adjacent to the Tin House offices, and a $1,200 stipend. Residencies typically occur in winter; the next application deadline is in fall 2022 for a 2023 residency. tinhouse.com/workshop/residencies

Tin House also offers a Debut 40

Scholarship, which covers the full cost of tuition for the Tin House Summer Workshop, held annually on the Reed College campus in Portland, Oregon, to writers over the age of forty who have not yet published a book. The next conference will be held from July 10 to July 17, 2022. Applications will open in January 2022. tinhouse .com/workshop/summer-workshop