 So, hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us at Mechanics Institute for our online program. The Writers' Lunch is a casual and virtual ground-bag lunch activity on the third Friday of each month. Look forward to craft discussion and formal presentations on all forms of writing and excellence conversation. My name is Niko Chen. I am quite new here as the program manager here at Mechanics Institute and for those who are new to Mechanics Institute here for the first time today, welcome. Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854 and is one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. Mechanics Institute features a general interest library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs in the cinema lit film series. A recent article in the San Francisco Standard describes us as the coolest library in downtown San Francisco and a remote work sanctuary. Come see this for yourself by joining us for a free tour which happens every Wednesday at noon. You can also find information about our upcoming programs at www.milibrary.org. So let me tell you about a wonderful event that is happening later this month. We have the Writing the Heroines journey with Kate Ferrell, which is a two-session writing course that begins on Saturday, September 23. In this class, you will learn how to use elements of the feminine quest in your journaling or creative writing for any genre, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and more. This course is $40 for members and $50 for our non-members. We also offer a plethora of free events for our Mechanics Institute members, such as the next storytelling showcase on September 27. Join us for an evening of laughter and storytelling. Local author and host of the month, Corey Rosen, will host a dynamic night of storytelling developed in his Your Story World Hold workshops. Come hear stories and jokes being told for the first time with some performers making their stage debut. Find these courses, events, and more by going to milibrary.org. Click on events in our top menu bar to begin searching and registering for all the course and or events of your choice. Today's theme for today's Writers' Lunch is on the Arts of the Anthology. How do you become part of an anthology? How do you put together an anthology yourself? Today's discussion, moderated by Cheryl Bézé-Boutet, explores how anthologies come together while showcasing writers from all genres, including EA Provost of New Alexandria Creative Group, Jennifer Vossier-Sander from Big City Books Group, and Sarah Beale from Colossus Press. This discussion will also include a Q&A with the audience, so please remember to add your questions to the chat and I will read them out or you're welcome to ask questions aloud when the floor opens. Remember to also mark your calendars for the next Writers' Lunch on Friday, October 20th on the topic, How to Craft the Coming of Age Story. This session will feature three moving authors, Dara R. Williams, Daniel Bobka, and Isidro Mencos. This event will also be moderated by the wonderful Cheryl Jé Bézé-Boutet. Now I will move over to my colleague, Alyssa, who will give us the author bios for today's event. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. I am happy to do some brief bios for our esteemed speakers today and their longer bios will also be dropped into the chat. So our moderator for our Writers' Lunches on a monthly basis is Cheryl Jé Bézé-Boutet, award-winning author and push cart nominee, and an Oakland multidisciplinary writer who's autobiographical and fictional short story collections along with her lyrical and stunning poetry artfully succeed in getting across deeper meanings about the politics of race and economics without breaking out of the narrative. An inaugural Oakland Poet Laureate runner-up, she is also a popular teacher, literary reader, presenter, storyteller, curator, and emcee host for literary and poetry events, and we are always happy to have Cheryl moderating our discussions. Of our three guests, I'm first going to introduce EA Provost, who is the author and illustrator of Diary of EA Provost, Diary of That Weird Girl, and Love, Joy, and Pease, illustrated poetry books that celebrate family life for its beauty and messiness. EA is the founder of the cooperative publisher New Alexandria Creative Group, and in her spare time she is also the director of the San Francisco Writers' Conference and responsible for the San Francisco Writers' Conference Writing Contest anthologies. We also have Jennifer Bossier-Sander, who is an author and book-packager of more than 50 titles on topics as varied as The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Published, over 100,000 copies sold now in its fourth revised edition, to The Martini Diet and many more in between. Bossier-Sander has crafted more than a dozen anthologies, one of which is a New York Times bestseller. A former editor for Random House, she gives literary tours to California, Paris, and London. Sign me up. And we are joined by Sarah Beale, who is a poet, visual artist, and social worker living in Oakland, California. She is the co-editor of the Colossus Press anthology series. Sarah has had poems published in Sparkle and Blink, Button Eye Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and one honorable mention in the Street Light Magazine 2021 