As Program Director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Chelsea Kern is the glue that holds so much of the indie literary world together, advocating for mission-driven independent publishers and magazines—and, with equal importance, introducing readers to the work this community produces. It is clear from our conversation, she has a passion for seeing big projects through to completion. We discussed the constant that is CLMP and how the literary landscape has transformed since the organization’s founding in 1967—becoming increasingly global and digital. CLMP, with Chelsea’s leadership, has taken these changes in stride with webinars, newsletters (that Bloomsday archives for reference religiously), and a listserv for magazines and presses to ask and answer each other’s questions. As a proud member of CLMP, we can confirm that this listserv is one of the crown jewels/hidden gems of the organization, which always saves us from having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to oddly specific publishing questions Google doesn’t have the answer to. We also explored Chelsea’s personal journey, from a CLMP fellow working in Diversity & Inclusion to Program Director. A go-between who works to connect us needy presses with the grant gods themselves, she has spearheaded vital programs like the Literary Arts Emergency Fund. Chelsea could be considered literary royalty, but she is a magnanimous monarch. We are grateful to have shared space with her in this episode.

Published Date: November 2, 2023

Transcription

Phuc Luu:

This has been a live recording of the Effing Shakespeare Podcast by Bloomsday Literary, at the 2023 AWP Conference and Book Fair. We're thankful to be the official podcast for AWP for third year, and have invited a vary of guests that you don't want to miss out on.

As always, please subscribe, rate, and review so we can continue to bring you interviews of amazing writers sharing about their amazing work. Enjoy.

Speaker 2:

I am excited to welcome to AWP land, Chelsea Kern. Thank you for coming on the show.

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Chelsea Kern is the program director over at CLMP and she's here to tell us all about CLMP, which is the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. And it's weird when you see people you know walk by and they're like, "Mm." And I'm in the middle of an intro, and I was like, oh, I do know that person. So we'll circle back to that later, which means nothing to you all out there.

But we're excited to talk to you about all of the things, all of the good things that you guys are doing over at CLMP. And the other thing you guys should know about Chelsea is that she has a PhD in English from UCLA. She currently lives in Portland, and she has plant babies that we may or may not get to today. But I think that's important to know. She cares about the natural world.

Chelsea Kern:

I do.

Speaker 2:

Clearly. Bringing the outside world in. Yes. All right, so just tell us a little bit about the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses and what your mission is over there.

Chelsea Kern:

So CLMP has been around for a really long time. It was founded in 1967 with a slightly different name, but we're now the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. And basically we are a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for independent publishers, so literary magazines, presses, zine and chap book publishers that are to publish literature.

And we do that in a variety of ways, but basically for publishers, we provide resources, funding opportunities, networking, and generally just we try to advocate for the importance of independent publishers to the literary field in general.

Speaker 2:

Right on. But you have two missions. So you do some work for the publishers like Bloomsday Literary, and other houses, and then you have a second branch that aims to help readers, correct?

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of our face two different directions. One is towards publishers, and we provide this kind of internal resources. And then outward toward readers what we're really trying to do is say, "Hey, look at these amazing community of independent publishers exist that you might not know about."

We have over a thousand members at this point, about two thirds literary magazines, one third presses. And as a writer, when you're just starting out, you're like, I don't know where to submit. And we want you to come to us and be like, look at all these amazing options that you have. Look at all the amazing work that they're doing.

So that's really part of what we do is we promote the work of publishers to towards the writing and reading communities that really should be reading all this amazing stuff.

Speaker 2:

We had NNeema Avashia on the show who is a queer writer from Appalachia, and she was talking about the importance of as a writer, when you're going out on submission, to really look at the presses that would be a meaningful fit for your work. And I know at CLMP, you guys do a lot to allow for presses to enter their bios and kind of connect with the people who are looking for those presses to submit to.

Chelsea Kern:

Absolutely. And it is so important. I feel like writers will come up to me at AWP for example, and be like, "Where do I submit? I just want to submit to the best places." I'm like sometimes the ones that you know, yeah, sure, they're well known and they're great, they're doing amazing work, but maybe you want to find the one that really fits with your vibe and what your writing is trying to do.

