[the Writing of Kuypers]
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[JanetKuypers.com][Bio][Poems][Prose]
Susquehanna University
TJ Heffers, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania
Editing and Publishing Unedited Interview
with Janet Kuypers, founder of Scars Publications
and Editor in Chief of cc&d magazine1. Could you give me a brief history of Children, Churches and Daddies? What roots has it sprung from? Where do you think it’s going?
When I received sample issues to read and learn from after I first started submitting writing to magazines for publication, I saw that a lot of the editors were published in these same sample magazines. Without knowing what it would entail, I decided that if editors got published (and not knowing any magazines that needed and editor), I could just start a magazine and become an editor.
Starting Scars Publications with the release of my first book (titled “Hope Chest in he Attic”), I then listed cc&d in as many journals as I could to get the word out in the literary community. However, when it first started off cc&d did not have many contributors. But by 1995 cc&d, as a 5.5" x 8.5" saddle-stitched magazine (which started on the Internet in 1995 as well) had so many accepted writings from contributors that it was released every two weeks. 1995 was also the beginning of annual poetry and prose collection books from cc&d (as we were looking for ways to expand the reach of cc&d, and also expand work from Scars Publications). So in 1996, cc&d changed formats (and Internet addresses, from a shout.net internet address to an aol Internet address) from saddle-stitched journals to 100+ page 8.5" x 11" brad fastened issues, and then contained not only poetry and prose sections, but also news, (plus PETA and political news) and philosophy.
1999 issues were all released as a giant collection book, and occasional issues (many times Internet only, at the current http://scars.tv/ccd.htm domain) were released with collection books for the next few years. In 2004 we decided to start saddle-stitched issues again (without the extensive news or philosophy sections, but occasionally with the “Performance Art” section, from live Chicago poetry shows). By 2009, issues were 44 pages and crammed with as many pieces as we could fit in a smaller typeface and expanded margins (instead of increasing the number of issues we released, the way we did in 1995). We also ran regular editorials in issues (called “the boss lady’s editorial”), but because of space we decided that editorials would appear only in Internet issues. By 2010 we wanted to give contributors more space, but we did not want to start hand printing and binding 100+ page 8.5" x 11" inch issues again. This is why in 2010 cc&d magazine started having their issues formally printed as monthly perfect-bound 84 page 5.5" x 8.5" books.
Where is cc&d going? I have no idea. (Sorry.) But since cc&d is my baby (so to speak), I try to get cc&d out there on as many levels as I can – for instance, I also host a weekly poetry open mic in Chicago (at “the Café, 5115 North Lincoln Ave), and at the beginning of every month when a new issue is released, I read select short poems from the issue to the live poetry audience (and with the contributor’s permission, I videotape and post cc&d magazine poem readings at youtube as well). Also, since cc&d has had an ISSN number for print since 1993 and an Internet ISSN since 2000, supplement issues of cc&d have also been released – as PDF file chapbooks on line, as saddle-stitched chapbook releases for poetry features, and also as perfect-bound supplement books.
2. What is your role at CC&D? How has it changed over time?
I have edited cc&d since its inception, and it has allowed me to interact with other writers, and learn from writers around the country – and even around the world. cc&d is actually named after a poem of mine – “Children, Churches and Daddies” is a 1993 poem of mine that talks about the dysfunctionality of those things at times. And yes, I would get snail-nail submissions at the onset of cc&d with cover letters that started with lines like, “Hello. I am a Christian mother of four, and I am submitting my rhyming poems to you.” Because of this I quickly created the byline “the UNreligious, NON-family oriented literary and art magazine,” and although the magazine name “Children, Churches and Daddies” has never changed, I have been really comfortable calling the magazine “cc&d” (so people don’t hear the long title and instantly assume we’re a “family-oriented” literary magazine).
The biggest changes to cc&d over the years has been in its format (designing different-sized issues changed the look of the magazine; the style of the headers within issues and title typeface fonts have changed once or twice over the years, the logo had one design change in 1995 and I have adopted using an additional “cc&d” logo in the latter half of this decade). Some things that have not changed include the types of writing we look for. We still look for new writers – the successes of the author don’t matter to us, all that matters is if the writing is good. And we let people know that if they submit writing to us, they retain all of the rights to their work – they are just giving us permission to broadcast their work for them. Right now we currently post all accepted writings in the “writings” section of http://scars.tv under their name, in Internet issues of cc&d on a web page, and in print issues. (And if people request it, we can pull writing from the Internet as well.) We also offer to accepted writers that their writing may also be printed in an annual collection book (as we choose select writing from every year for a collection book or two).
3. What is the mission of CC&D, in your own words? How does this affect which submissions the magazine accepts?
At cc&d, we want to let the world know of good writing. Simply put. That is why we try to publish good work that makes you think, that makes you feel like you’ve lived through a scene instead of merely reading it. Reading the guidelines link at http://scars.tv/ccd.htm gives anyone a better idea of what cc&d looks for (where it also explains in the guidelines that 99.9% of what we accept is emailed to us versus snail-mailed).
