Inside Judgement by Leslie McGrath

A few years ago, as ten years of persistence began to pay off in terms of publication here and there in literary magazines, I began to be asked to be a reader, and later a judge, for a number of contests and fellowships.  This, the service element of a literary life, doesn’t get written about as much as I think it should. There are so many ways to be of service: reading for (and its more sophisticated cousin, editing) a literary magazine, running community workshops, charitable gifts to libraries and literary organizations, and on and on. I think of being a reader and a judge the beating heart of literary service. And here’s why: it takes years to develop one’s skills and aesthetic as a writer, years more to develop a deep understanding of other aesthetics. This accretion of knowledge and empathy can be used, certainly, in the classroom, but not every poet is a teacher. Nor should every poet teach. Judgment passed after thorough, fair-minded consideration is what every writer hopes for when applying for a residency, a grant, or when seeking publication of a collection. Being a part of the process is an intangible but important mark of success as a writer. It means we’ve earned the confidence of our peers. 

No one gets wealthy from judging state literary contests and fellowships. I’ve served on panels that offered a few hundred dollars for dozens of hours of work. I’ve served on panels that paid gas fare and gave us a deli lunch. I’ve served on panels for which there is no payment whatsoever. That is, if I didn’t consider the chance to read 15 to 25 of my fellow poets’ new collections and discuss them for an afternoon with other writers whose views I admire.

I spent three years on the judges’ panel for the Connecticut Book award. The judging process was pretty typical: each judge received a copy of every book under consideration, then read and took notes on the books over the course of a couple of months, winnowing the group down to the strongest five or so.  We’d then schedule a multi-hour meeting and go through the candidates one by one, often reading particularly strong or weak passages.  The real difficulty would come at the end, when we had to choose the winner. There was a year in which there was agreement from the beginning. In other years, we tore our hair out trying to compromise. But in every situation, I worked with a group of people who took literature seriously, who took the time to build an argument for a favorite, and who had the sense of fairness to recuse themselves if they were friendly with the poet whose work was under consideration.

I’ve also been a reader for a national fiction contest, which was probably the most difficult thing I’ve done in this regard, simply because of the number of manuscripts—each of which was a novel or short story collection. The sponsoring press was extremely well-organized and thorough. Readers were paid on a per-manuscript basis. Every few days, a box would arrive, containing about 25 manuscripts, each of which had been registered with the press and assigned a number. I was to read about 125 manuscripts, which meant the delivery of five heavy boxes.  It was a yeoman’s task—and I’m an organized person.

For weeks my office was filled with stacks of manuscripts and I’d scream at anyone who got near enough to topple them.  About a quarter to a third of the manuscripts for any of the contests I’ve read for are relatively straightforward “Not for us.”  Another third comprised the “this is getting there but needs a lot of work” category. The final third consisted of the beautiful, the moving, the memorable and the initially incomprehensible.  These were the manuscripts I read over again and took notes on and argued with myself about. 

I then had to winnow down to the two manuscripts I felt were the strongest, then to label the one I felt the most confident in.  I was one of a number of readers—seven, I believe—each of whom made the same decisions. Our group of finalists was given to the judge, a well-respected fiction writer, who made the final judgment. And no, my choice wasn’t the winner.

I’ve not yet been a judge for a book contest, but last summer I had the opportunity to be nearby during the three-day judging of the Washington Prize, which is decided by a committee of writers on the staff and board of The Word Works (Washington, D.C.) I was impressed by the time and serious effort the five judges put into the process. Each had read and taken notes on all the manuscripts before arriving, and when the time came for the judging, they closed themselves in a room for the better part of a day, emerging at last with a winner: Brad Richard’s Motion Studies, due for publication this spring. They wouldn’t talk about the candidates in front of me, and only after the winner was contacted did they let me know who it was. This is the kind of process I admire; I’m reassured that the thoughtfulness and skill required to write the collection is matched by the effort it took to shepherd it into life as a book. I hope you're reassured as well.

Comments

[Rick Rofihe]

I administer but do not read for or judge two contests, one in Creative Nonfiction
2011 Judge: Elizabeth Wurtzel (1st year)
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/andernonfictionprize2011.html
and one in Poetry (2011 will be the 6th year)
2010 Judge: Linda Bierds
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/anderprize2010.html

Mr general function in these contests is to keep everything running along and sorted out: the advertising and publicity, the entries, the return notification envelopes, the entry-fees, the prize, the notifications, the publication of the winners. Sometimes an entrant will write in to inform us that, say, one of his or her poems has been accepted elsewhere, so that has to be fished out.

What I'm trying to say is that, even without doing any reading or judging at all, and even while averaging only a hundred entries per contest, there's a lot to keep anyone who's running a literary competition's hands full.

Sincerely,
Rick Rofihe
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
http://www.anderbo.com

[Laura Orem]

Thanks for posting this. I think this is an aspect of literary life that most of us taken for granted - the "in-kind" service that most writers perform when asked. In fact, the only reason I've ever encountered that people turn these requests down is a question of time; that is, they have their plates full with other in-kind service work. I think it's worth remembering when folks think about the state of literature today. It's largely a well-run, committed, passionate, mostly invisible volunteer force that keeps the literary biz humming along. Only a slender top layer gets any financial cream - judging fees, paid editing jobs, etc. - that may rise. What other industry can say that? What other industry would not collapse without a financially-compensated workforce? I believe this says a lot about writers - perhaps we are fools, perhaps starry-eyed angels, perhaps a little of both.

[twitter.com/jessiepoet]

Terrific insight into the process. I'm going to share this with my blog readers :)

[DL]

People aren't aware of how much thought and hard work go into these deliberations. Your column is a salutary reminder that there are people out there who give selflessly of themselves to honor the art and its practitioners.