For twenty years, Water~Stone Review has been a collaborative passion project of students, faculty, and staff. While it is a staff member who holds the position of managing editor (Meghan Maloney-Vinz), and esteemed faculty (Katrina Vandenberg, Patricia Weaver Francisco, and Sheila O’Connor) who serve each issue as section editors, it is our current MFA (creative writing) students who work as invaluable editorial board members and graduate assistants. Led by the faculty editors in a semester-long course, our editorial board members learn the art of careful consideration and in doing so curate the beautiful writing in our journal each year.

In this series of blog posts we introduce you to some of our incredible and accomplished student editors. In this post we meet Chelsea DeLong.

What genre and volume did you work on?

I’ve had the opportunity to be on the fiction editorial board twice. First for Volume 18 with Mary Rockcastle and currently for Volume 20 with Sheila O’Connor. 

Where are you in the MFA and what is your primary project?

I’m in my final semester before beginning my thesis next fall. I’ve been working– technically reworking– on my thesis project since the fall of 2015. When I was a idealistic teenager, I wrote a speculative fiction novel (and its sequel, and the unfinished conclusion to the trilogy) that’s never quite left my mind. When I took The Novel class with Sheila O’Connor, I decided to take everything I’d written for it and completely rewrite it from scratch to shape it into the work I want it to be. It has a long way to go but I’m excited to further expand this post-apocalyptic, dystopian, sci-fi-ish world and its characters into something unique. 

Tell us a little about yourself (job, publication, history outside of Hamline, etc.).

I came to Hamline in September of 2014 after completing my undergraduate work at Central Michigan University. I lived my whole life in Michigan– so the move to Minnesota at 22 was daunting to say the least. I chose Hamline because of the opportunities to work in publishing and to not be forced into a teaching track and, needless to say, it’s been the best thing I’ve done for myself. 

I’ve been working as the Visit Coordinator for Hamline’s Undergraduate Admission Office since 2014, I was Water~Stone Review’s Production Assistant (Volume 18) and General Operations Assistant (Volume 19), and this past fall I completed a Development Internship at Graywolf Press— it’s been a busy two and half years. I also have one flash piece published on Five2One’s #sideshow, The Sky Is Green— it was the first thing I wrote for this program.

What drew you to be a student editor with Water~Stone Review?

Before I was accepted into the program, I knew if I was, I would be working on this journal as a student editor. Simply, I wanted to pursue the publishing track in Hamline’s versatile program because working in publishing is one of my passions. I want to help put something into the world that the author, those who worked on it, and the reader can enjoy and be proud of. Publishing is a truly unique and special industry and I love playing a small, but still vital, part of it. 

What did you learn while on the editorial board that surprised you?

It teaches you to be a better, more thoughtful writer. By reading others’ work, you learn so much about your own– where you succeed and where you falter. It also just encourages you to get out there and submit, submit, submit. 

Do you think that your aesthetic was well represented in the issue of Water~Stone Review that you worked on? Why?

Hmm… it’s hard to say. In Volume 18, I was far quieter on the board and was beginning to explore myself as a reader and individual. I’d say for Volume 20, it’s shaping up to better fit my aesthetic, but I would contribute that to being a more open and observant reader. I like more stories, love experiments, and just love well-written, thought provoking, heart-wrenching prose. 

How do you think literary journals affect the writing world? 

Literary journals are the lifeblood of the the writing world. By that, I mean literary journals give writers a platform to share their work, to build their publication history and readers, and introduce fantastic prose and poetry to the world that only existed to the author. As writers, it’s one of our goals to share our words. Literary journals let so many authors at all levels share their hearts and souls to whoever reads the collection. 

What other literary journals do you admire?

Ooh, too many to count! But I’ll give three: Five2One, Cease, Cows!, and The Slidestone Corrective.

What are you reading right now?

Aside from my mountain of homework, I’m slowly digging through some Graywolf Press books at the moment. That includes All That Man Is by David Szalay, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, and The Impossible Fairytale by Han Yujoo.

How do you think that being a student editor for Water~Stone Review helped you in your writing/editing journey?

Completely! I look at my work differently now–with newly critical eyes and even more inspiration to make it something great to get out into the world. 

Are you doing something literary that you would like to share?

I suppose preparing myself and my thesis project for my completion of the program in May 2018 would be the closest thing to something literary!

How about this weather we’re having (extremely relevant question for Minnesotans)?
You know, when I moved here from Michigan, I was expecting -50 degree winters. I wouldn’t say I’m “disappointed” at the three mild winters I’ve had here thus far… but what the heck Minnesota?! My extreme winter gear is sadly stuffed in my closet. 

Brief note from the managing editor: 

Every few years, Water~Stone Review hosts its annual fiction contest, a call for anonymous manuscripts with the winner selected by an outside judge. For me, securing the judge is nearly as exciting as the early screening of manuscripts, mostly because it means an esteemed writer whose work I’ve long admired will be making one of the most anticipated editorial decisions of that year, and I am as eager as the writers to learn what the decision will be.

This year our judge, Nami Mun, selected “World Cup” by Saba Waheed, the story of Adeena and Bilal, and their awkward, whiskey-infused reunion. But like the best short fiction, “World Cup” is about so much more, including love and loss, family and tradition. Rich in subtext, with pitch-perfect dialogue and well-drawn characters, “World Cup” is the work of a serious writer to watch. Out of the more than sixty manuscripts we received, I am delighted this powerful story won.

