Clifford Garstang is the author of five works of fiction including the novels Oliver’s Travels and The Shaman of Turtle Valley and the short story collections House of the Ancients and Other Stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, and In an Uncharted Country. He is also the editor of the acclaimed anthology series, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet. A former international lawyer, he lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
>We didn’t go this year. UVA’s in the process of some pretty serious budget cutbacks, and skipping AWP was a way to save a pretty good chunk of change. One of our fearless Online Contributing Editors attended, though, and it’s he who wrote about it for us.
>And wrote very interestingly.
You guys should tell Willard Spiegelman at Southwest Review about the budget cutbacks. At the panel on The Future (and Present) of Literary Magazines he made some snide remark about VQR being exempt from the financial constraints that face magazines like his.
>Ha! If only that were so! I think the university has cut our budget every year for the past three years, certainly the past two. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve been wonderfully supportive, it’s just that as the entire university’s budget has fallen, so too has our primary university funding. Thankfully, we’re operated as a business—we sell copies, ads, subscriptions—and so we’re able to make our own money, too. But running a literary magazine is, of course, not really a profitable endeavor. 🙂
BTW, I really enjoyed the Daily Progress article about your dad yesterday. I’ll have to find a chance to see his art on exhibit—it looks just great.
>Hey, I believe you! Tell Willard!
By the way, Michael Garstang isn’t my father (I had to google the DP to see who/what you were talking about.) I haven’t even met the man, although I believe we are distant cousins–way distant.
>I stand corrected. Welcome to the Poverty Club.