And a lot of these smaller magazines, that's where that's happening. You have these magazines that fit, like we're looking for exactly your voice, and this is the character of our magazine. So yeah, we really want to make sure that people know that that's out there. Whatever you're writing, there's a home for it.

Speaker 2:

Can you talk a little bit about the ecosystem and how it has changed from... I mean, 1967 predates most of us here, all of us here, but when it started in '67, how has it changed over till 2023? I mean, the membership has grown for one.

Chelsea Kern:

For sure. Yeah, it's exploding. But I think one thing to note is that while publishing and the CLMP community used to be really New York and East Coast focused, because that's where a lot of things were happening, and we didn't have the technology to be doing Zoom meetings, that it used to be really kind of locally focused. And now we have members from every state in the country, people from all over the place, a ton of local Seattle members here. And then we have members from 17 other countries around the world.

So we're really becoming a national and global community of publishers, which is awesome because we're not only able to serve people who are going to walk down the street and find stuff, but people all over the place who want to be able to connect in person with publishers even if they're not in New York.

Speaker 2:

Right. So what does it look like if someone's listening now or is going to hear this on the podcast, what does it look like to enter into that community? Because it's a changing word these days with everything being so accessible online?

Chelsea Kern:

Absolutely, yeah. So a lot of our services now are online. For our members, a lot of the stuff we do is through webinars, through online resources. And then for writers, we have our calls for submission page. It's up on our website. You can go on there and see which magazines and presses are open for submissions, and then we send that out through our social media and our newsletter as well. So we've really been happy for the way that this new kind of world has allowed us to reach people that we would never have been able to reach before.

Speaker 2:

For sure. Yeah. I mean, as the ED of Bloomsday Literary, I know when I open my inbox and I see the newsletter from CLMP, there's going to be something important for me to know about what's happening right now. I don't hit delete on that one.

Chelsea Kern:

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. That's been really helpful to me. And also I find, I don't know if you were planning on plugging this, but I'm going to tee it up for you, but the CLMP listserv, the ability to email widely, pretty much any of the editors that we know who are in this world of independent publishing, and ask the most specific question, and feel like all the questions are okay, and then get a response pretty quickly.

We've had questions about how we do inventory, what are your royalty rates? We are sharing a lot of information because of what you guys are doing. You're setting that up to also have that be a part of the community.

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah. I think that's actually one of our most undersold resources is the listserv because it's huge. Everyone who is in CLMP is a member, so we have over a thousand editors and other staff people at these magazines and presses that are on there. And you can just, as you said, ask the specific question that you think you're the only person dealing with that issue. And someone else out there is going to be like, "Yep, I did that last year. Here's what we did. Problem solved."

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Or, "We haven't solved this problem. What are the pieces of information that you have and what are the pieces of information you have? Let's put it all together and see how close we can get to a workable solution."

I have on my to-do list for AWP is walking around and finding the people who have helped me. I've seen them help me through emails, but never met them in person. And I want to go say to Jeffrey Levine at Tupelo, "Thank you for..." Because there have been many times when I'm like, oh, that's the answer. That makes the most sense for us too.

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah, for sure. And I think it's so important too, for presses and magazines that are just starting out, who think that they have to do all this on their own and reinvent the wheel, but no, that people have been doing this work for decades. And there's a lot of knowledge out there that if you can get in contact with the right people, you can take off so much of your workload.

Speaker 2:

Yes. Right. And we know that there's plenty of work and load to be distributed, so we can share as much as possible. It's a great resource, a great resource.

Talk about LitNet. Can you tell us about what LitNet is?

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah, absolutely. So LitNet, CLMP is a member of LitNet and also helps out with some of the administration. But LitNet is a national coalition of literary arts organizations. Not just publishers, but presenting organizations, writers in the schools, all kinds of organizations. And the goal of LitNet is really to come together as a field, a literary field, to be able to advocate for the importance of literary arts, both for funding reasons and also just visibility. People are doing so much amazing work and we want everyone to know it.

