Cricket Magazine Group is a publishing group that offers fourteen award-winning, advertisement-free magazines for babies, toddlers, children, and young adults. The Group first started in 1973 with the literary magazine CRICKET (ages 9-14) and eventually expanded to include four more literary “bug” magazines for other age groups: BABYBUG (ages 6months-3years), LADYBUG (ages 3-6), SPIDER (ages 6-9), and CICADA (ages 14+). Today, Cricket Magazine Group’s fourteen magazines fall into three categories: Science and Ideas, History and Culture, and Literature and Imagination. While the Cricket Magazine Group’s publications in the first two categories—COBBLESTONE, CLICK, CALLIOPE, ASK, MUSE, etc.—have become popular in schools and libraries, as well as with children who love science and history, this interview focuses on the five literary magazines, the magazines which have earned the title “The New Yorker” for children.

Flyway blogger Mateal Lovaas asks Deborah Vetter, Executive Editor of CICADA and Senior Contributing Editor of CRICKET, questions about the five “bug” magazines.

Mateal Lovaas: I believe CRICKET was your magazine group’s first publication in 1973. What is the story behind CRICKET, and which “bug” magazines came next?

Deborah Vetter: Back in 1973, founder and editor-in-chief Marianne Carus had the idea to start a literary magazine to “create in children a love of reading by sustaining a lively, witty, and cheerful tone and a sense of humor.” She found herself inspired by St. Nicholas, a children’s magazine published from 1873 through the late 1930s. Its editor was none other than Mary Mapes Dodge of Hans Brinker; or the Silver Skates fame. St. Nicholas was filled with stories, poetry, nonfiction articles, and great illustrations—exactly what Marianne envisioned for her magazine.

Of course, a new magazine has to have a name. Marianne campaigned for Troubadour or Taliesin, but people told her those titles sounded a little “too foreign, too unfriendly, and not accessible enough for children.” Shortly afterward, Marianne was reading Isaac Bashevis Singer’s autobiographical A Day of Pleasure, in which Singer writes about a cricket chirping behind the stove, “telling a story that would never end.” Aha! Now CRICKET had its name—and a new board member in Isaac Bashevis Singer.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Marianne found How Six Found Christmas, written and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. She asked Trina to be the first art director, and when Trina said, “I’ve never art directed a magazine before,” Marianne replied, “I’ve never edited a magazine before. We’ll make a good team.” And it was a good team; I had the pleasure of knowing and working with both of them. Trina was the one who came up with the idea for the bug characters who romp in the margins of the magazine.

Lloyd Alexander joined the editorial board and was an active contributor up until his death in 2007. CRICKET readers might like to know a well-kept secret: this award-winning author of the Prydain Chronicles was also the voice of Old Cricket Says. OCS is a one-page feature that appears at the end of each issue, and many, many of these informative essays came from Lloyd’s old typewriter, which he used for his entire writing career. So if you’re reading back issues and see an Old Cricket Says feature without an attribution, chances are it’s one of Lloyd’s.

After making its appearance in 1973, CRICKET hopped along telling stories on its own until 1990, when Marianne started LADYBUG, a magazine for preschoolers. After that the “bugs” came quickly: SPIDER (for ages 6–9) in January 1994, BABYBUG (for 6 months–2 years) in September 1994, and CICADA, a teen literary journal for ages 14 and up, in 1998. Times were exciting!

M.L. : The “bug” magazines are arguably the highest-quality literary magazines on the market for children. How do you remain advertisement free, especially with the decline of the publishing industry? What changes have you witnessed in the “bug” magazines over your 25 years with the Cricket Magazine Group?

D.V. : The “bug” magazines rely mostly on subscriptions, and because we’re advertising-free, we face special challenges. Over the years, for example, we’ve had to pull back a bit on the number of pages in CRICKET and CICADA. As with many other magazine publishers, we’re also facing competition with electronic media. Therefore, we’ve launched lively, interactive Web sites: www.cicadamag.com, www.cricketmagkids.com, www.spidermagkids.com, and www.ladybugkids.com. We’re launching our first e-books, too, this holiday season, including a Best of CICADA anthology featuring contemporary realistic fiction from authors such as Billy Lombardo, Suzanne Kamata, Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, Tony Lindsay, and Chris Wiewiora, who is currently in the MFA program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University.