Poetry Contest. Her chapbook, Prescribed Burn, will be published in 2023 by Finishing Line Press. She is interested in the creative process as a medium for change, healing, and building community. We are very excited to welcome all three of our guests today and our moderator, Cheryl J. Bise Boutet, who we will pass it on to now. Thank you so much, Alyssa, and thank you, Nico. And much appreciation to you, Alyssa, Jennifer, and Sarah for joining us today and to the audience who is out there, who we will be participating with in a little bit. My first question to the three panelists is this. What is the major value of the anthology for the writer? Alyssa, would you like to go first? Well, I can start by saying, you know, my entry into writing was being part of an anthology in fourth grade that California poets in the schools came in and taught poetry to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders and put together an anthology. And my poem was selected as like the winner of their contest, and I was just a fourth grader. So of course that massively influenced my interest in writing and just sparked that from there. So I think there's a huge amount of value, especially with young people and in school situations with putting together anthologies. Later as an adult, I was part of an anthology that really served to restore my faith in myself. I think sometimes that's the important part of our process. And then as part of New Alexander Creative Group, as part of the San Francisco Writers Conference, we have had a contest almost since the conference is beginning. And often we would see the category winners, they would come to the conference, they would meet agents and they would get signed with agents because they had risen, you know, to the top through this contest, but we had never published who the winners were. And so as I was coming into the director role, because I have some background and I can publish, I have a publishing cooperative, I offered to actually publish the finalist in an anthology. And since we have done that, we have seen not just the category winners, but the finalists all are making tremendous progress in their careers. I have had them come back to me and say, Hey, I had been talking to this agent. He was not really, you know, he's kind of put me off. I knew he was putting me off. As soon as I said that I had been published in the anthology, and I was a finalist in this contest for the anthology, he offered to represent me like immediately. So as a tool to encourage young people to feel legitimate about yourself, you know, as a first step into publishing, and then actually as a tool to build your career and legitimize your writing in front of, you know, some of the gatekeepers, agents and publishers, anthologies are really useful in all of those ways. Good stuff. Thank you, Lisa. How about you, Sarah? I love anthologies. And I think for writers, they can be a great first step. As you're moving, you know, from just writing by yourself and sharing stuff with, you know, your friends and your family to, you know, putting it out in the larger world. I also love anthologies because they I think of them almost like a potluck. I love the way all the voices come together. And I do feel like they create a kind of community, you know, if not physically present community, sort of more virtual community. And, you know, I love reading anthologies because I feel like, you know, you get to hear so many different voices. And I'm really interested when I'm putting together an anthology about the way the different voices and perspectives, because our anthologies are always on one theme, you know, for each book, the difference in the way the voices come together and play off each other. Yeah, it's pretty amazing how that happens. Thank you. And you, Jennifer? Well, excuse me, what comes to mind right away is that there I can think of at least two different writers right off the bat who as a result of having stories in the anthology that I put together, ultimately had their own book. Can you hear me? Sorry? Yeah, but you're breaking up. Keep going. Let's do that. Yeah, sorry. I don't know what to do about it. So, so I did a book before. Where did it go? And Cheryl is in this book. With the old soul. Yeah, which I get it in the anyway, it was done for the nonfiction, the nonfiction arm, I tell people a Harlequin. I don't know that it even still exists. But as a result of having a story in there, there was one author who told me that she had been contacted by the, you know, the history press, the people who do small historic books about neighborhoods and various towns that she was contacted and got a contract to do one of those books for a specific area. There also was an author who had a story in the very first book that I ever wrote or ever compiled, rather, which was called Christmas Miracles published by William Morrow back in the 90s. That was the one that was the New York Times seller. She went on as a result of having that she had her she ultimately got her own book deal to do her own stories. I would also say that one of the strongest in addition to the exposure and the ability to be a part of a published book, get the authors individually get to claim part of the success. So for instance, with Christmas Miracles, everybody that's in that book can say I was in a New York Times bestselling