As Nami Mun so eloquently wrote of “World Cup”: “When I finished reading ‘World Cup,’ I immediately wanted to read it again. I wanted to see how the writer, in only a few pages, got me to think about Kate Chopin, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Essentially, the story had me thinking: How can a person be when a personhood is filled with so many beings? Or to recycle a bit of Sartre: this story of sharp dialogue and artful compression reminds us that the ‘others’—with all of their silent and not-so silent judgments—have given us the means (possibly the only means) for how we judge ourselves.

“In ‘World Cup’ hell isn’t other people. Hell is realizing that there is no escaping aunts or parents or a nation of expectations; that it’s nil-nil, no matter how one keeps score. I could go on about ‘World Cup’ and its merits, but I think that’s my point. A good story never ends. A good story, in the right reader’s mind, can only expand.”

Read it once, then read it again. And again. And then, pass it on.

Sheila O’Connor

While the inevitable scroll of first day school photos are infiltrating my Facebook feed, I am a woman still straddling the gap between these seasons. One child already well into her first month of a year-round middle school and a barnacle of a boy attached to my every move while we wait for his year to start.

Much of the hard work of making this year’s journal behind me, the nervousness of the printing and launch yet ahead. Movement in this gap is slow. It is navigating a season of anticipation while maintaining a semblance of daily structure for which there is no guiding force.

Pretending it’s still summer but with a newly imposed 4 o’clock punch in to be back for help with homework, emails from the office, and home-cooked meals—the time clock has reversed.

And then there is the packing up to do—the cleaning up from summer. The closing of the cabin or cottage on the lake, the bike rack reattached and loaded, the family dog bathed and dried before the drive back to the city… all of which is actual, and a metaphor of course. There is so much work in the reemergence.

So most of my day, these long weird days in the gap between summer and fall, is spent thinking of the work behind me and the work ahead. Of a summer filled with lake water and family and of the fast fall rush of Water~Stone and office hours spent at a desk other than my kitchen counter.

It is something like destiny that this happens each autumn.

That a new school photo is shared, a new tooth showing in her once gapped smile—that a new journal, our nineteenth, will emerge from the summer like a new and full breath after full submersion in a small, rocky lake—this too is inevitable and comforting. The surfacing is what sustains us.

Special thanks to our WSR summer crew: Anne Kelley Conklin, our trusty copy editor, Dylan Cole, studio manager at MCAD’s DesignWorks, Joe Letchford, our student designer this year, and Danielle Bylund, our production and social media assistant who has kept the ship afloat while the rest of us abandon it for the sweet relief of inflatables on tethered lines. Additional summer support generously comes from Christine Rousu, Ruthie Nelson, and Jenniey Tallman who are our lifeguards and watch for fresh water sharks and storms on the horizon. Thank you. Everyone.

At the center of Buntrock Commons on St. Olaf College, there is a memorial. It is a lovely wood tower with a huge wind chime. It is a magnificent structure made all the more meaningful by what it represents. The memorial is for the students that pass on while attending St. Olaf before they can graduate. It anchors the campus and makes one feel gratitude for life and the privilege of being able to learn.

That was the theme of this year’s Water~Stone Review Summer Writing Workshop, gratitude. Every student I spoke with was so pleased to be writing and learning with people who were as passionate as they were about the craft. Everyone was in a genre cohort that they work closely with for the week. The visiting faculty was incredibly impressive and also surprisingly warm. For a student embarking on a career filled with rejection letters, the workshop is a place where writers can feel a sense of community and place.

Our Creative Nonfiction visiting faculty this year was Sven Birkerts. His class focused on the memoir and the past. Students were instructed to bring a photograph with them to class, (challenging for some of our more technologically advanced students), and to focus their writing on something about this photograph. Sven is the kind of writer and teacher that wants to focus carefully on a subject to find insight. He used the Flaubert quote; “Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.” This is a perfect encapsulation of his class. Students were given writing prompts to find the locus of their projects, the place of revelation.

Chinelo Okparanta our visiting Fiction faculty ran her workshop with razor sharp focus. Each student writer had a piece workshopped. Chinelo used classical examples to improve the work by referencing Chekov’s assertion that if there is a gun present in the first act that it must go off by the second. She used this to point to particular places in student’s work where there were “guns” that failed to go off. Using a more contemporary analogy Chinelo referenced Lan Samantha Chang by using her bucket analogy. It is the concept that states that a story has a series of buckets from beginning to end and the author must fill the bucket with information otherwise no matter how the piece ends it will not be complete. This simple analogy can be incredibly helpful for revision. Her guidance to the students was focused on eliminating the unnecessary omissions from the work. After one student’s work was workshopped the other writers were given writing prompts to improve the main character. It was an interesting prompt that Chinelo described as a “gift to the writer.” Having an entire class help you with flushing out a character was truly a gift.

Rebecca Lindenburg ran the poetry cohort and she was universally admired by her students. She ran each class in small workshops. In intimate groups the poets were able to read each other’s work and have casual craft conversations about, at times, sensitive subjects. Rebecca was the best kind of mentor, thoughtful and protective of her students.

And then there was The Contented Cow. A waterfront three-story patio attached to a small Irish pub in the city of Northfield, MN. The students had some wonderful late nights there. If you want details you’ll just have to attend next year and join us.

The Water~Stone Review Summer Writing Workshop was not just about taking classes. It was also about making connections with other writers and constructing a space where we exchanged ideas, talked about challenges, and celebrated each other’s successes. As one student said, it felt like family. Another student described the experience as being uplifting and necessary. We as writers are solitary by virtue of our work and it is necessary for us to collaborate and connect.

Thank you Water~Stone Review Summer Workshop faculty, students, and the lovely Northfield for a week of fun, joy, and gratitude.