And if you're at AWP on Saturday morning at 9:00, we're having just a LitNet meeting. You can learn about LitNet here from a couple of guest speakers. And then after the meeting, we'll be just having a mingle over some breakfast so you can meet other folks in the field, say hello, and make that face-to-face connection.

Speaker 2:

What are the topics of discussion for that morning?

Chelsea Kern:

So one of our guest speakers is from the NEA, talking about one of the new initiatives that they're doing, I believe at the Smithsonian. And then we have... I'm totally blanking on our second guest speaker, but it's going to be great. Oh, we have a funder from Seattle, just talk through the funding process, which is such an important topic for a lot of literary arts organizations.

Speaker 2:

And very simple. The funding process is really simple, so I'm sure it's going to be [inaudible 00:09:24]

Chelsea Kern:

Definitely easy.

Phuc Luu:

Yeah, sarcasm in there, I hear. And where would this be held?

Chelsea Kern:

It is in one of the rooms in this conference center.

Phuc Luu:

Okay. You find it.

Chelsea Kern:

Look it up in your AWP program.

Phuc Luu:

You find it, listeners.

Speaker 2:

Consult your AWP. Yeah, we'll figure that out. No, it's easy to do. We can search it up. That's what my 12-year-old says.

Chelsea Kern:

It's in 331. It's all in my brain somewhere.

Speaker 2:

I'm impressed that you get there so quickly. That's really solid podcasting.

Chelsea Kern:

So room 331. Come join us Saturday morning at 9:00.

Speaker 2:

Nice, nice.

Phuc Luu:

All the answers will come.

Speaker 2:

They will all come.

Phuc Luu:

Yeah, eventually.

Speaker 2:

Can you talk about a little bit of the work that CLMP does to connect nonprofits to either consultants or grant opportunities, that kind of thing? The funding, because that seems to be such a major issue for nonprofits and for-profit presses, startups, and established. Sustainability is the name of the game, and I feel like we need lots of help in that department.

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah, absolutely. So a big part of CLMP's mission is again, advocating for the importance of this field. And so we do a lot of liaising with funding organizations just to say this is a really important thing, please pay attention to it.

One of the things we've been really happy to be able to do over the last couple of years is increase the number of grant opportunities that we're able to offer to our members and to the wider literary field. You don't need to be a CLMP member to apply for these grant opportunities. That would help since you can keep in touch with us and stuff like that.

But over the past two years, we've been partnering with the National Book Foundation, Academy of American Poets to offer the Literary Arts Emergency Fund, which offered emergency funding to publishers and other literary arts organizations that were affected by the pandemic. So that has been really wonderful to see.

This past year, we also offered the Capacity Building Grants, which we're able to give grants to 43 organizations for long-term organizational sustainability reasons. And that's really wonderful. And then throughout the year, we also offer a number of smaller grant opportunities that pop up every now and then. But that is, I think, some of the most rewarding work that I do, because I get to see all those applications come in and be like, oh, look at all these cool projects that everyone wants to do. How can I help facilitate making this happen? So yeah, that's really great.

Speaker 2:

This is off script. As you don't know, we have teleprompter, so everything is scripted. The whole...

Phuc Luu:

Yeah, we're just reading.

Speaker 2:

Which is why we're doing so well.

Phuc Luu:

That's why the answers came so easily.

Speaker 2:

No, this is off script because I want to put a personal spin, and it strikes me that this might be interesting for people who are literary adjacent, maybe they aren't here with a book, but they're here fresh out of their MFA, or they just started their MFA or they're getting a PhD in literature at UCLA.

Can you tell us your sort of personal trajectory, how you ended up with CLMP? Because I think that a lot of people get out of humanities degree programs and wonder if they have found that scholarship and academia is not going to be their future, they're sort of looking around like what's next. So maybe your story about how you ended up there would be helpful.

Chelsea Kern:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, also when I went into the PhD program, was like, I'm going to be a professor. And as so many of us learn, that's a really difficult thing to accomplish, especially in today's environment.