M.L. : Could you describe your own editorial process of reading over and deciding whether to accept a submission to CICADA, the literary magazine for teens and young adults ages 14 and up? Are there specific features you look for first?

D.V. : We’re looking for fiction with literary sophistication and a genuine teen sensibility. Most of our fiction runs between 3,000–5,000 words, which gives authors space to develop plot and characterization fully. Voice is all-important; in addition, most YA fiction is first person and often in present tense, both of which lend an air of immediacy.

I find that teens and people in their twenties are especially successful at capturing that teen sensibility; many older adult authors are, too, of course, but often adults write “about teens” rather than from within the teen experience itself. For CICADA, we’re looking for those authentic coming-of-age moments; many of our stories revolve around relationships with boyfriends/girlfriends or with family members. Relationships with parents can be especially rocky: great fodder for stories.

M.L. : When writers submit manuscripts, what is your general turn around time? How much do you work with authors to edit and adapt their work?

D.V. : We are blessed with hundreds and hundreds of submissions, which is fantastic, because it enables us to discover new authors and new voices. In fact, many authors place their first stories for publication in CICADA, or one of our other “bug” magazines, and we’re proud of that. Part of our mission is to nurture new talent.

Because we do read unsolicited manuscripts, and because we have a small staff, it can take up to six months before an author receives a response. I know that’s a long time to wait, but we are amenable to simultaneous submissions, if you identify them as such in your cover letter.

If a story makes it through the first read, it will be “set up” and routed for additional reads from up to four or five in-house editors. As you can see, all this takes time. Often we will ask an author for a revision on spec before making a final decision.

Once we’ve accepted a manuscript for publication, an editor will edit and copyedit the story for house style. Sometimes editing is heavy, sometimes light; usually it’s somewhere in the middle. While it’s important to smooth out the rough spots, we also know that an editor’s job is to preserve the author’s voice. The author always has an opportunity to review and approve the editing before a story goes to press.

M.L. : According to your website, writers are supposed to submit their manuscripts directly to the “bug” magazine that best fits their piece. If writers feel their piece might work for more than one age range, may they submit to more than one of the “bug” magazines? If you receive a strong manuscript, but one that fits better in a different age range than CICADA’s 14+ focus, do you pass the manuscript on to one of the other magazines? In general, how much communication is there between you and the editors of the other four magazines, BABYBUG, LADYBUG, SPIDER, and CRICKET?

D.V. : That’s a good question, Mateal. In fact, we just updated our guideline page at http://www.cricketmag.com/6-Submission-Guidelines-for-kids-magazines-for-children-from-toddlers-to-teens to let authors know that, while it’s good to target a specific magazine, we do pass manuscripts around freely. I can remember one memorable occasion where a LADYBUG submission ended up in CICADA!

M.L. : I know the bug magazines publish works written by children, young adults, and adults. Do your standards vary depending on whether the submission is from children and young adults versus adults? Do you seek to represent a range of authors in each issue?

D.V. : SPIDER and CRICKET have special pages reserved for young readers; SPIDER has “Spider’s Corner,” and CRICKET has “Cricket League.” CICADA is the only magazine that accepts general submissions from both teens and adults. We don’t have one set of standards for adults and another for teens; teens are amazingly good authors, and believe me, they can hold their own. Log on to www.cicadamag.com/thisissue and read some of the Expressions pieces from current and past issues. Anna Blech’s “Adventure Day” (September/October 2011) is especially compelling.

Does CICADA seek to represent a range of authors in each issue? Mainly, we’re looking for a variety of styles and genres, and we want a mix of male and female protagonists, but we don’t specifically aim for so many stories written by teens and so many by adults. We just go with the best stories we have, and it all works out.

CICADA also has sections it reserves for authors ages 14–23, specifically Creative Endeavors (www.cicadamag.com/submitwork) and The Slam (www.cicadamag.com/theslam), which is an online critique forum for poetry, microfiction, and creative nonfiction. The Expressions feature, too, is usually written by a teen or “twenty-something” author.