I am used to assuming people want to know what kinds of poetry we look for (since we publish poetry and prose), but those guidelines really also make short stories really appeal to cc&d as well. In the first half of the 2010 issues, prose takes up around three fourths of all of the pages. (This is easier to understand when you take into account that a short story takes up a lot more space than a poem.)
4. What design challenges has CC&D met? Has there been a tension between print and online formats?
The one thing that has been nice (in my opinion) about designing cc&d is that it has always been my baby, and I have been able to do whatever I wanted design-wise with it. When I started the magazine, I designed the logo and put everything together as I saw fit. And when in my profession I was working as an art director for food trade magazines (where you had a specific market to target and very specific guidelines while designing magazine pages with extensive advertisements), it was so nice to be able to design cc&d magazine and only answer to what I believed the magazine needed (and not to a corporate staff and a fleet of salespeople).
I have wondered at times if there should be design changes, but when I get to those points, I study the options and make appropriate changes as I see fit, I hope I have done a good job designing issues over the years; looking back I think that some issues look messy (I think I went overboard with design choices in 1998 and 1999 releases, for example), but I like how a lot of material has turned out over the years from Scars Publications.
But when it comes to designing Internet (web page html) issues, the design completely changes. I cannot give all web browsers the fonts I use in designing print issues (and I really don’t want to make transparent gif file images out of the titles, because that too would affect how the pages looked in web browsers). Structuring an html page of a cc&d issue means that items in relation to each other will be different. Layout of accepted materials in html issues is completely linear (versus artwork appearing throughout a short story, for example). And it is kind of sad that when reading an html page issue, the reader cannot open a set of pages to read material, but although it is designed differently from print issues, I believe the Internet issues also work out well.
5. What has led to CC&D’s stance as being the “UNreligious” magazine? Does this tie in with the political nature of the submissions the magazine looks to get?
I think I started to answer this before: because with a magazine named “Children, CHURCHES and Daddies,” I would get snail-mail submissions in the early to mid 1990s with cover letters that started with lines like, “Hello. I am a Christian mother of four, and I am submitting my rhyming poems to you,” so I quickly created the byline “the UNreligious, NON-family oriented literary and art magazine”. We do get a lot of submissions from people, and we (at times) really push the edge with the kinds of writings we publish. When people know the byline, we occasionally get letters asking if mentioning religion or talking about religion is off limits, and we tell them no, it is fine. We just don’t want the world thinking we’re looking for “praise Jesus” writing. This is why we even include past issues on line for people to check out – everyone can see the kind of writing we are looking for and the kind of writing we would publish by seeing what we have published.
And yes, we do like political poems and short stories. Because people think about politics and how politics affect many different aspects of our lives, it is good to write about it.
In fact, for the longest time I had editorials running in issues of cc&d (at the front of issues, in a section called “the boss lady’s editorial”) that usually talked about something political. I have even released two books called “the boss lady’s editorials”, and have a cc&d book release coming out by the summer of 2010 of editorials (pending title: “Adolph Hitler, O.J. Simpson and U.S. Politics” – from Clinton to Bush to Obama, I try to tie everything together through editorials). Political stuff is good. Stuff about environmentalism is good. Stuff about religion can also be good (I even did an editorial called “Proving the Existence of Jesus”); we just (as I said before) don’t want “praise Jesus” writing.
6. Does CC&D hold strongly to the promise, on its guidelines page, of “publishing some pretty hot stuff from some of the best underground writers?” Why is this important to the magazine?
Making a statement like that on our guidelines page would be entirely subjective (anyone can say anything, and it is always based on the opinions of the writer). And I just checked the guidelines page on line (direct link http://scars.tv/guide.htm), and saw that we never described what we published anything that we described on our guidelines page as “hot”, and the word “underground” never even appears on our guidelines page.
But writings we have accepted have ranged from mild-mannered writing and slice-of-life writing to overtly sexy to sometimes pretty graphic sexually to sometimes grossly violent. Because we have published over the years a lot of new writers as well as well-known writers, people looking for more “underground” publications (where a lot of writers turn to for a creative outlet when mass publishers won’t give writers like us the time of day) for publishing their work. We want to let people know that we are not looking only for well-known writers (and excluding others). Plain and simple, we look for good writing. It doesn’t matter to us if the accepted writer has a long credit sheet or none at all.
If we mention underground writers, we are stressing that we don’t search for only well-known name for publishing writing at cc&d.
7. What political issues does CC&D try to champion with the pieces it publishes? Which of these is most important to the magazine? How have these issues changed in the most recent political era, since 9-11?
As the guidelines mention, we look for writing that makes people think. Anything political makes people think. (Imagine getting two talking heads from opposing sides on the cable 24-hour drive-by news shows, and you can imagine the two sides getting angry with each other, trying to cut each other off to get their point across. In other words, people have opinions about political issues.)
