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Liz Bolton '24, M.F.A., Creative Writing

When I went back to school, I was in my forties with a whole other career behind me (and a few young kids at home). I was thoroughly versed in what I would consider “the art of rejection,” because in my previous career as an actress in Los Angeles, it’s fairly typical to audition for five or ten roles before landing one. This happens week in and week out for actors: get dressed up, do your makeup, go to the audition, do your best, and then… wait.

Why do I bring this up? Because understanding the art of rejection helped me—a lot—when I began submitting my work to literary journals. I say it’s an art and not a science, because I can’t offer a ten-point bulleted list about how to navigate rejection that will work seamlessly for everyone all the time. Understanding the process can help, but understanding ourselves is equally important, and that’s the art.

I can share what has worked for me, as I go on three decades of routinely being told “no” across multiple careers. I hope that it offers something that will work for others as well.

First, I do my best. I wouldn’t have shown up at auditions without preparing, both for that particular role and by having taken years of acting and improv classes to work on my craft. Likewise, I don’t write something in the notes app on my phone and immediately submit it to The Paris Review. If we do our best work, workshop it, share it with a trusted friend, listen to the notes, consider changes, edit carefully, take some time away, revise, etc etc etc, our chances are better of having the work accepted. This is not to say that we’ll always make major changes: sometimes we might end up submitting what is fairly close to that first draft on our phones, but it has been vetted and carefully considered, so we can be confident that it is as good as we can make it.

Next, I submit strategically. When I told Daryl Farmer, my very excellent thesis advisor, mentor, and friend, that I wasn’t sure how to start submitting to lit magazines, he suggested that I submit one essay to five lit journals at a time. It was great advice, and I tried it out. Over time, I realized that what worked better for me was to spend a lot of time researching which journals would be most likely to publish that particular essay—because of a particular focus of the journal, for example—and to submit to them one or two at a time. That way, if a piece was accepted (glory glory hallelujah) I didn’t have to let four other journals know I was pulling it from consideration. If I was rejected by those first few places, or if several months went by and I hadn’t heard anything, I would submit elsewhere, again doing more research to see what might be a good fit. This also buffered me from hearing five rejections in a row, which can be demoralizing. A slow rollout won’t work for everyone, but it has worked well for me.

In general, I try to adhere to the adage that you don’t get 100% of the jobs you don’t apply for. (Is receiving a polite rejection letter worse than receiving no letter at all, never having that hope of a “yes?” I don’t think so.) In spite of everything else I could be doing instead of submitting my writing (like writing itself, for one thing), I make a point to carve out time to submit. I don’t do this every day, or even every week: it goes in waves. If having a specific schedule works well for you, then go for it. You may find that you have certain seasons when you’re writing a ton, and other seasons when you have a bunch of completed writing; it’s easier to submit during those latter times, partly because you’ve got writing that’s ready to go, and partly because you may not feel the same burning desire to write. Submitting is a form of cheating on writing. It’s writing adjacent.

Always, I push down any nagging fears of success. A rejection is a disappointment, of course, but it’s also a relief: now no one will read this. Phew. Because if they read it, they might hate it. They might judge me. They might think I’m a terrible person—or worse, a terrible writer. If my writing never reaches anyone, I can sit here quietly by myself and engage in an enjoyable hobby. To circle back to my acting career, I once made the mistake of reading online comments in which someone wrote of me, “her voice sounds like broken glass.” If I’d never auditioned, I never would have gotten that particular job, and no one would ever have written a nasty comment about my voice on a random online forum. People telling me they don’t like my work is a rejection of sorts too. But over time, I’ve come to realize that it comes with the territory. Putting our work out into the world is, to crib Jerry Maguire, a pride-swallowing siege. We’re not doing it for the haters, though. We’re doing it for the people who have been waiting for something they connect to, and who will know it when they see it. We publish so that those middle of the night thoughts can find a home in the world, and when we publish it can make those late nights feel worthwhile.

If you haven’t submitted your writing yet, there’s no better time than the present. Ask for guidance, trust the process, and remember that rejection is proof that you’re moving forward, perhaps still imperfectly, but ever in the right direction.