M.L. : What closing advice do you have for writers beginning to submit their work to one of the five literary magazines in the Cricket Magazine Group?

D.V. : It’s a cliché, and it takes time, but study sample issues. Nothing beats that hands-on analysis. Second, read and follow the guidelines at http://www.cricketmag.com/6-Submission-Guidelines-for-kids-magazines-for-children-from-toddlers-to-teens. We’re always eager to find new authors from undergraduate and MFA programs!

It’s chilly here in Iowa.  If you’re looking for a book to go with your hot tea and couch blankets (Snuggies?) this Fall, here’s what we’re reading:

(If you’ve read any of these and feel like some book talk, leave comments!  We’ll answer!)

John Linstrom, Nonfiction Editor

Sarah Burke, Managing Editor

Xavier Cavazos, Poetry Editor

David Wagoner, Who Shall Be the Sun: Narrative poems of the Pacific Northwest Coast Indians. Might as well be the BIBLE!

Michele Devlin, Mark Grey and Aaron Goldsmith, Postville U.S.A.: Nonfiction account of the historic 2009 immigration raids in Postville, Iowa. Shame on you “ICE”.  Shame, shame, shame.

Yoani Sanchez, Havana Real: She’s a Cuban blogger who has been kidnapped, beaten and threatened with her life because she tells it how it is to be living under Castro’s Cuba. A must read!

Genevieve DuBois, Fiction Editor

Bill Streever, Cold: Because winter’s just around the corner!  This nonfiction book explores the colder places on earth and some of the various stories, cultures, and ecosystems that have evolved in and because of them.

Brenna Dixon, Blog Editor

Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned:  This collection of stories is a fast read full of memorable characters and moments (Blood Eagle, anyone?).  It’s perfect for some couch time before bed.

Interview with Managing Editor of The Sun Tim McKee

From their website – The Sun is an independent, ad-free monthly magazine that for more than thirty years has used words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being human. The Sun celebrates life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity. The personal essays, short stories, interviews, poetry, and photographs that appear in its pages explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet those challenges.

Tegan Swanson: A reader characterizes The Sun as showing “the beauty, the wonder & the dirty truth of the human spirit” – why do you think this is representative of your artistic aesthetic?

Tim McKee: The dirty truth is pretty key – beauty and wonder is important, but we don’t want to leave out the hard part.  We don’t shy away from occupying the messy parts of life.  A Sun reader is someone at a party, if you ask them how they are, they’d much prefer to stand in the corner with you and have a conversation for 45 minutes, rather than the superficial social moment.  There are a lot of party conversations in the media – we’re not interested in furthering small talk, or illusions that life is easy or simple.  That’s the writing that we gravitate towards.  People write us letters that ask us why we’re down or dark, but as a staff, we take the opposite position.  We think it’s inspiring to read about people’s own grapplings with the messy parts –  as a community, we feel less alone, and to see something beautiful in all of that, it’s inspiring.  Finally, we might find some way to get out or through these things.

TS: Since 1990, The Sun has been an ad-free, non-profit publication.  Founder Sy Safransky started The Sun as a sort of street-side guerilla publication in 1974.  More than 30 years later, how much of that backpack-to-reader intimacy remains in the magazine?  What sort of challenges has the staff faced in order to maintain this status?

TM: Sy had nothing against ads, but there was a feeling that the writing and photography is very intimate, sort of a connection developed between the piece of art and the audience.  Anything that rots or dilutes that relationship is undesirable.  We are a nonprofit, so essentially we need to break even, which means there is less pressure to bring in huge dollars.  Everyone is paid well, the offices are comfortable.  We ask our readers once or twice a year to contribute – this is the price that readers pay for not having ads.  The thing is, when people send in donations, they often write that they do so because we don’t take ads.  There is the passive appreciation and the idea that it is nice not to clutter, and also the mere act of support for taking that stand in this world where ads are following us everywhere.

We have 70,000 readers now, in comparison to the handful which were buying magazines out of Sy’s backpack in 1974.  Back then it was him and one other guy, now we have 14 full time staff, freelancers.  It’s a bigger operation.  But we’re still all about the dirty truth, telling the stories that we don’t necessarily hear in the mainstream media – that remains at the core.  Content is still alternative, but I think the term  “new age-y” would bother him now, because we’ve moved passed that.  Look at an issue from the 1970s, now the tone is slightly different.

