Index for Continuance

In this episode, we talk to writers, teachers, and organizers Matt Weinkam (Executive Director) and Michelle Smith (Programming Associate) of Literary Cleveland, a (you guessed it) literary arts nonprofit here in (yep) Cleveland. We really get in there on jobs, work, what counts as “being a writer,” the necessity of cultivating multifarious skills as an artist, the erosion of the middle in arts labor economies, and paths outside the academy; email, 990s, nonprofit nuts and bolts; activist principles and good old “boring awful capitalist economics.” We also touch on the idea that New York is not the world and explore ways to think about region in the work of fostering local literary community and creating opportunities in Cleveland, a city with a troubled racial and economic history in the Rust Belt, or the Midwest, or both, depending who you talk to. 

Some things you should probably look into that come up in our conversation: Literary Cleveland’s course offerings, residencies, and opportunities for writers; Quartez Harris’s We Made it to School Alive; Stephanie Ginese’s Unto Dogs; Kevin Latimer and Grieveland; Belt Publishing; Gordon Square Review; the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, the Great Lakes African American Writers Conference, and Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Conference.

In our first episode, we talk to Matvei Yankelevich, poet, translator, critic, editor, and publisher. You may know him as a founding member of the editorial collective Ugly Duckling Presse, current publisher of Winter Editions, and editor at World Poetry Books. His recent work includes the chapbook Dead Winter from Fonograf Editions and the co-translation, with Eugene Ostashevsky, of Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think, from NYRB Books.

Our discussion explores Matvei’s four-part essay series, first published on Harriet in 2020: here’s part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. Along the way we discuss professionalization in the writing world, money and how small presses do and don’t get it, the struggles and beauties of collectivization, the autonomy of the small press vs. the compromises of capital, amateurism, middle age, antagonism in the market, moving forward with obsolescence.

More.