THR Interview Series: Joe Taylor
Headlight had the opportunity to interview Joe Taylor––short story writer, novelist, poet, and publisher at Livingston Books. As COVID-19 continues to take it’s toll, we managed to virtually connect with Taylor and explore his world of literature. It was a pleasure to discuss the details of Taylor’s publishing process.
When running a contest or an open call for submissions, does the quality of the submitted manuscripts vary greatly from one year to the next? Are you seeing any type of trends in contemporary fiction in the submissions you receive?
Joe: The quality remains pretty much the same, that is, about one-quarter are outstanding works. But a great many are predictable work-shop voices. I do think there has been a tendency toward more straightforward realistic work, with straightforward plotting and characterization. For better or for worse. What I tend to look for is voice, an authorial voice that makes me think, I believe this writer has something important on her mind. Or his mind. Myself, I’m somewhat fond of bending realism’s frame, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate realism.
Any publisher, be they the head of a large press or smaller one, is faced with great challenges. What are yours?
Joe: Well, distribution is a large problem. Even though we are carried by Baker & Taylor for libraries, and Ingram for bookstores, libraries and bookstores are cautious—an understatement—about buying small press books. Getting the book reviewed is an equally large challenge. Larger reviewers pretty much lean toward publishers who spend beaucoup advertising money. Twenty years ago it was easier for a small press to get reviewed. I suppose reviewers felt an obligation to toss a bone our way. That certainly isn’t the case now. I will vent a small irritation here: I can understand magazines and libraries, but independent bookstores? Aren’t they supposed to be, well, independent? It has been extremely hard to get independents to provide a chance for a small press author to sign and read. What? The cost of coffee and Cokes is overwhelming? And I’m talking pre-Covid-19!
Can you discuss the additional challenges of publishing brought along with the COVID-19 virus?
Joe: The virus has been pretty much disastrous on the sales level. One response has been to have “virtual” author appearances. I’m not sure how effective those are. I’m trying to have a bit more electronic appearance through social media.
When you look over the roster of books published by Livingston, do you have favorites? We're not asking you to say one book is better than another, but can you relate particularly good experiences while working with a certain writer on a book, or something that surprised you about a book after it was published?
Joe: One book that has greatly surprised me is Nicholas Bourbaki’s IF. (Bourbaki is a total pen name, by the way. The “real” Bourbaki was a hermit mathematician, who was also somewhat ephemeral.) IF is a choose-your-own-adventure for adults. It is by twists and turns comic or quite tragic. At the end of each “chapter,” the reader makes a choice and turns to one of two (or three at times) pages to continue. It’s a very interesting take on life—and on fiction. It was published six years ago, and in the last two years has become a steady best seller, say a hundred or more copies a month. While as mentioned before I do tend toward form-bending in my own writing, I do have some favorites that are quite straightforward in plotting and character—though never in style and voice! Scott Ely and Tom Abrams both fit that latter category. Karen Osborn’s recent The Music Bookworks similarly. A nice LP novel that balances betwixt realism and the fantastical is Gray Stewart’s Haylow, which intersperses a Bre’r Rabbit character amongst quite realistic—and sometimes harrowing—scenes of racial conflict. Charles McNair’s Pickett’s Charge does something similar. And Kat Meads’ novel Miss Jane presents a realistic story of an undergraduate’s seduction by an older professor, but with such an eccentric, angry chorus that it too borders on the fantastical. Nearly all the writers I’ve published have been helpful, informative, and entertaining to work with.
Can you tell us about your background as a writer? Where did you attend college, who did you study with? Did any book in particular make you want to be a writer?
Joe: I wrote a brief satire when I was in sixth grade. I wrote some poems as a freshman in college—this is a funny story—and then sent them to Antioch Review. I soon received a letter back, stating, “Dear Mr. Taylor: The best thing you can do with these poems, and any other poems you may have written, is to take them into a very large field on a very windy day and toss them up.” I went to Kentucky as a philosophy major. An English professor there advised me that if I really wanted to write, the last major I should think of should be . . . English. He may have been right. I then stumbled about for ten years and finally went to Florida State to get a Ph.D. in creative writing. I studied under Jerome Stern and Janet Burroway, both of whom were wonderfully insightful. Novels. Well Siddhartha by Hesse comes to mind. Catch-22 by Heller. Faulkner and O’Connor. Currently Kate Atkinson and William Gay. I’m not sure that Shakespeare’s plays and modern poets such as Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, and John Berryman didn’t push me toward writing as much as fiction did.