TS: The motto of the magazine as attributed on the website is “Personal.  Political.  Provocative. Ad-free.”  Features about controversial figures like the interview with Peter Coyote or Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson certainly typify the “political” aspect of this approach.

TM: For the interviews, we try to feature people who are going to make our readers think about something a little differently, learn something new.  Having folks who run against the grain.  We get letters about controversial issues, like the interview with Stewart Brand where he is questioning the “sacred cows” of the environmental movement.  Here’s a guy who was an environmentalist,  and the opinions he’s expressing were sort of unexpected.  People wrote in saying things like – what’s with this guy, he sold out?  But we’re trying to expand the conversations, broadening the market place.  It’s important to feature people who don’t just say exactly what you think you know something about already.

TS: In an age of instant accessibility and 24 hour media coverage, what role does print media  – and The Sun in particular – occupy in the contemporary American political conversation?

TM: There is a kind of headspace that the reader has to get into, a particular one.  I still read The Sun sometimes at my house, even though I’ve been involved in the creative process.  It’s a meditative state –  I curl up in my favorite chair by my window, by the fire, try to really have the openness to really take things in.  Besides the Sunbeams feature [ a page of quotations at the end of every issue], nothing in the magazine is something that you could really digest on the go – you’re going to have to give it the time.  It’s a certain line that we’re holding.  We are going to have a digital version for those who prefer to do their reading online, but it’s still “here’s an idea or story, sit and get into it.”

TS: I loved the short story by Kathleen Founds in the September 2011 issue, and I was pleasantly surprised by its inclusion because of the nontraditional structure.  In wading through piles of manuscripts and submissions, what characteristics are most appealing for publication?

TM: With our fiction, it opens the window, let’s some fresh air in.  There can be so much experimentation with voice, character, narrative perspective, versus the confines of the other forms.  But it still needs to feel real to us, still in the realm that we could come across in daily life.  Founds’ piece was creative and funny and vibrant.  There is some satire in that piece, but it worked because the voices of these high school kids, and the teacher, had a resonance with reality.  We’re not interested with literary sleights of hand, experimentation just for the sake of moving the form forward.   Going to break with form just for some meta-literary thinking, we are utterly uninterested in that.  Sometimes we act like we’re dense, almost purposefully.  When it comes down to it, we’re people around the fire, and someone is telling the story.  The trickery is distracting.

I’ve done some poetry workshops with  youth – what they think about poetry, what comes to mind.  They say things like “I can’t understand it , doesn’t make sense, I don’t know what’s going on”, and I think this is really counter to what the heart of poetry really is.  I don’t want to have to look it up to get it.  A poem that is doing its job should be understood by a teenager, not because it’s simple, but because you don’t need insider knowledge to get it.

TS: When you are considering work for publication, how do you interact with the authors?  Do you work with them on edits, etc.?

TM: We have lots of exchange with writers.  We edit heavily.  Always send edited galleys to the writers, and we expect them to exchange opinions.  A sort of back and forth until both parties are pleased.  I only know of one case where we lost a piece because we couldn’t reach agreement with a writer on edits.

TS: What suggestions do you have for writers looking to get their work published?

TM: I know it’s been said before, but knowing your publication is key; I’m still shocked at number of submissions that are so off of our base, it makes me think that a person has never seen an issue.  It’s hard work getting published.  But literary spamming, the scattershot approach – I don’t think that works.  Find magazines that you as a writer enjoy reading, and those are the ones to keep trying.

TS: It seems like this idea of the dirty truth is pervasive on many levels at the magazine.  Any final thoughts about what The Sun means for you personally?

TM: It follows a line in my life.  I’m searching for communion with other people.  I also struggle with solitude and alienation, because I’m looking for real conversations – the 45 minute chat at a party – and that can be hard to find.  When we have retreats, a hundred or so readers will come, and it’s amazing even though we’re from really different walks of life, you get them together, and just to see how deep people will go.  It’s not about hearts on our sleeves, trotting out all of our woes, that sort of thing.  I have this neighbor, an old man who lived in a small town for a long time.  He used to say he liked the kind of folks who, when you ask them how they are, they really answered.  That’s the kind of conversation we’re trying to foster.

