the [zeus] of nonprofit publishing
go down to the mortals
When I first interned for the Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF), it was in conjunction with a graduate course I was taking at the time. Dr. Jim Henry challenged me to conduct an ethnography on a writing organization, and after courting several interesting options I made my choice. The LLF was about celebrating, advocating, and educating others about the vast trove of LGBTQ literature that has and continues to influence the literary world. After speaking with the executive director, I researched the organization by visiting its website. Looking at the vast array of information it offered, I assumed the operation to be quite large. I was wrong. That wasn’t my only surprise. My ethnographic notes revealed my horror as I walked through the front door of the quaint offices located in a seedy neighborhood of Washington, D.C. An old, soiled couch vied for my attention as I squeezed around boxes and scattered books, strewn about the floor. A lonely plant lay dying atop a fiberboard bookshelf. An air conditioner mewled as it competed with the faint hum of a printer stationed by a barred window on the other side of what was once the inner parlor (the offices occupied a refurbished row house). The place was a mess and I was overdressed. Needless to say, my perception of the publishing cosmos had been drastically changed in an instant. The texts produced by this organization, namely the website and its monthly print publication, were by no means reflective of the operation I found behind closed doors.
lightning strikes
The print publication of the LLF, the Lambda Book Report, was a review of contemporary gay and lesbian literature, and remained an authority in the business of book reviewing. Its readership, although mostly limited to North America, spanned the globe. The Lambda Literary Awards, or “Lammies,” were held once per year in some major city and guests included bookworms, recluses, and celebrities. It was actually all quie a grand shebang. But it’s really the print publication that kept donors and other interested parties connected to the foundation on a monthly basis. Then disaster struck. The publication had become irregular, the awards had lost the organization money instead of raising it, and the subscriber base was dwindling. The LBR was soon suspended, which left the organization adrift with no oar. Meanwhile, a poet by the name of Charles Flowers had demonstrated his solidarity in the business by successfully launching and maintaining his very own literary journal. So, Flowers was given the throne after a brief yet scandalous shake up a year before, during which all original employees of the LLF were sacked by the board of directors. The board had dreams of surplus and, over the following months, Flowers found ways of making those dreams bloom.
the mortals shall be saved
Lester Faigley compares and contrasts three modes by which rhetoric manifests itself within nonacademic texts [1]. The textual perspective seems to be the more “technical” of the three, in that it typically critiques sentence length, word usage, format, etc. When the Lambda Book Report had its relaunch in Spring 2006, much had changed regarding its formal features. Where the publication had once been cluttered, amateurish, and glazed over with color combinations that simply didn’t work, it was now cleaner and more “typographically correct,” as one associate mentioned after her initial glance. The operation had traveled a mere 300 miles in its relocation to New York City, yet the look and feel of the Book Report seemed to have traveled light years. Why was that? It turns out it was all in the perspective. The social group that surrounds the publication (intellectuals, professionals, educators) likes to think of itself as well-read and streamlined. It shouldn’t be surprising that it wants its publications to augment the lifestyle. Advertisements were no longer scattered throughout each page, they were now clustered within a few pages. The fonts, as well as the paper used, were changed to incorporate a more neo-contemporary feel. White space was encouraged and not ostracized. Subsequently, more emphasis was placed on the content of the writing, rather than on the magazine itself. The result was a more confident, centered, and mature publication. After the re-launch, subscriptions slowly climbed and the 2006 awards made a significant kickback - a sharp contrast to the deficit they had repeatedly incurred for years.
you shall know them as if they were gods
This is where I got to thinking about social perspective, and Carolyn Miller’s expansion of the idea [2]. The written text, in this case the LBR, could not be viewed as a detached object possessing meaning on its own, although design principles remained a large portion of what ultimately turned the tide. This situation considered social roles, ideology, and theories of culture. The LGBTQ community is perhaps more confident, centered, and mature now than it was during the Book Report’s inception in the 80s. The metamorphosis of the LBR provided a great example of how writing, while taking place within a structure of authority, changes constantly as society changes. It also illustrated a deeper language based interaction, in that it sought to bridge the expectation/delivery gap between writer/editor and audience. Faigley discusses the importance of “how individual writers come to know the beliefs and expectations of other members of the community, and how individuals can alter the community’s beliefs and expectations” (Peeples, 54). Flowers already had the thick description firmly rooted in his mind, or at least his filing cabinets, so appealing to the right crowd hadn’t turned out to be as difficult as his predecessors had thought. In this case, the product of the text as not the text itself. It was the action that came from it. The desired effect on its audience was achieved and two oars were put back in the water.
referenced in this post:
[1] Faigley, L (2003). Nonacademic Writing: The Social Perspective. Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field. T. Peeples. New York, Longman.
[2] Miller, C. (2003). What’s Practical About Technical Writing? Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field. T. Peeples. New York, Longman.
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