book. That's right. That is right. Yeah, so yeah, you can claim part of the success. And I think that that's one of the that's a really, a really strong reason to participate in one. Now, you know, you've got people who are just thinking about writing and you've got people who are kind of in the middle are there they've been published every now and then and then you've got these really seasoned writers who's done very well. Is there any difference among that group of those groups of people in terms of wanting to be or submitting to an anthology? I know that some people I'll take the poetry sector for one. I do poetry in the Bay Area. I'm pretty successful at it, but I don't miss doing an opportunity to do an open mic. I don't think it's beneath me to do an open mic because I might want to share something or test something. Do you do you look at anthology the same way for seasoned writers? Jennifer, I'm not sure I ever considered that question because I generally start with the topic. And so I know the stories that I'm looking for. So I'm just looking for the story. Somebody who can tell the story that would fit in the theme. So it doesn't it doesn't really matter what you have been in the past. Right. So it doesn't really matter for you what place they are in their writing. But you're really good story. No, no story. I'm focused on this on the strength of the writing. How about you, Lisa? Because we're a contest and because we very much working with people at the beginning of their careers, that that tends to be what we get. And I find that as I progress with my career and I'm producing full books of my own work, I don't have as much time to enter into contests and anthologies. So I'm sure that's a factor that people consider. But then I think of, you know, we have speakers come to the Writers Conference who are regular contributors to books that are basically anthologies like the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. And, you know, so it's kind of different types of anthologies and different types of levels of writer. Sarah. For our anthologies, Colossus is really our intention was to create space for a multitude of voices. And so we do tend to have newer writers and we actually, you know, we sort of encourage newer writers. We love having youths involved in our anthologies. And for our, I think it was our third anthology, Colossus Freedom, since the theme was on freedom and the industrial incarceration complex. We reached out to a lot of incarcerated writers. And one of the things that I think is really beautiful about that book is the very like the broad diversity of writing styles and voices and experience. We had some people who were very experienced published writers and then other people who this was their first time ever submitting. And I know in, you know, in all of our anthologies, anthologies, we've had this amazing combination of, you know, newer writers, but also poet laureates of, you know, definitely from the Bay Area and in Colossus Body, which is our newest anthology, which focuses on bodily autonomy. We have a poet laureate from Dutchess County, which is in upstate New York. And we have Oakland's current poet laureate, Aya Deli and Kim Schuck, who's the poet laureate emeritus of San Francisco. So we have, yeah, I love the diversity and I love the different voices. And so I think it can be a great place for anyone, you know, if they feel motivated to submit to an anthology, whatever point in their career. So, Sarah, what advice and piggybacking on that? What advice would you give to writers who are considering submitting for an anthology? What, what points should they make sure they cover? And I think there are so many different anthologies, you know, I think as far as when our our editorial group is looking at submissions, we definitely want to want we're looking for work that actually does fit with the theme. And we're also interested in different having different voices and different approaches to that theme. So, you know, I would say, don't be afraid if you don't think that you're saying what everybody is saying, because, you know, that difference can really add to the sort of musicality of a collection. And. Yeah, I would I would just encourage people to, you know, obviously, I always want to really submit something that you're you're feeling confident about and that you've worked on. But, you know, I would say, you know, don't be afraid to submit. Because it you don't I think, especially with an anthology, people are looking for different things sometimes, you know. Yeah. And Jennifer, what do you what do you say? Well, I would agree with her. It's got to be something that fits in with the theme. You know, don't use it as an opportunity to just send what you think is a brilliance of writing, regardless of whether or not it fits the theme, because nobody is going to know what it is. Look at it. It's not going to be accepted. But yeah, once again, all I can say is absolutely. Regardless, I think they think their writing is good enough. If it's on topic, send it in, because I know, for instance, my experience looking specific for a variety of stories on a particular theme, I was perfectly willing to help people shape their stories. I call it buff and polishing. Yeah. And so I would you thought you taught me a lot. There's an opportunity. If there's an