Hi, everyone!

The deadline for Flyway‘s annual Notes From The Field contest is fast approaching!  Get your prose submissions in via Submishmash by midnight on November 4th!  So far we have a handful of entries.  We’re looking forward to reading them.  We’d love to read your work, too!

If you missed our first Notes From The Field post, you can find it here.  Winners are featured in our Fall issue.

Speaking of which, our Fall issue is coming together nicely!  We’re still on the hunt for more work to include, however.  Send us your poetry and prose!

Questions?  Comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

Recently, Flyway blogger, Chris Wiewiora, had the chance to ask NANO Fiction Editor, Glenn Shaheen, a few questions.

Chris Wiewiora: I’m curious about the name and background of NANO Fiction. Your guidelines state a 300-word count maximum. That wedges between the heritage of Jerome Stern’s initial 250-word limit of what he called “micro fiction” for the World’s Best Short Short Story Contest in Sundog (currently Southeast Review) and contemporary flash fiction, published in many magazines such as Quick Fiction, with a 500-word count limit.

Glenn Shaheen: Well, to be honest I wasn’t around when NANO Fiction was founded. My coeditor, Kirby Johnson, would probably have better insight into the particular reasons she had for our name, but I’ll take a shot. We chose the name NANO not to imply any new kind of genre, but just to mean small, as a nanosecond or nanometer, and also a little scientific. The 300 word limit was something we chose because, at the time, there wasn’t a journal whose wordcount guidelines were so low. The genre of flash fiction is so fluid that I don’t think breaking stories of less than 1000 words into different, more specific categories. I just call it all flash.

CW: Along with names and background, would you share what happened with the IRS labeling NANO Fiction as a publisher of pornography and thus turning down your 501(c)3 application to be recognized as a nonprofit, and how your progress is coming along for reapplication?

GS: I feel that I should preface all of this by saying that we are reapplying for 501(c)3 status, and I, therefore, don’t want to make the IRS look ridiculous, even though accusing any literary or art publication of pornography is very much ridiculous, which they may or may not have done. (I can answer this more specifically if our claim is denied again!) BUT what I should say is that while we were on some shaky ground, we discovered we had a lot of support, both from our readers and from the people of Houston, and through many generous donations and a benefit dance party we threw we managed to secure the funding to reapply. I mean, Donald Rumsfield wanted to cover Justice’s boobs, right? To certain fetishists a shoe store is pornographic. I have a lot I’d like to say about this but I feel I can’t right now, for prudence’s sake.

CW: What has been the biggest surprise/shock from a submission (i.e. big name author, content, resonance)?

GS: It’s always lovely to receive unsolicited work from authors that I love. It’s weird though when a big name author sends stuff for the contest, which I don’t feel is exactly ethical. Journal contests, to me, seem to be more of an outlet for writers at the beginning of their careers to gain some recognition. I know it’s not a rule, but it seems kind of unspoken. Just because you have a couple books, though, doesn’t mean you’re rolling in cash, so I guess there’s that side. Luckily a big name author has never submitted for the contest that we’ve all wanted to pick as the winner. Once, though, one of my favorite authors submitted, and when I wrote to her to tell her that though the other editors didn’t want to pick it as the winner, I would still love to publish a couple of her pieces, she said no, she’d like to save the pieces for somewhere else, so that made me feel like a bit of a chump.

CW: I’m aware NANO Fiction not only publishes fiction, but also nonfiction. Do you have plans to include comics and book reviews, and maybe even plays in future issues?

GS: We also publish prose poems, don’t forget! Originally, we did specify comics in our guidelines, but nobody ever sent comics in so we just removed it. Briefly I thought about adding book reviews in so I could get free books, but then my conscience chimed in and said if I love literature I shouldn’t be a cheapass about it. Plays, I don’t think so, though – what counts as a word? Dialogue only? Stage directions? Act or scene titles? Besides, we probably wouldn’t get any plays.

CW: Also, you have interviews online. How about contributors/former contest winners interviewing each other and asking one question with a 300-word limited response?

