Behind The Editor’s Desk: Brandi Wells

The Los Angeles area is rife with independent presses. One of those is Gold Line Press, housed in the University of Southern California. Both Gold Line and its sibling press, Ricochet Editions, are independent presses run by students and alumni of USC’s PhD Creative Writing Program. When WWS organizer Tisha Reichle-Aguilera became one of the Ricochet Editions editors, she suggested I reach out to Brandi Wells, Editor in Chief of Gold Line Editions.

Women Who Submit members should know that neither Gold Line nor Ricochet accept unsolicited submissions. But Gold Line is currently accepting submissions for their annual chapbook competition, and we encourage all of you who have chapbook length work to submit!  The deadline is August 1st.

Brandi Wells answered my questions over email.

As EIC at Gold Line, what are you looking for in a submission? What kind of writing aligns with the values, aesthetic and mission of Gold Line?

Across all three genres: nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, I am interested in language that captivates as well as innovates. I am most excited when what I’m reading feels new and like something I haven’t seen before. Good writing is good writing and I like to see work that is polished and thoughtfully considered, but I have a real soft spot writing that bends or breaks the rules or is subversive. Last year’s winning fiction chapbook is called The Best American Short Stories 1998 and I have to admit to being immediately charmed by the conceit of this one. 

I’m also really pleased to be working alongside nonfiction editor Emily Geminder, fiction editor Sam Cohen, and poetry editor Muriel Leung, who are all exceptional writers themselves, and are in USC’s Phd in creative writing and literature. I’ve had workshops with them as well as read their writing for pleasure and am a big fan. It’s a privilege to work alongside writers that I can gush over and brag about.

 

We’re very excited about the chapbook contest. How long has Gold Line Press been hosting this contest? How do you decide on whom to invite to be the guest judge in each genre? 

Our first poetry chapbook contest was in 2010 and then in 2011 we opened it up to fiction as well. It wasn’t until our 2017 contest that we added the nonfiction category as well. USC has also recently added a nonfiction track to the creative writing and literature PhD program, so it feels like nonfiction is expanding all around me. As you can imagine, this is the genre we receive the least submissions for and we’d love to see more. Prose chapbooks can sometimes be a hard thing to wrap your head around. Is it a long story or essay? A collection of flashes? A couple of short pieces? Something entirely different? Yes, it’s all those things. 

As far as judge selection, in each genre the editors select a writer whose work and tastes they admire. This is the second year we’ve reached outside our university system to find judges. Bhanu Kapil is our nonfiction judge, Myriam Gurba is our fiction judge, and Diana Khoi Nguyen is our poetry judge. All three of these writers are doing work that we find both timely and exciting. 

 

What are a few titles that Gold Line has published recently that you are proud of/excited about?

Alysse Kathleen McCann’s chapbook of poetry, Pentimento is a pleasure to read and has one of my favorite covers of the past few years. It’s a good-looking book, both inside and out.

Cassie Donish’s nonfiction chapbook On the Mezzanine is so smart and beautifully lyric. Donish is also a poet and I love to read prose written by poets. But besides gorgeously rendered prose, I was quickly drawn into her essayistic investigation of gender and sexuality. I’ll be reading anything that Donish publishes in the future and am grateful to have been exposed to her writing.

Julia Zhou’s fiction chapbook Generics has been an SPD best seller and is one of my favorite fiction titles. I was the fiction editor when Zhou’s Generics was chosen, and I remember how excited I felt as I first began reading it. I read straight through it twice on that first reading. At the time I was living with then editor-in-chief Zachary Doss and I had him read it too, immediately, sitting across from me in our living room. I remember watching him, nervous that he might not love it as much as I did, but he kept nodding while he read. All of our finalists were great, but I’ll admit to being giddy when that year’s judge, Danzy Senna, chose Generics as the winner.

 

How often do the editors give constructive feedback on rejected manuscripts? Have you seen writers re-submit after rejection?

Often we tell writers who don’t quite make the finalist cut how much we liked their writing and encourage them to resubmit in the future. We’ve had writers resubmit in subsequent years, be selected as finalists, and then win the contest. Our staff changes from year to year, and while Gold Line Press will continue to be staffed by graduate students in USC’s PhD in creative writing and literature, tastes do change along with the staff. 

 

What are some goals or hopes you have for Gold Line in the future?

We’d love to be able to publish full length books and that’s a possibility that looms on the horizon. We’re also working to become more active in our local literary community here in Los Angeles. There’s a vibrant small press scene and we’d love to contribute more. This can sometimes be tough with a rotating staff, but current fiction editor Sam Cohen is particularly interested in this and I hope to see these plans come to fruition over the next year.