opportunity to submit, submit for heaven's sake. Yeah, don't. And you'll get in and you'll decide that you don't want to be included. But regardless, you're not going to, you know, you can't you can't even if you don't play, isn't that the profession? Exactly. Are you missing the shot? And, uh, listen, what do you say about that? Um, as I said, art is a little different and it's a contest. I as an author, I really was a little confused going into the whole contest mindset, you know, before I got involved with the Writers Conference, because I was looking at all of this, like it's a lot of money. Sometimes some of them, some of them look like their whole business model is the fees they get for contests. And then they fell in the contest, a book. And really learning how that operates from the inside is and something that that people who are submitting probably should know is that writing contests are very often fundraisers for various organizations. So the San Francisco Writers Conference is a nonprofit. And our mission is to connect writers, aspiring writers with the industry and to educate them. And so the writers, the contest does sort of two things. It is a fundraiser. So your money helps us continue to put on the conference and keep it going. But we also want to connect. That's why we're doing the anthology. We want to connect more writers with the industry. So our audience for the anthology is the agents who come get copies. Everybody who is in the anthology or everybody who enters the contest gets a copy of the anthology so they can see who the winning entries were. And so they can refine their own work based on what they learn from that experience and what they see as comparatively. So they want to know, like, what is this organization doing? What is the point of this anthology? How big is the audience? I am I love anthology actually as a fundraiser. I wrote a book for parents. I have four kids and did the PTA thing for many, many years. And on doing anthologies with students as a fundraiser, because you have a built-in audience, everybody who's kids in the book is going to buy at least one copy, if not multiple copies for grandparents and relatives and so forth. And that gives kids the exposure and experience. And it's very easy to do in the publishing landscape that we have now with Prince on Demand. And so I actually wrote a book that was maybe published on how to do that. Their numbers and everything have changed since. So they've taken it off of their their group of free books that you can get. But there are a lot of different reasons to do an anthology. And, you know, what I'm doing is it sounds like it's quite different from what Jennifer and Sarah are doing. It sounds like they do more like the the California Writers Club do anthologies. And they actually spend a lot more time with the entry entrance. They have an editor that spends time helping them refine their work. So what you get out of that process is not just getting published, but you get this experience of working with an editor. So, you know, it's it's worth entering and understanding what experience or what you're planning to get out of this. And contests do enter them. You'd be surprised how sometimes we don't get that many entries in the category. And it kind of surprised us. We they before I came in, they actually just continued the poetry section because we weren't getting enough entries in the section, which is crazy. So I I found my people in the poetry track at the conference and really have pushed and built and tried to build the poetry side because we have such a rich poetry culture in the Bay Area. And as you said, with the poetry, as Sarah was saying, you know, you get more established poets, poets will continue to publish an anthologies even when they, you know, get well known when they're already exactly because because they're like a box of chocolates. You know, it's it's a little bit of everybody's different flavor. It's a wonderful thing. It's very marketable. So they continue to be published in anthologies. You know, fiction, nonfiction, less so as you get up there, I think. And children's is a tremendous opportunity. We get very few entries in the children. So I would encourage you if you're if you're interested. You have children's books that you're writing enter in the San Francisco Contest. It's closed right now. We're announcing the winners for this year on September 30th. But next year it opens again. And, you know, you'd be surprised not as many people enter contests as you think, especially if they're smaller, more local, they're attached to a conference, something like that. Look for those opportunities because your odds are better and you will get get experience through the process. Thank you. Very good. Now, let's flip this a little bit. What advice would you give to writers for putting together an anthology? How do they how do they go about doing that and getting started? Listen, since you're on the screen, I'm looking at this. I've done this a few times. Well, from the from the fundraising perspective, I would always say work with a team because it's a lot of work. And you want to think about not just putting the book together, but how you're going to sell it. So what's the end result? Kind of the getting work together is almost the easy part. It's the getting it into the market and finding