And yes, over the years what people have written about (and what we have highlighted) in cc&d has changed. Because I am a vegetarian, a lot of articles, poems and short stories have reflected that. (Even if I may not personally support all of the things PETA does, for instance, some of the points the organization makes are worthy of thinking about, so I listed some of them in cc&d.) In the 1990s I even released on the web copies of the Unabomber’s Manifesto (which C Ra McGuirt of Penny Dreadful Press completely loved, and it’s funny that I posted this anti-technology manuscript only on the Internet). After 9/11 Scars has released pieces bringing up 9/11, and yes, the changing climate changes what people submit to us.
Of course political changes change what people think about, and it changes what people write about. So what cc&d would consider and accept would reflect that as well.
8. Why does CC&D take such a strong stance against experimental poetry?
That question made me laugh (sorry, it’s not like we’re on a quest to extinguish “experimental” poetry). And “experimental poetry” is hard to define, but poems that are shaped like something (or even rhyming poetry), are poems that is specifically designed for something other than the actual content of the writing.
Experimental poetry (and oftentimes even rhyming poetry) is more about making something fit a stereotypical form, and overlooks the message in the actual writing. If we ask at cc&d for writing that makes people think, we want readers to think about the message, and not think about working to read it because it is indented in difficult ways. Even in rhyme, readers get lost in looking for the rhyme instead of meaning, and the less experienced writer will usually work harder on making sure lines rhyme, even if the chosen words don’t accurately get the meaning across.
This is why we say in our guidelines that poems with repeated or intricate indentations are frowned upon. There are two reasons for this: the literary reason for this is because if the poem cannot read well without the mass special indentations, then it’s probably not a good enough poem for publication at Scars. An additional reason is because of us publishing poems on the Internet as text as well. Because we have to redesign the writing so it appears on a web page, which cannot be replicated precisely, special indentations cannot be done with text (on a patterned background, as our issues and the writings section of http://scars.tv are). So we explain to people that we prefer writing that wins us over not on how it looks on the page, but how it reads.
9. What do you feel the duty of the literary magazine is in the current literary world? Does the literary magazine have a role to fulfill that no other medium can?
I don’t believe in the idea of a “duty” when starting or editing a literary magazine. But if people are passionate about something (like writing, or publishing a magazine) publishers are interested in having good voices out there, to broadcast for the world to read. They want to highlight good writing, so other can read it and learn from the better poems and stories. Writers want these outlets because they want feedback on their own writing, and learning what others think (and potentially comparing your style of writing with other accepted writers) helps them improve as writers as well. Writers also want these outlets because it not only provides them a variety of venues to read a wide variety of writing styles, but reading other people’s work also give writers ideas. I know there are a number of poems I have written over the years because I saw someone else’s poem, and it inspired me to write.
We are all looking for ideas, and all of the writers that support magazines like cc&d look for places to read a variety of voices on a variety of ideas. People look for this venue in on line journals, saddle-stitched Xeroxed poetry collections and other literary magazine outlets everywhere. It becomes a place not only for people to be able to share their work with others, but also a place to hear new and refreshing ideas that you so not see in any major mainstream venues.
10. What do you think the future of publishing looks like, and what place do you think CC&D has in it?
I have never thought cc&d “having a place” in the publishing world, but I have never wanted cc&d to remain stagnant. In 1993 and 1994 as the magazine was starting, the goal was just to get issues released. So by 1995 cc&d changed their logo, and more than doubled the number of issues as well as the issue length. Scars Publications also released the first cc&d collection book by the end of 1995. By 1996 we changed the format of cc&d for a few years, then by 1999 we decided to run cc&d as solely collection books (then books and Internet issues, which included mp3 file audio Internet issues). Scars Publications has been on the Internet with web pages since 1995, but cc&d further expanded on the web after 2000 and the founding of the domain name for http://scars.tv – this gave us the chance to include audio files. As youtube started, we found another avenue to expose cc&d and Scars Publications to the world.
Since we halted the production of individual issues in the beginning of this millennium (and chose to rely on book production and Internet issue releases with mp3 audio issues), we decided to start releasing issues again (with quarterly 8.5" x 11" brad fastener issues in 2003, then monthly 5.5" x 8.5" saddle stitched issues in 2004). Once we were releasing monthly issues, we released more and more collection books (in addition to books of collections of issues in 2007 through 2009). The new format of cc&d monthly perfect-bound books in 2010 has also been a major boost with quality and quantity of issues released. With my starting hosting the weekly poetry open mic at the Café, there is also a venue to read poems from accepted writers in current issues regularly.
The point? We are trying to get the word out for cc&d in as many ways as possible (audio, video, print, Internet, and now also as download files anyone can order for issues).
Every month we look for ways to find new avenues for the expansion of cc&d – and expand the awareness of the literature we release for the entire world. We have published writers from the United States, Canada, Australia, Belgium, England, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malta, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa and Turkey (and we have also had input from both Japan and Slovenia). We continue to try to expand our base of contributors, so more people from around the world can learn about this publication.
After cc&d and Scars Publications work in a certain realm for a short while, we search for new options and additional steps to take to expand the knowledge of both cc&d magazine and Scars Publications. We cannot know what steps we will take in the future, but we are always looking for ways to expand our services and expand people’s awareness of the writings, audio and video we share with the world.
Copyright © 2010 Janet Kuypers.
may be reprinted without express permission.
