Art student Marie Follayttar rushed into the office of Words + Images the morning that it was set to debut. She couldn’t wait to see her artwork in print.
Sarah Skelding, a poetry editor for the publication, looked at Follayttar and said, apologetically, “didn’t you get the e-mail?”
“I could tell it was a hard thing for her to say,” Follayttar told the Free Press.
Words + Images is an art and literature magazine that publishes every year. This year, it has no images, no art, for the first time in its 28-year history – and artists like Follayttar, who submitted work and were told it had been accepted, are less than impressed.
As she stood before Skelding, there was nothing Follayttar could do.
The 2008 Words + Images had been published. The books were in boxes in the office. Without art.
“I am upset and somewhat humiliated. I rejoiced and shared that I was being published,” said Follayttar.
Ryan Gato, the publishing editor, said it was a mistake.
Although their constitution calls Words + Images an ‘arts journal,’ it also gives the publishing director freedom to make decisions. And by ‘arts,’ this year, the audience will get ‘literary.’
Gato said he made a last minute executive decision to exclude all art, although he also said they received the usual amount of art submissions. In the fall, when the group traditionally advertises for submissions, it advertised in two national literary journals, but no ads were put out to encourage art submissions, according to staff.
“This was not intentional,” said Gato in a phone interview. He served as the fiction editor for the 2007 issue of the publication, and plans to serve again as publishing editor next year.
“We messed up. It was a problem between the publisher and myself. It was a deadline thing – we didn’t have all the rights from submitting artists. It was a last-minute decision I made in order to meet deadlines.”
Gato said that out of the submissions received by the December deadline, the editorial board chose four artists, including one from USM, to be a part of the 2008 edition. All of them were sent an e-mail in March like this one sent to Follayttar.
Dear Ms. Follayttar,
We are pleased to inform you that your black and white photograph Glasses has been selected for the 2008 issue of Words + Images. Please let us know if this piece is still available for publication and also send along a brief biography. Thank you and congratulations!
Sincerely,
Words + Images Staff
Traditionally, the congratulatory letter tells the artist that unless the journal is notified, their initial art submission gives the journal permission to print the work.
Using the above email, and asking for another confirmation, the journal only heard back from two of the artists, Gato said.
Follayttar was told she was the only artist they heard back from.
Follayttar got a second e-mail the next month. She checked in inbox after she had seen the stacks of finished 2008 Words + Images in the campus center office.
“Due to complications between the journal and its publisher, Words and Images will be unable to feature art in this year’s edition,” it said. “I really do apologize for the confusion. I hope this won’t discourage you from re-submitting, as we all were looking forward to publishing your work.”
It was signed by Gato, who noted in the end of the email, perhaps to console Follayttar, that the Words + Images Staff was highly selective in determining the pieces which would be featured.
Thinking Gato was referring to problems between himself and the printer, we called Penmor, the Lewiston-based printer contracted by Words + Images.
Their representative spoke of a pretty good relationship with Gato, said there had been no such issues on their end and that they were not the publisher, only the printer.
The problem, it seems, lay in the computer publishing program, Adobe InDesign, which only one staff member knew how to use, a serious problem considering the publication’s tight deadline.
But the publication had a year to be competed, a full semester during which submissions could be laid out onto pages. Templates for those pages were not created until the week before the journal was due to the printer, according to staff.
When Penmor received the file — the final copy of the book — it did not include any images.
The students involved in publishing the book anticipated being able to include images at the center of the book, but in order to meet their goal of having the journal finished in time to sell at the April 3 reading by novelist Jennifer Egan (an event Words + Images paid several thousand dollars to sponsor), there was not time to enter art.
An interview with Egan is featured in the journal, as well as interviews with film director Todd Field, novelist Richard Rousseau, and the band The National.
“I am invested in USM,” Follayttar said, “but I worried about the other people accepted and contracts not met and whether this made the student activity fee vulnerable to a lawsuit.” The Student Senate, who allocates the student activity fee, funds the production of Words + Images. For the 2007-08 school year, they were given $13,030 to pay for staff and the creation of the journal.
Gato was also given work study funds over the summer so that he could get started on the journal.
The journal did not fill the position of arts editor this year. It is unknown whether or not they advertised the opening.
It did take on a managing editor, a position that was created by Gato this year, and filled by English major Benjamin Rybeck.
In a final phone interview as the Free Press went on print on Saturday, Gato explained and defended what happened. “We’re undergrads,” he said. “This was a mishandling by me. There’s a yearly turnover in staff, we were all figuring things out as we went along. I take full responsibility for certain failings.”
Gato plans to run the journal next year, but depends on a nomination by his staff and his acceptance by the student body President Ben Taylor, who oversees the heads of all student senate entities.
Taylor agreed in an April Student Senate meeting to investigate the situation with the lack of images in the journal, after it was brought up in the ‘concerns’ section of the meeting.
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Positive change
This year’s book was redesigned to be smaller in size, with one half printed upside-down to mark traditional versus experimental halves of the journal.
The Words + Images team used their concept of the dichotomy between experimental and traditional to separate interviews, poetry, and fiction. USM student Steve Gibbin has a poem and short story published, and alumni are featured writers as well.
The new, smaller format cut production costs, naturally, so did not having colored pages, and will cost $10.00, about half what it has cost in the past.
The staff also accepted submissions electronically, which cut down the costs of copying each submission times the number of staff for review.
Words + Images is set to be released to the USM and local bookstores starting this week.
If you’re interested in helping the journal next year, their office number is 228-8501.