an audience that's more difficult. And you can sort of do that as you're at the beginning of the process if you've thought it all the way through before you start. So that's kind of what I would say is think of the end. And in fact, even to our mom, both sides of the process at DreamWorks, the process at Disney is you don't start the process until you know how the story ends. You don't start writing until you know. So how is this going to end? Who's your audience going to be? What's your purpose in doing this? What's your what do you want to get out of it? And then you start, you know, connecting with people. I was part of a lovely anthology by Jelena Clice Corwin. It's this one written across the genres and she wanted to create an anthology to help her friends get some recognition and notoriety. And so she put together this beautiful anthology and she just talked to every writer she knew because she was in community with a lot of writers. With the Writers Conference, of course we have a built in sort of community that we can invite to submit through our email list. If you have a community like that, that's the place you can go. That's the way we've done it. So I don't know how others work, but community is so important to writers. Yeah, oh yeah, definitely. Thank you. Jennifer, how does one get started? Well, as my experience and both professionally and as a writer is strictly in the nonfiction world, I would recommend starting the topic and organizing it that way. So for instance, just with the last year or two, I had two different women that I was working with, helping them with their writing. They were working on novels, but as we had more and more casual conversations, I learned more about what their personal lives were like and I said to both of them, two people in two different places who I said, you need to be putting together an anthology because there are a lot of women out there who are in the same situation that you are and you would be able to submit questions and you would get author or you would get culture interests. One woman, her son had transitions and she talks and talks about that experience. I said, that is so much needed, particularly now, in our current situation and everything that's happening across the world. These voices need to be heard and other parents need to hear what it's like. Honestly, how did you handle it? What are some of the challenges? I mean, everybody has a different experience and frankly, a different reaction to what has happened. So that was one, ultimately, she decided it's just too raw still for her. And then the other one, who again, was we on a novel, talked a lot about the fact that her father had just died and what happened to her at this moment in her life and I said, you know, I think you maybe have an anthology topic here. You know, women grieving their, the father loss and she did in fact reach out to some grief groups that she was in and kind of test the idea out. But again, just like the mother of the, of the trans kid just felt it was just a little too new. She just didn't have enough separation. So, but again, for me, let's see, as we know, you know, coming from the publishing business, I've just warned people, I'm like the crassest person in the room because I can't shut off my publishing brain. Everything runs through their mark for this. Who's gonna publish this? What's already happened before? How well did it do? So when you, I'm sorry. You're really breaking up. You're really breaking up. They can easily, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do. Does it help when I'm back here? Does this help at all? Yeah. This does. Yeah. Okay, I'll lean back in. Maybe I was too close. What I was saying is that if you approach a publisher with an idea of a proposal or an anthology that has a clearly identified theme and a clearly identified audience and a clear need that this anthology is filling, that's a big step forward to get a publishing deal. Very good. Yeah. And you, Sarah. I think it's interesting because when Colossus started, I didn't, I never intended to run a small press. Like, I never wanted to do that. And so the way Colossus started was very organically. I think it was the time when the last presidential administration was separating families at the border. And like many people, I was horrified and upset and I was ranting to my husband and I was like, there's a poem on the Statue of Liberty that talks about this. And that's of course Emma Lazarus' poem, The New Colossus. And so I talked to some other people in the poetry community that I knew and I said, let's meet at my house, let's have a poetry salon, let's all use Emma Lazarus' poem as our prompt and write from there and just gather and create community and put our feelings into words. And so we did that. And there were about maybe 10 of us at that salon. And I loved hearing all of the work and having all the work together. And I had this idea at that moment that like if we put all our poems together, we could make, I'd made some little handmade books before and I could put together a really quick chapbook. And if we sold that to just our, sort of almost like a bake sale to our friends and neighbors and community that we could then take that those funds and donate them to local immigration-focused non-profit and we'd not only be finding a place to put our feelings