GS: That’s a good idea, actually. Less work for me as far as creating unique web content goes!

CW: It seems like short fiction magazines are unique because they give definite boundaries for writers to follow. Would you give your thoughts on the freedom and confinements of a (small) word-count limit?

GS: I think the extreme restrictions of flash fiction force writers to work in an entirely different way than if they were creating a story. I don’t consider flash fiction to be a subset of fiction in the same way I consider sonnets to be a subset of poetry. In sonnets, you may have some specific moves as far as meter, rhyme scheme, the volta, etc. laid out for you, but you still approach a sonnet on the same general terms of poetry, with attention to line, to image, to stanza, etc. For flash fiction, it’s such a different creature than fiction – can you say you place attention to character in a piece that is 250 words? Not in the same way that you would in a 5,000 word piece. Same thing with detail, or setting. You’re frequently picking the minor tools that you want to amplify briefly. I’d almost call it a genre on its own. Of course that’s self-serving, since I edit a journal of flash fiction, but isn’t life self-serving in its little ways?

Review by Tegan Swanson, Flyway Staff

With hundreds of short stories published every year, the ever-expanding number of worlds contained in 8,000 words can be overwhelming to contemplate.  How does one even choose where to start?  Collections and anthologies make for good filters, providing a smorgasbord of literary styles, voices, and subjects for readers to sample.  Popular volumes from O. Henry, PEN American, and the Best American series are released on an annual basis, each containing a hand-picked selection of some of the most exceptional works of the year.  In The Best American Short Stories 2003, editor Walter Mosley presents a collection which “live(s) with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams.”

Having read multiple volumes of the Best American series, I was particularly struck by the depth of talented women writers who were included in this collection.  Two of the twenty stories in 2003 were particularly excellent for their diversity of character and voice, and I think their strengths typify the characterization of memorable tales which Mosley explained in his introduction.  Originally published in Zoetrope and Callaloo respectively, the stories detailed below are worthy of any fiction reader’s attention.

Smart and unflinching in its portrayal of a juvenile detention facility, “Mines,” by Susan Straight, follows a guard identified only as Clarette.  Mother of two young children and aunt to one of the “big roundhead fool” inmates, Clarette struggles to balance the demands of a male-dominated workplace while still caring for her family.  “When I get home now,” Clarette narrates, “I have to stand at the sink and wash my hands and change my mouth.  My spit, everything, I think.”  Straight juxtaposes these environments in short, sparse prose, depicting aspects of both the inmates and her children in descriptions of their hair, their schools, their clothes, and their skin.  Even though the inmates are tattooed with gang signs and tough nicknames which make them seem like dogs in “ a damn kennel”, Clarette can’t shake the instinct to think of the young men instead as the sons of other mothers.  Although the title appears as slang reference to “getting mines” in the dialogue, it manifests thematically as a metaphor of violence.  The mines that Straight places in front of her protagonist arise as unexpected outbursts in the detention center, in being in the “wrong place, wrong time”, and in the tenuous conflicts of a crumbling marriage.  In the end, Clarette remains silent and steady in the wake of a prison fight, still determined to “get hers” despite the challenges of her life.

In Edwidge Danticat’s “Night Talkers,” a young Haitian émigré named Dany returns to his ancestral mountain village in order to reconnect with the aunt who cared for him after his parents were killed.  Themes of identity and language manifest in three main characters, all of whom Danticat calls palannits, a Creole word her own aunt created to describe “people who wet the bed with words.”  These characters represent both the multi-faceted demographics of the Haitian village that they inhabit, and the importance of communication and forgiveness in their community.  “Night Talkers” is ultimately a story about the release of grief and the power of compassion, both of which are depicted through the act of verbal expression.  Whether speaking aloud during a dream, giving words of comfort, or telling a story too long untold, Danticat’s characters reveal the importance of human communication.  Although their identities in Beau Jour are very different, the maternal aunt, a forgiven criminal and the estranged nephew are all intimately connected by the relationships they form while learning to “speak [their] nightmares to others, in the daytime, even when the moon had completely vanished and the sun had come out.”