Spotlight

MFC Feeley: Willa Cather Resident Writer

Student Spotlight: Margaret Thomas

I’m a non-traditional, part-time student, and was officially enrolled as a bachelor’s student in the Fall of 2020 (fun times). Working full-time during Covid and doing all my classes online meant that, for at least the first half of my degree, I didn’t know anybody. I can't remember the names of most of the professors I had; and it wasn’t until years later, when I was finally on campus, that I realized I had been taking classes with the same students that whole time.

In these recent, on-campus years, my most inspiring professors have been Dr. Brightwell and Dr. Williams. Dr. Brightwell helped me to realize my skill in creative writing, and Dr. Williams (though he probably doesn’t realize this), made me realize that I am much more into American Lit than I am British Lit. Which is a hard realization for an English major, since all the canon seems to be British and there’s this pressure and expectation that you, as an English major, must enjoy it. That’s simply not true though, and even with books that aren’t my favorite, I prefer the writing style of American Lit so much more. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s wrong to passionately dislike Jane Eyre. I’m serious.

In addition to my realizations about my literary preferences this year, Dr. Brightwell shared with one of my creative writing groups in 2024 an opportunity to submit to Scribendi, a national Honors magazine. Surprisingly, I was one of 33 submissions out of 500+ that were accepted and published in their 2025 edition. It is my first publication outside of UAF’s IceBox. It’s a big enough literary journal that they have a release party every year at the Western Regional Honors Conference (WRHC), and they invited me to Denver to speak about my piece. I ended up attending almost the entire conference, and it was a fantastic experience. I got to watch students from all over the country come and share their Capstone projects. I watched presentations on Zines, DnD as a teaching tool in the K12 class room, how stranger-danger scare tactics put women at a higher risk of abuse from close friends and family; and at the end of it all, I got to listen to other Scribendi authors talk about their pieces.

I was very nervous to get up there and talk about my work, I was one of the only unsponsored students, I was certainly the only one from Alaska – but the Scribendi team was supportive and excited, and they knew me by name when I came in. When I introduced myself, they immediately started gushing about my work and what they loved about it. It was overwhelmingly positive, and completely shocking. It wasn’t until I was there that I realized how big this conference was, or how much time and love was put into the journal. They had clearly read these pieces closely and carefully, and they remembered each one of them. At the end of the day, I walked away far more confident in my writing than I ever was before, and I have carried it with me.

If I have one piece of advice for any writer out there: Submit. Submit every chance you get, even if you don’t think your piece is perfect. There are opportunities all around if you just put your name, and yourself, out there.

If you’d like to read my Scribendi publication, you can do so here:

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970)

reviewed by Jericho Williams

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is one of the most difficult books I’ve read and taught.

Morrison thought about her art this way: “Writing is, after all, an act of language, its practice. But first of all it is an effort of the will to discover.” The Bluest Eye attempts to understand how a child’s life can be destroyed, and Morrison offers no easy answers as she interrogates American culture and racism of the early 1940s in Lorain, Ohio.

The basis of The Bluest Eye originated from a childhood conversation in which Morrison recalled one of her friends telling her that she had been praying for blue eyes. Morrison felt “violently repelled by what I imagined she might look like if she had her wish,” and she continued thinking about this comment for many years.

Her experimental and innovative first novel grapples with beauty standards, dominant societal expectations, silencing, and erasure prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Pieced together, the fragmented narrative tells an inflammatory story that is both easy to read and shocking. It is a book about seeing, one that does not look away from what most would rather not witness.

There are many reasons The Bluest Eye remains important and should exist in public libraries, but perhaps the most compelling one for me is the reminder that children are not just of their homes, but rather children of societies. By asking hard questions, The Bluest Eye demands that readers consider their cultural values and the trickle-down societal impacts of oppression, poverty, and racism.