but finding a way to create concrete change. And I feel like it's really important as we see things in the world that are painful or need to be different that we work on not only like processing our feelings and expressing ourselves, but also figuring out how we can create concrete real change. And so that's how Colossus started. And so I didn't like, it was never more of a plan than that and then it just kept going. Yes, it has, thankfully. Yeah. And yeah, Cheryl is in, in, you're in one of our books, are you? I'm in the home one. Yeah, you're in home. All three of you ladies have been gracious enough to publish my work, all three of you. And I thank you for that. It's not because we're gracious. No. You're a good writer. Yeah, we love your writing. Oh, thank you. So let's see if there are any questions from the audience, Nico and Alyssa. Sure. So we have a question from... We do have a question from Daniel T, which is, where are the best places to look for anthologies to submit work into? And Dara so graciously offered a website that I think is a good place for her to submit anthologies. But I would love to also hear from the other panelists about other possibilities and ideas. Okay, Jennifer, you wanna start? Sure. Unfortunately, I don't have any particular place to point people to. I'm trying to think, because when I start an anthology project, the first thing I do is send out an email to everybody I've ever worked with and start asking them to. So I don't know that I've ever posted. There is a Facebook group called Wyne, W-I-N-E. Wyne would used to be a social group here in North Carolina, but now it's on Facebook. I have posted calls for submissions there. But other than that, I just start spreading it through my own network rather than posting it at any place. Lisa? Well, the Writers' Contest is on the website. But also I would say all of the writers groups that I know of do anthologies from time to time. So if you're part of a writing club, a part of a writing group, if you're thinking about starting an anthology, you will often get a supportive group behind you, like they'll release it. Like California Writers' Club, if you were to say, I wanna do an anthology of this type on this thing, they would be like, yeah, we'll publish that for you if you make it a group anthology. So working in a community like that, you can often find or start an anthology that suits you or suits your type of writing. With Contest, they're often advertised online. One of my favorite emails is Funds for Writers by Hope Clark. And she basically posts all of the upcoming contests, anthologies, opportunities to get paid to write in some way or another in blank weekly emails, all over the US at least. So that's one of my favorites to read through. It's kind of a long, very, a lot of words in that email, but you can scan through and find what you need. And there's also a Winnie Writers' Email List that you can get into for contests. I don't love everything that they share, so be a little selective. But there's places that send out email lists of all of the contests that you can get involved in. Many will advertise in some of the magazines, poets and writers, I think writers digest, that's the other one. So there are places that are advertising them, but like I said, the odds are really good. If you're in a club or you're in a small group, that there's a smaller pool of writers that you'll have a better chance of getting your writing picked up, especially if you're really just at the beginning. And then as you get more experienced, you'll also be told by other people in the clubs about other places that you can submit. And it grows. Right. And Sarah? Well, at least for Colossus, originally we would put our call for submissions out on Facebook and Instagram. And I think it was also a lot of word of mouth going to open mics. And one of us would read in an open mic and say, hey, we're looking for submissions to the anthology. Also, there's a website called Submitable. And we put our for Colossus body, we had a call for submissions on Submitable. And we got a lot of, most of our submissions did come through Submitable. Right. Thank you. Any other questions out there from the audience? I see in our chats a follow-up question about contracts and payments for anthology. So maybe like the behind the scenes, how do you pay authors once they submit? Well, not all anthology assemblers or editors or writers pay. So for those of you who do pay, how does that work? Let me start with you, Sarah. Colossus, we don't pay our writers. When we did Colossus Freedom, we did try to give a $20 stipend for authors because so many of the writers who were included in that anthology were incarcerated and the tiny stipend we could give them really would mean a lot to their lives. But that's not usual for us. We are a nonprofit. All of the funds, at this point, all of the funds that we get from selling copies of our anthologies go to the identified nonprofit organization that is connected to that theme. So for Colossus Home, Moms for Housing was our nonprofit. So every time a copy of Colossus Home sells, Moms for Housing gets $20, which is the price of the anthology. Colossus Freedom, the $20 goes to California Coalition for Women Prisoners. And for Colossus Body, the funds go to Keep Our Clinics, which is actually a national nonprofit rather