Even for a superlative anthology, the authors showcased in the 2003 edition are intimidating in their accomplishment.  Included here are also stories about a blind malacologist (Anthony Doerr), the congregation of a Baptist church (ZZ Packer), kidnappers on the lamb (E.L. Doctorow), a New York City couple (Nicole Krauss), and a withered Ojibwa who plays the violin (Louise Erdrich).  As Mosley writes in his introduction, “A good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs,” and almost ten years after their original publication, these stories are still worthy of such acclaim.

Our annual Notes from the Field contest is now open for submissions!  We’re looking for prose focusing on place and the environmental imagination.

Word Limit: 3,500 words

Prize: The winner will receive $200 and publication in Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment.
The first runner-up will receive $50 and publication consideration.

Reading Fee: $19 (includes a one-year subscription to Flyway)

Submissions should be submitted online by midnight on November 4th.

For details, see our contest page.

Still have questions?  Comment here and we’ll be sure to answer!

Review by Mateal Lovaas, Flyway Staff

“You haven’t read Eragon?” one of my fifth graders asked me, appalled when he found out that I had not yet read this bestselling book. “Do you know a 15-year-old wrote it?” about four more boys chimed in. The next day, I found the book on my desk with a note from the student telling me he’d lend me his book, because I had to read that book right now.

I first read Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Series when I was working as a middle school English and history teacher at the Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland, California. During what I called “free reading” time, my students would pull out their chosen free-time books, and without fail, I’d have at least one fifth-through-eighth grader reading one of Paolini’s three books, Eragon (self-published in 2001 by a family-owned press and then again in 2003 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers), Eldest (2005), and Brisngr (2008). But until one of my students lent me his Eragon book, I had no interest in reading books about dragons, especially ones which had garnered such bad reviews. But I read it, and soon a second student lent me Eldest and a third Brisingr. The writer and grammarian in me winced my way through the books’ deadly-slow pace and choppy, bloated prose, but another part of me reveled in the unique magical elements of this fantasy series—the same part of me that can’t wait for Random House to release the last book on November 8. With this upcoming release of the fourth and final book in the cycle, Inheritance (which is also, confusingly, the name of the whole cycle), it is a good time to revisit this hotly contested series.

Besides perhaps the Twilight series, I can’t think of any other book in recent young adult literary history that has such critics, such vicious haters, while simultaneously selling millions of copies. Yes, Harry Potter has its critics, but a quick search on the Internet proves that they are much less abundant than anti-Inheritance folks.

Let me highlight just a handful of critiques about the first three books in the Inheritance series:

• unwieldy and unchecked prose
• significant grammatical errors
• meaningless, overused violence simply for the sake of violence
• Eragon’s lack of emotion
• general lack of developed characters, thereby causing a lack of reader investment in the characters
• weak dialogue
• clichéd descriptions and immature style
• over-explanation
• too many tangents
• off-the-stage villain (readers never truly see the evil King Galbatorix)
• dropped characters
• slow pacing, often for hundreds of pages at a time
• extension of the series from a trilogy to a quartet
• poor resolutions
• lack of originality, sometimes veering on overt copycatting of other fantasy series

This last critique is arguably the most salient. Any reader of the series can clearly pick out an uncanny number of similarities to Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, His Dark Materials, Beowulf, and Dune, to the point that Paolini’s series feels simply like an amalgamation of all that came before him. Yet despite these points, and a myriad of other complaints gushing indignantly over the Internet waves, it is undeniable that Paolini is doing something right. To date, the first three books have sold a total of 25 million copies worldwide. The first book, Eragon, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 121 weeks. It has been translated into 49 foreign languages and made into a movie. And when I run a Google search for “Inheritance series,” I come up with over 22 million results in 0.14 seconds. The fourth book, Inheritance, is primed for success with an impressive first-printing of 2.5 million copies and an eighteen-city tour starting on the release date. I can’t imagine what Paolini’s advance must have been for this last book.

