The Magic Behind the Words Life lessons from one of Alaska’s finest editors By Don Rearden
I
first heard of Alaska Quarterly Review the day I received acceptance into graduate school at UAA. I taught high school English in my hometown of Bethel at the time, and shared the news with Ben Kuntz, a good buddy, and now a professor at the Kuskokwim Campus. He’s easily the most wellread person I know and he became noticeably excited when I said my advisor would be Ronald Spatz. “Whoa,” Kuntz said, “that’s great. He’s the editor of AQR!” As a Bethel kid, I’m no stranger to acronyms. The tundra town is awash in letter abbreviations for everything from the hospital, to the store, the high school, and every business and building in between. I’d never heard of AQR, or the full name Alaska Quarterly Review, and the look Ben gave me when he realized I’d never heard of this prestigious Alaska literary journal was two parts, are you serious? And one part, and you call yourself a writer! I instantly understood from Ben’s befuddled look, this outsider and new to Alaska, that AQR was something I should not only know about, but should probably read. And, like most things literary, my pal Ben was correct. What I didn’t know then, as I poured over one of Ben’s copies of the journal, was the role this Ronald Spatz character and AQR would come to play in my development of becoming the writer and educator I am today. Ronald Spatz, a UAA professor and founding editor of AQR, took me under his tutelage and, to be completely honest, nearly broke me. He saw something in my work worth fighting for, but he also somehow knew a deep dark dirty secret about my writing, and he was the first one ever, in the
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history of my entire education, to call me out. He saw and recognized my raw talent, but he knew I was cheating and relying on that talent to dazzle and trick readers without knowing the craft, without knowing how to slow down, or make the work meaningful. This lesson didn’t come easy for me. When I sat down with him after turning in a draft of my final thesis project, my first novel, he flopped the giant manuscript down on the desk with a resounding thump and said two words: “Rewrite it.” “Revise it?” I asked. I’d been through several creative writing workshops with Professor Spatz and also had an internship as a grad student reading submissions for AQR, so I knew he could at times be difficult, or not communicate as gracefully as one might like, but I knew his genius and trusted his advice. Still. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he said. Could he? “Rewrite it,” he said. I think I eked out something pathetic and desperate like, “But I’m graduating in a few months!” He proceeded to tell me that my novel felt rushed, plot driven, and sloppy. I asked for an example and he flipped to a random page and read it aloud and I sat there dumbfounded. The passage he read sounded cliché, alien, and horrible. Never had anyone challenged my work. Never had I been told to rewrite something. Never had I been told to slow down. To make the work matter. I struggled for a bit with the news I wouldn’t be graduating that spring, and that my novel was a bust, but ultimately, I sat down and went to work. I rewrote that novel and learned as much about myself and the writing process as I had in the entirety
“Ronald Spatz and his crack team of editors put together one hell of a magazine. Read it cover to cover; put it on your coffee table; impress your friends. This magazine’s so hot, it makes any number of editors in the Lower 48 look like they’re living in the ice age.” — JOHN MCNALLY, LITER ARY MAGAZINE REVIEW