So I actually got really lucky in that I applied to this program through ACLS, American Council of Learned Societies called the Leading Edge Fellowship, which places recent humanities and social science PhDs in nonprofit organizations. And CLMP had applied to receive one of these fellows. And so I applied to the program and then got to interview with Mary Gannon, who's our executive director, and got the fellowship, and that was my foot in the door with CLMP. And that's what I did for my first year at CLMP is I was a fellow just working on some of their diversity equity inclusion programs, and then was able to stay on afterward to become the programs director.

Speaker 2:

Very cool. And not something you would've thought about starting the PhD program, right?

Chelsea Kern:

Absolutely not. And I know that a lot of my peers in grad school as well, when they're looking for opportunities outside of academia, the nonprofit world is really appealing because it feels like you get to do the same kind of mission-driven work that brings people into academia where you really care about the field that you're working in. So I think that a lot of people are kind of turning towards the nonprofit world and the literary arts coming from English as well, as something that can feel fulfilling.

Speaker 2:

What's an intentional way to seek out that fellowship? Is that program still around?

Chelsea Kern:

It is still around. I think the application period is open right now. Look that up.

Speaker 2:

Hey, hey, look at that. Providing goods and services for the people right here, that's what we do.

Phuc Luu:

We're all about the people.

Speaker 2:

Goods and services for the people.

Phuc Luu:

For the people.

Speaker 2:

That's what it should say up there. Cool. Yeah. How intentional were you? Did you stumble into that? Did you know it was there?

Chelsea Kern:

I knew that that program was there. It was, I think in the second year of existence, that fellowship when I did it. I did transition from a slightly different kind of fellowship, but I had known for a couple years towards the end of my program, but I maybe didn't want to go into the teaching academia route.

And so one thing that I started doing is I had worked in this other program at UCLA, mentoring students and doing program development for them, and so I really leaned on that, like okay, this is this other skillset that I'm building in addition to my scholarship, in addition to my teaching. And I think that that was really helpful in getting the fellowship and showing I have all this wonderful experience I've gained as a scholar and as a teacher and know my interest in the literary arts, but I've also have this practical, I can run a nonprofit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Really cool. That's amazing. Thanks for sharing that, Chelsea because I think that's an important tool to emphasize for graduate students or undergrads, or people who are just starting over for whatever reason.

Chelsea Kern:

Identify your skills.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Yeah. Okay, this is an important question. We are keeping track of all the T at AWP. We're calling it overheard at AWP. What is the most AWP thing you've heard thus far? We're nearing the end of day two, so there must have been some things piling up, some good stuff.

Chelsea Kern:

I don't know if this is T necessarily, but I heard it and I was like, yes, this is true. As I was on the elevator standing behind some folks and they were just being like, I have so much coat envy at those conferences. There are some amazing coats walking around in this convention center.

Phuc Luu:

There are. We met someone who held onto their coat and didn't want to surrender it at the coat check. It was so fabulous.

Speaker 2:

And rightly so. I don't begrudge her that. It was such a fabulous coat. Yeah.

Phuc Luu:

There is also a lot of shoe envy here too.

Chelsea Kern:

Yeah. I mean, everybody looks amazing.

Phuc Luu:

We just have to look across the table right now and we see some...

Chelsea Kern:

Look at that skirt.

Phuc Luu:

Some nice awesome shoes.

Speaker 2:

A great skirt. Those are iridescent Docs?

Phuc Luu:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Or are they just black patent and they're like catching the light in beautiful ways?

Phuc Luu:

Well, yeah, they're black patent.

Speaker 2:

They're beautiful. Yeah. I'm impressed with us as a group.

Phuc Luu:

You can perceive things as you please. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

AWP is showing up, showing up in all the ways. I'm very impressed.

Chelsea Kern, we have taken enough of your time. Thank you for giving us so much of your time. You wear many hats over there at CLMP. And as a member, I'm going to take this time to say thank you.

Chelsea Kern:

Well, thank you for being a part of the community. We're so happy to have you. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's been fun.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Phuc Luu:

Awesome, Thank you.

Phuc Luu:

Effing Shakespeare is a production of Bloomsday Literary, hosted by Kate Martin Williams, Jessica Cole, and produced by me, Phuc Luu. Our trusty and hardworking intern is Elaina Welsh. With special thanks to Juanita Lester and the AWP staff, without whom this will not be possible.