Ruth Behar's Lucky Broken Girl

reviewed by Gwen Retterer

This is a true story about Ruthie Mizrahi and her family who moved from Cuba to Queens, NY in the 1960's. Escaping the constrictive life they had under Fidel Castro, Ruthie's introduction to the United States includes meeting her neighborhood classmates who are also from different countries, playing hop scotch, and learning English at a public school.

Ruthie goes from being an animated and optimistic 10-year-old girl to almost being completely immobile due to an accident. Behar takes the reader into the mind of Ruthie as she journeys through the ups and downs of healing: grappling with hate towards the people that caused the accident, physical dependency on her mom as a caretaker, unexpectedly meeting new mentors, and finding inspirational outlets despite not being able to move.

The recommended audience for this book is 10 and up. While the style of the writing certainly embodies that of a 10 year old, the themes coming from Ruthie and all those around her transcend age. The following quotes will give you a snapshot of the themes, as well as a taste of what this book is all about.

"We're nobody. We're refugees. We just arrived in this country. What if they send us back to Cuba?" - Ruthie's Dad

"Try not to hate so much, mi niña. Maybe you'll get better faster." -Ruthie's Mom

"...Some of us come here as shooting stars, to shine brightly for only the briefest moment, and others of us come and overstay our welcome, living to a ripe old age and forgetting our own names." -Chico, Ruthie's friend

"Why is it that bad things have to happen so you learn there are lots of good people in the world?" -Ruthie

Alumni Spotlight: Jessica Klagmann (née Bryant)

I was introduced to UAF by David Nikki Crouse, who was my first undergraduate writing professor in New Hampshire, and who had graduated from UAF’s creative writing MFA program. I’d never considered going to Alaska, but after losing my father in my last year of college and learning that he’d always wanted to go, it felt like the kind of adventure I needed. I remember David saying to me before I moved to Fairbanks: You’ll live in a dry cabin. You’ll get a truck. You’ll probably get a dog. I did all of these things, much to my delight. They also told me: Alaska is a place that, by nature, forces you to figure something out about yourself. This, I found, was also true.

As a reader, I’ve always leaned toward magical realism, speculative fiction, and environmental nonfiction. Books that shaped me and my work are Gretel Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces, Kevin Brockmeier’s Brief History of the Dead, and anything by Anne Valente, Nicole Krauss, and Rick Bass. A favorite recent read was Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over.

As a writer, I’m drawn to the ways people connect to wild landscapes and the natural world, and magical realism has been my way of weaving lightness into dark subjects. But I didn’t always do this well. David Nikki Crouse—who returned to teach at UAF—was an incredible mentor, not just in the craft of writing, but also in becoming a teacher. Filmmaker Len Kamerling encouraged me—as I struggled with pacing and action—to visualize the way scenes unfold and fit together as a whole. Derick Burleson pushed me to find grounding in my fantastical ideas, but then we also went off on tangents about the exquisite beauty of flowers. Everyone I knew in Alaska taught me some simple truth about life that carried into who I became as a writer.

During my time at UAF, I wrote a thesis of three novellas, discovered a love for teaching, learned a thing or two about publishing (I was �ʱ�������ڰ��Dz���’s editor-in-chief for Volume 32), and met my future husband. After we left Alaska for New Mexico, I worked at a college in Española as a writing instructor and the director of their adult education program. I also co-founded the school’s literary journal, Trickster. All the while, I kept writing stories, kept submitting. In 2013, I got my first publication for a nonfiction piece about my worst day in Alaska (and how a day like that can lead directly to the “figuring out” I mentioned). I started writing a novel in 2014, and after many, many submissions to agents—and many, many rejections—I finally signed with one. I felt like I’d made it, not realizing that it was just one step in a longer journey. A whole new round of rejections from publishers ended with that first novel getting set aside, but I’d been writing a second book to keep myself from going crazy, and in 2024, This Impossible Brightness was published.

My second novel, North of the Sunlit River, will be released this September. It’s set in Alaska and is about the ways in which lost loved ones can become greater than human—can become mythical—and how this act of myth-making can heal. Inspired by my time in Fairbanks and by my father, it was a way of finally getting him to Alaska, the place that left so much of its magic imprinted on me.