Ask the Editor: Jensen Whelan, Hobart (Web) Editor

In this week’s Ask the Editor, we talk to Jensen Whelan, Web Editor for Hobart. He talks to us about international intrigue, parenthood, his amazing ability to effect social change, the brilliance of the spork, and the Internet as the modern televisual device.

1. You lived in Sweden for a time and now you’re back in the states, living in Massachusetts. Same sex marriage is legal in both places. Are you responsible for this progress? What was the most interesting aspect of living in Sweden? What do you miss?

Thanks for noticing my efforts. Apart from the same sex weddings I was going to all the time, the best part about living in Sweden was learning a new language. I’m a total foreign language nerd. I was that kid in high school whose idea of a fun after school activity was declension worksheets with the German Club. I was and still am a total geek. Otherwise, I liked almost everything about living in Sweden. Except for the darkness. I do not like the darkness. What do I miss? Universal Healthcare, a functioning social welfare system and the band Europe. On a serious note, my wife and I are very happy and fortunate to be able to raise our sons in places like Sweden and Massachusetts, where tolerance and progress are normal parts of the cultural experience.

I don’t really know. The writing community in the US is really energetic and dynamic and I never experienced anything like that in Sweden. To be fair, though, I never looked for it as I put so much of my effort into being part of the community in the English-speaking part of the world. Literature is enormously popular in Sweden, even English-language literature—I’ve seen some great readings/events. Richard Ford came two years ago and the guy introducing him choked up a little during the introduction he was so excited. Obviously, being so close to the UK, a lot of British literature is popular. It was kind of cool to be exposed to writers I might have otherwise missed. I’m thinking of people like Scarlett Thomas, Lloyd Jones (although he’s Kiwi), Sarah Waters, etc. But the scene here, as far as I can tell, remains pretty well rooted in the establishment in the sense that there are very few independent publishers and that kind of thing. I mean, Sweden awards the Nobel Prize, so the cultural norm is more Toni Morrison than (who would be a good example here?) David Foster Wallace.

I look first for hugeness of heart. Stories that are funny and generous and willing to engage the world in odd and wonderful ways have a good chance of hitting with me. I also look for language that gets into my writing DNA, makes me want to keep reading and then stop reading and go write. The best example I can think of from our archives is Glen Pourciau’s “Belly“. This story is just right in so many ways.

There are two things that will guarantee a rejection at Hobart Web when I’m reading for an issue. 1) Unfamiliarity with the kind of stuff we publish. I feel like I see this a lot from editors in interviews, but it’s really true: submit to magazines and journals you love to read. Finding a good fit for a story in a magazine is an important part of the process. Though as a writer, I understand how difficult this is. It’s hard to look at the range of work we’ve published and then define a “Hobart story,” and I love to be proved wrong when it comes to my own sort of preconceived ideas about what’s right for Hobart Web and what’s not. I guess I didn’t really say much there. And 2) A lack of completion. A lot of the stories I read just don’t seem fully realized or ready to go out yet. Maybe this is because they are too new or something. It often feels like the story was going along just fine, then it took a wrong turn, maybe two sentences synthesized in some predictable or boring way and the story went where it shouldn’t have, ending on the wrong note. I don’t know.

I do love PANK. Also Hobart, of course. Opium, Monkeybicycle, Quick Fiction, NOON, Avery Anthology, Spork, Wigleaf, elimae, Tin House, Pindeldyboz, Night Train, Smokelong, Ninth Letter, Keyhole, Gulf Coast. I recently discovered some online journals that publish longer fiction that so far has been really, really good: Waccamaw, Freight Stories, Bull: Men’s Fiction, Avatar Review. There are so many others. I can’t wait for the Collagist to launch. (ed. Neither can we!)

Enormously. Getting to read good writing is always inspiring. Also, getting to read work that I feel is not great helps me identify bad habits and bad choices in my own stuff. Reading twenty stories in a row in which the narrator keeps popping out of the story’s action to editorialize what’s happening or what a character is thinking has helped me understand how easy it is to fall into this trap and to, hopefully, avoid doing so. I think editing has also helped me be able to separate in a way from my work once a draft is completed, to be able to see where a story is working and where it’s not without feeling too close to a particular paragraph or sentence. I’m able to be more ruthless with my stuff now in a way that I couldn’t before.

Definitely A. But only if by “sleazy motel” we mean the Hyatt and by “one night stand” we mean a good night’s sleep in a comfy bed and my sons are not there. This makes me sound like I’m fifty or something.

