Everyday Genius Since October 1

Chloé Cooper Jones is the editor of Everyday Genius for this month. I am excited about that. I first met Chloé when she came to visit Baltimore this summer and we all got stoop-ed on Alec Niedenthal's porch. Sometimes you meet a writer and things just click; it's easy talking about the business of literature and the crafting of it and how we deal with submitting and critiques and so on -- that's how it was, plus with Natty Boh. Chloé said she doesn't submit a piece anywhere till she knows it's good, and I thought: yep. I knew she would manage the month well, and from the way things look, I was right.

And it's been a couple months since I did a roundup of Everyday Genius. November was the 4 Year Commemorative Edition of the daily journal, and I marked the occasion all month by publishing work from its archives as well as from IsReads, Chapbook Genius and with excerpts from some of PGP's books. Like, remember "Pocketfinger," that awesome story by Ryan Call which his sister illustrated? Now you can read it all at EG. And here's an excerpt from Kathryn Regina's awesome chapbook As I Said. I liked using the month to highlight other Everyday Genius posts, too, like this hilarious head scratcher from Theresa Columbus and Aaron Burch's Best of the Web-winning instruction. Then, more than just re-"printing" old work, it was nice to check in on Jen Michalski in a sort of "where are they now" interview (A: alive and well), to hear a new musical, uh, thing from Ric Royer, and to see a portion of Stephanie Barber's audience-favored laugh-riot. It was cool.

Back in October things were pretty cool, too. I took editorial duties for the first time in a while, and Matt Walker was kind enough to match each post with one of his amazing photos. It was great to take the reins again, to get into reading submissions and to work at crafting the month. Sometimes I feel like my role with Everyday Genius is really big-picture, to step back and by choosing good editors and interesting projects (like May's Weekly Genius thing), to try to shape the journal's identity as a whole. Obviously, this is a lot different than editing the writing for one month. It's also different than editing Publishing Genius as a whole, from providing feedback on accepted manuscripts to (still) reading manuscripts submitted during April's open submissions to working with designers on layout, and so on. Editing EG is like surgery. Running the press is like building a skyscraper. Both are awesome.

What else is awesome? The work from October, with Sommer Browning, A D Jameson and Brandon Shimoda just to highlight three great pieces among many more. Stay tuned for December and beyond.