I agree with nearly every complaint I have ever read or heard about the series. Yet the series’ redeeming qualities, however sparse, are actually enough to keep me reading. One selling point is Paolini’s fantastical, detailed world that spirits readers away. Even if the world of Alagaësia is a striking mixture of several other fantasy worlds, for me, that does not dilute the fact that Paolini describes it so resolutely and adds his own unique features. Paolini models the ten-mile high Beor Mountains, home to the dwarves, after the jagged Beartooth Mountains of his Montana home. In Eragon, Paoloni takes the time to languish over the land where Eragon is hunting:

The sky was clear and dark, and a slight breeze stirred the air. A silvery cloud drifted over the mountains that surrounded him, its edges glowing with ruddy light cast from the harvest moon cradled between two peaks. Streams flowed down the mountains from stolid glaciers and glistening snowpacks. A brooding mist crept along the valley’s floor. (Eldest)

His descriptions of landscape make me yearn to enter the world of Alagaësia.

In Eldest, I was impressed with Paolini’s elf land, Ellesméra, despite its similarities to The Lord of the Rings’s Rivendell. One unique element, though, is Paolini’s elven lodgings, grown in and of the trees. When Eragon enters Ellesméra for the first time, he slowly realizes that the trees are in fact dwellings:

But what he had taken to be clusters of lumpy, twisted trees were in fact graceful buildings that grew directly out of the pines. One tree bulged at the base to form a two-story house before sinking its roots into the loam [….] Another house was nestled between three pines, which were joined to it through a series of curved branches. Reinforced by those flying buttresses, the house rose five levels, light and airy. (Eldest 222)

The trees mold themselves into stairways, which spiral around their chunky tree bases and guide elves up into the branches. There are walkways and doorways into the insides of trunks. Eragon’s own tree dwelling, crafted by the trees just for Dragon Riders, is high up, has nearly 360-degree views over the emerald forests of Ellesméra, and feels inspiringly open to the elements. There is also a cavernous entryway for Eragaon’s dragon, Saphira, to enter, and a special, carved-out, wooden, bowl-like area for her to sleep in.

The fact that Eragon and Saphira share lodgings in Ellesméra speaks to another compelling feature of the Inheritance cycle: rider and dragon share a fiercely loving and unique relationship. Eragon and Saphira spend all their time together, can speak telepathically, and share the same difficult mission. Saphira herself is also such a loveable character. Sometimes she calls Eragon her little “hatchling,” even though it was she who hatched from an egg. Saphira can be sweet as pie with Eragon, but also harsh and sassy. She almost always shares what she thinks, even if just in gestures that show she is bored: “Eragon bowed his head and retreated to Saphira, who lay curled on a bed of moss, amusing herself by releasing plumes of smoke from her nostrils and watching them roil out of sight” (Eldest 220).

Paolini imaged Saphira as the “perfect friend.” In that, I think he succeeded. As a reader, I found myself loving Eragon and Saphira’s relationship, feeling jealous of the inextricable bond between human and creature.

Ultimately, perhaps part of the Inheritance series’ success is the simple enduring nature of coming-of-age novels. As with Oliver, Holden Caufield, Scout and Jem, Frodo, Harry Potter, and so many other characters, Eragon and Saphira have to face their world, and they grow up while doing so. And Paolini doesn’t make the growing up process cliché or easy. Eragon, for example, becomes more like the elves, physically and emotionally, but also eventually becomes hardened to killing, which is unlike the elves.

As an educator, I think any book or series, no matter its flaws, that gets kids passionate about reading—which for this cycle involves reading thousands of pages—is a success. Personally, I’m excited for the November 8th release of the last book in the series, Inheritance, but not excited enough to pre-order my own copy. For this series, the library will do for me.

We are excited to share our first online issue with you!  The issue features Cynthia Neely, this year’s winner of our Hazel Lipa Chapbook Conest.

“In Broken Water, Cynthia Neely begins with ancestry and ends with loss, but what persists, what weaves itself through all of these poems is wildness. This collection makes the lyrical case for sustenance in nature. Even the greatest suffering is not too much for the world of bird and wolf, seal and wave. If we can draw our gaze up from a ground littered with shotgun shells, we might catch a glimpse of “the meadowlark, bibbed and shining.”

–Derek Sheffield, winner of the inaugural Hazel Lipa Chapbook Award for A Revised Account of the West (2008)

You can subscribe to Flyway or purchase Issue 13.3 here.  We’d love to hear what you think of our new online format.  Please leave comments on our blog!  Thank you for your patience!