Carla Spataro: Writer & Publisher

by John Schoen

Carla Spataro is co-publisher and fiction editor of Philadelphia Stories. For over five years, PS has showcased fiction, poetry and art from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, serving as the region's venue for emerging and established artists alike. Spataro has become a fixture of the Delaware Valley's literary scene, promoting book fairs, reading series, writers' conferences and numerous other events like Push to Publish. First and foremost a fiction writer, Spataro is also the program director for the Rosemont Writers' Retreat, an adjunct professor at Rowan University, and the midwife of 322 Review.

* * *

What do you look for when you read submissions? In other words, is there some type of voice or perspective that is most attractive to you?

I've always been attracted to interesting characters doing interesting things. It's so much easier to describe what I'm not attracted to in a story. I'm not big on day-in-the-life stories, stories that are "underfictionalized" or feel unimagined, or stories that involve child sexual abuse (these so frequently feel exploitative to me—and the subject matter is already heinous enough). Students love to write day-in-the-life stories, as if their college routine is unique—that most of us don't wake up to the sound of an alarm clock and then stumble through the rest of our day doing mundane and uninteresting things. Students also love to write about bad break-ups, lousy boyfriends, cheating girlfriends, unexpected pregnancies, and smoking weed. I like to put a freeze on these subjects if possible. If a day-in-the-life story is a hard sell, imagine if the narrator is stoned! Frequently we get stories at the magazine that revolve around abusive parents, usually a drunken father, or stories about friends or loved ones who are dying. I understand why authors want to write about these subjects, but I think what happens all too often is that the emotional weight of the central issue overwhelms the characters.

At PS, ultimately, I think what we're interested in most are stories where the author is able to explore the inner lives of characters and do it with a certain amount of emotional honesty. Some really great examples of that would be stories like, "Wonderful Girl," by Aimee LaBrie, "The Tangle Between," by Colleen Baranich, "Small Animals," by Serge Shea, "Holiday," by Emily Fridlund, "Atlantic City," by Justin St. Germain, "Cheesesteak Heaven," by Kathy Anderson, "Regalia," by James W. Morris. Really, I could list so many stories that we've published over the years that fit this category for me. Some of them are on the bizarre side like "Regalia," where the main character is so disaffected with his life that he adopts a regal persona in order to empower himself to approach the woman he's attracted to. And "Cheesesteak Heaven" is about two cops who sublimate their hunger for other things by eating greasy but delicious cheese steaks.

What is your definition of great fiction?

This is a tough question. For me, because I read so much, I think these days great fiction falls into a "wow" category. I read some great short novels this summer prepping for a class I'm teaching at Rosemont and I had a couple of those kinds of wow moments. Again, for me, it all comes down to emotional honesty, imperfect characters struggling to do the best that they can, whether their world is mundane or fantastic. And if the writing is lyrical but economical, then how could it not be great? But really, how often does this happen?

Can you tell us about Push to Publish?

[PS co-founder] Christine Weiser and I had a five-year plan when we started the magazine. One of the things we definitely wanted to do was provide professional development opportunities for writers. The University of Penn hosted a writers' conference every year. It was huge, and Christine and I were involved. But then the University reorganized, and they eliminated all of their non-credit programs, including the writers' conference. People were devastated. Christine and I saw this as an opportunity to help fill the void. A while back we went to a conference in Baltimore called Conversations and Connections, which is run by a few magazines down there like the Baltimore Review, and it was awesome—we were amazed at how the whole thing was structured. It was a great way for writers to connect and sit down with editors and agents and with other literary magazines. And I remember telling Susan Muaddi Darraj, the fiction editor of the Baltimore Review, "We're stealing this whole thing from you. We have to bring this to Philly." And she said, "Okay, that's fine."

When did you first realize that you wanted to create a literary magazine? What were you thinking?

What was I thinking? [Laughs] Well, I was looking for places to send my own work. This was before the days of Duotrope, which makes things much easier now. I was trolling through some magazines, and I found one that I thought was really interesting, called Literal Latte, which at the time was being distributed through New York City coffee shops and cafés. It's no longer in its print version, but they had a great reputation, and the model of it seemed really interesting to me. I thought, "Why doesn't Philadelphia have something like this?" So I emailed Christine Weiser, fully expecting her to say, "You're crazy. What are you thinking?"

And back then, I had a very insulated view of the literary scene in Philadelphia. As far as I was concerned, the entire literary scene had revolved around my own writers 'group, which is ridiculous to think. Christine and I quickly learned that that wasn't the case.

Christine emailed me back and said, "Okay, yeah, let's do it." And that's how it started.

Christine and I both had different but complimentary skills. And I think that's why we've been so successful. I had a lot of experience doing grass-roots fundraising and working with non-profits, and Christine had at that time ten years of magazine publishing experience under her belt. There's very little overlap between us. It worked out well. We did some fundraising, and we got really lucky. Once we put it out there that we were looking for contributors and were actively fundraising, it all developed really quickly.

When it comes to fundraising—and I learned this from my previous non-profit—if you don't ask, you'll never know what might happen. And the worst that can happen is [a donor] will say no, and you're exactly where you were before you asked.

Did you ever think PS would be this successful?

I think we anticipated that PS would be around this long, but I don't think we ever imagined how many people in the area were looking for something like it. Our fantasy was to build a community of writers, and once we realized that the world existed outside of our writers' group and that there were other groups like ours all over the region that had no way of reaching each other, PS became the place where they could all connect.

How did PS Books start?

Well, it's definitely something we've always wanted to do. We wanted to start a small boutique-like indie press. Initially, we put together a collection from the magazine, which went well, and then I wanted to publish Christine's book, Broad Street. The feeling was that we really didn't know what we were doing, and if we screwed it up… well, it was Christine's book. We wouldn't be messing around with someone else's work. And then in the spring we published Mark Schuster's The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl. Our goal is to sell enough books to catch the attention of either a larger indie press or even a bigger press and to be able to sell the contracts and help promote the authors.

What should someone expect if they're considering launching their own magazine?

It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. In the beginning Christine and I thought we could even take a small stipend. Yeah, that didn't happen. If you're going to start something like this, you need reasonable expectations. You have to give yourself enough time to get the project off the ground. You have to build a network of support, and you have to understand that you can't do everything you might want to do. That's something we still struggle with.

About the Author

For more information about Carla Spataro, visit her at http://www.philadelphiastories.org/.

Maintained or neglected, familiar or foreign, well-worn or wild, roadways inform our decisions and identities. Their geographies direct the movement
of our lives and sketch the cartography of our stories. In this spirit, 322 Review publishes provocative emerging and established artists whose fiction,
creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media artwork wander the paths of human experience. A nonprofit literary journal conceived
and operated by former Rowan University graduate students, 322 Review is based in Southern New Jersey.