The Uncertain Future of Bloom

BLOOM First Issue Published: 2004

Last Issue Published: 2016

Location: New York City (2004–2008) and Los Angeles (2009–2016)

Number of Staff: 5 to 7

Number of Issues Published

Annually: 1 or 2

Published: Queer poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art

JOpening Night

ANUARY 2004—I am waiting anxiously for one of my two readers to arrive for the launch of Bloom, a queer literary journal I had spent the past year creating. We are at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street in New York City, and the room is packed with people I know and, more important, people I don’t know. A friend who works for the Associated Press weaves through the crowd, saying, “I know the editor!” as if he is working the red carpet at the Oscars. By the time I start speaking, the room is full, past its capacity of one hundred, standing room only. We actually have to turn people away—for a queer literary journal reading, seriously?

Bloom began while I was working at the Academy of American Poets, where it seemed everyone was also working on a literary journal and expanding the literary conversation. My coworker Beth Harrison was publishing Spinning Jenny, while Aimee Kelley coedited Crowd with Brett Lauer, who worked at the Poetry Society of America. “Local” publications like Fence (1998), jubilat (2000), and One Story (2002) were building a national audience. Publishing a journal looked exciting and, best of all, possible.

This is not a how-to essay on publishing a literary journal—for that information, join the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) and do everything they say— but rather an essay on how this calling can teach you something about yourself, whether you are ready to learn it or not.

The Calling

IDON’T know what else to name this drive to create a publication but a “calling,” defined as “a strong urge toward a particular way of life or career; a vocation.” It’s not just about loving writing and books or even fontaphilia. To bring a publication to life, into the world, sounds like wanting to be a parent, a pursuit into which I, as a gay man growing up in a particular time and place, had not invested any emotional energy. I

did, however, possess a dream to own a bookstore or run a small press.

I had a clear vision of what I wanted to create: a journal in which men and women could publish together, no nudity on the cover, and a broad interpretation of queer writing. Most LGBT journals at the time were single-sex, as if women and men could not be published together, which underestimated and limited the literary capacity of both sexes, and most were poorly designed. These gay journals usually placed nudity on the cover to entice readers, but unless the writing was erotic, this was the ultimate baitand-switch. Plus, our sexual culture was alive and well, while our literary culture was shrinking with the closing of LGBT bookstores and publishers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Finally, I wanted to create a space where LGBT writers could write whatever the f*ck they wanted, and since it was in a queer space, the writing itself was queer, period. No litmus test of queerness other than the author’s self-identification. Some queer writers were being published in journals, but there is something edifying and amplifying about appearing in an identity-based publication. Just as queer bars were not just bars, but rather safe spaces where our community could meet, gather, and thrive, so too was a literary journal. I chose Bloom as a name because it sounded hopeful, something beautiful about to emerge, and it had literary resonance.

Reception

AS OUR opening night intimated, Bloom was quickly popular and found a welcome audience among readers and writers. It helped to have amazing editors like Joan Larkin, Wesley Gibson, Aaron Smith, and Jeffrey Lependorf. It helped that we kept the women-men ratio even; long before VIDA held our community accountable, we had equal numbers of female and male contributors in every issue.

We had tasteful, sometimes beautiful covers—Issue 6 featured a photograph by Catherine Opie. The graphic design was flawless thanks to Stewart Cauley of Pollen Design. We published a strong mix of established and emerging writers—from Adrienne Rich to Jericho Brown before he published his first book. We did a lot of things right, but…

Stumbles

TOO many to recount here, but the one that gave rise to all the others: I tried to do too much by myself. Don’t do it alone; get as many people as you can tolerate to help.

I had editors but no managing editor, no frontline readers of submissions. By the end I was laying it out myself and reserving Stewart only for the cover. Holding on to so much of the work—wrangling authors, editors, production, events, fund-raising, distribution, and so on—was a strange combination of control, codependence, and selfishness. I wanted final say on what was published, although I was always willing to compromise when an editor felt strongly about a piece I did not relate to. I did not want my editors overburdened for fear they would quit.

I was selfish because I really enjoyed doing it all, enjoyed the actual work but also the growing investment in the final product. If you can accept help from others—not just ask for help as I did, but accept help, as I did not—you will respond in a timely manner to submissions, have a regular publishing schedule, raise more money so you can actually pay your authors and editors, and you won’t enter the AWP book fair in fear that someone you rejected or disappointed will confront you. (Yes, that happens.)