We read on a month-to-month basis. Sometimes a story will come in (often near the end of the month) that is so great it gets passed on to the next editor for consideration if an issue is full or the piece just doesn’t fit with the other three or so pieces in the issue. Andrea has just joined Team Hobart and I’m really excited to see her first issue. I’m a big fan of her work and know she’ll put together a great group of stories. Who else? Aaron Burch is the Boss. He founded Hobart and still edits the print edition. He is a truly amazing editor with a great eye for people on their way places (Pasha Malla, Jeff Parker, Roy Kesey, etc.) and has put together increasingly awesome issues. Number 10 is just out and looks badass. Often he’ll send along shorter stuff that is better suited to the word counts of the Internet. I’ve taken a lot of these stories. Like I said, Aaron has great taste. Matthew Simmons is the interviews editor. The interviews are one of my favorite parts of Hobart online. Ryan Molloy is the photo editor. Every month we send him our stories and he picks photos to complement the work. He’s also a great designer who did the Hobart Ann Arbor reading poster (which can be seen on the blog. Sean Carmen, who used to be the photo editor, takes care of the blog.

At UMass I’ve been lucky enough to work with Chris Bachelder, Noy Holland and Sabina Murray, three writers whose work I loved even before I came here. I honestly think it’s going to take me a few years of decompression to understand all that I have learned so far from these three (not to mention poetry classes and workshops I’ll be taking from Jim Tate, Dara Weir and Peter Gizzi). Apart from just being able to have the ear, so to speak, of writers of this caliber and ask (more than likely) lame questions, the biggest benefit for me has been community. I’ve been fortunate to find some great friends so far and some generous and brilliant readers of my work. I’m also really digging the teaching we get to do and the classes we get to take. On the downside: the constant criticism that MFA programs get for the dreaded “MFA story” doesn’t come from nowhere. My program works hard to discourage this type of writing—the three writers I mentioned above hardly write what might be called traditional MFA fiction—but workshops do have a tendency to want to iron out the most interesting wrinkles and turns in a story. But overall, I’m pleased with the experience. You don’t enter an MFA program to learn how to write; you go to learn how to do it better. Three years of basically cost-free time to learn from a bunch of great young writers and our professors is not a bad thing.

10. I enjoyed your piece Training Exercise in Spork and found it very moving.  How does fatherhood inform your writing? Is the spork perhaps the best food conveyance device ever invented?

Thanks for the kinds words, Roxane! Yes, the spork is the best food conveyance ever invented. Obviously.

Fatherhood informs my writing quite a bit. I think it’s because there is an emotional texture in a story about fatherhood that I just understand and am able to then take places I couldn’t otherwise. I don’t write much about, say, bars or being young and living in New York because those things aren’t my reality. That said, it’s not like I sit down every morning and say I’m going to knock off another father story. I often just find that those are the sentences that are coming out.

It died. I was not very good at running my own journal. I knew nothing about design and html and that stuff, but I liked doing JoMP. As you know, editing and publishing takes a ton of energy. Right around the time JoMP died, I was entering my master’s program in Sweden, had a kid and just found that it was either that or my own writing. Of course, right around then Aaron asked me to join the web-editing team and I couldn’t say no.

I like to be as personal as I can. Often I don’t have time to be, but I try to at least include a small note to the writer telling them to submit again or suggesting places I think might be better suited to a particular story. I think it’s important as an editor to read a story on its own terms. In other words, just because I think a story should be put together a certain way doesn’t mean that’s right. I mean, if I knew so much about it, my own stories would be accepted all the time, right? If there is something I feel strongly about—say a fix or two that would make the story great—I’ll suggest it. But if the only thing “wrong” with a story is that it just doesn’t feel right for Hobart, chances are the writer knows what he or she is doing and will place the story eventually. I often seen stories I reject published in other journals, which I used to think reflected poorly on me, but now think just means that once a writer hits a certain point in her development its only a matter of editors’ taste that determines where a story finds a home.

Right now I’m a little more than half-way through a collection of short fiction. I’m also just wrapping up a chapbook manuscript (which includes “Training Exercise” and some other fatherhood stories and for some reason, lots of stories in which birds play some kind of part) that I’m hoping to be able to submit to upcoming contests, etc. this fall. I’ve been trying to take submitting and (hopefully) publishing a little more seriously than I have, getting my work out there and figuring out which journals I fit best with. Just this morning Avery Anthology took a story, I’m happy to say. So maybe, hopeful, I’m starting to figure things out in small ways.

I know this sounds obnoxious, but I don’t have a TV. BUT! I do watch a lot of stuff on the Internet. Netflix, Hulu, etc. I love me a good (but historically dubious!) “documentary” on the History channel. My wife tells me this is something only old men are into, but I don’t care. Sometimes you just want to know what really happened to Hitler or why the UFOs landed in ancient Egypt and built the pyramids.

The answer is beer.