than local. But we felt that with, particularly with the issue of choice, the reproductive healthcare clinics in the Southeast were the group that needed the most support. So we wanted to acknowledge support as much as we could where it would really make a difference. So we don't really pay our writers and we just, it's sort of a way of donating to support a cause that people believe in. Yeah, this is Sarah's talking about the anthology as a social change tool. Yes. And when you submit to that type of anthology, you are becoming a part of that social change. And most of the time you will be giving through your writing rather than receiving money back. When I submitted to Colossus Home, I did it because I knew that the proceeds would go to Moms for Housing. And so that is one arena. Now, all anthologies are not that way and all publishers are not that way. So, Lisa, can you talk a little bit about the contest? Yeah. It used to just be the contest and then we started doing the anthology two years ago. And at the same time, I said, well, our grand prize winner, we really want them to come to the conference. For the past few years, a grand prize winner had not actually come out to the conference because the conference can be very expensive. This has to be another thing that we do because we are a nonprofit. We are trying to make these connections and if the people that are winning the contest can't afford to come to the conference, we need to bring them out. So we changed our prize for the grand prize instead of a cash prize, it is a full registration to the conference. And then for the category winners, it was cash prize, the last contest. This contest, I pushed that because it was so great. We had 10 people that were finalists show up at the last conference and it was phenomenal and they made great connections. All of them did very well by the experience. So we also have added that our category winners will win instead of $100 cash prize, they will win a summit registration of their choice. So in addition to the full conference, we have a poetry summit and a writing for Hollywood summit that are one day like many conferences you can do within the bigger conference rather than paying and doing the whole big conference, you can just have this one day event. And they have the choice of using that as like a discount off of a full conference registration if they want. So it has a value of $249. And then the other thing that I made an executive decision and did was I sent all of the finalists a $50 coupon for conference registration if they wanted to come. So the entry fee was $35. Everybody got a copy of anthology that entered whether they were finalists or not. So that's a roughly $20 value because we were selling it for 15 that make it really affordable and $5 of shipping it out to everybody. Then we have the finalists that got the coupon. We have the category winners that got the, that will get the registration for the summit the one day or they can apply it to the total conference. And then we have the grand prize winner who was brought out to the conference. So, to me it's about that mission of making publishing accessible to people who would not normally have that access. And that's what it says on our application for a nonprofit license to the state and that's what I'm gonna do. So that's sort of the compensation. You might just get a copy of the book but you might get a whole lot more but we don't pay for sales or commissions off the book. Exactly. Now, Jennifer, you have a, I know a totally different response for this question. I've enjoyed hearing how they handle it all. The books that I have done have all been official publishers and I feel recently that people need to be paid. If I'm making money, then they should make money. But I will say that the honorarium that I have paid in the past totally depends on the size of the advance that I've received for selling the book idea. Exactly. So back in the day, back in the day, I will say, I mean, we all know that everything, the money is getting smaller and smaller in the publishing world. And so, back in the day, yes, it was a nice generous check and as the years on by, correct me if I'm wrong. But I think it's like 25 dollars. Yeah, I feel it's got to be something, you know? You need to be able to feel like you're a writer who's getting paid regardless of the size of the song. And then also one thing that I feel very strongly about is the contract, the story lease that I use all states that it is non-exclusive. I don't own your story here on out. It's non-exclusive and all I am getting is the right to use that story in this analogy. Right. And there is a contract and you do sign a contract and it is completely understood upfront what is going to happen once your piece is published. So see now you have- I will say- Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, I'm just gonna add a quick thought in case this doesn't come up yet. But in listening to what some of the others say you could have been saying, I thought, you know, one of the reasons that publishers, they're publishers or somebody like me of what you're putting something together, like anthologies is because you don't just have one person who is promoting it, you have the entire body of work. You have 30 people who are gonna be out there talking about the book and getting their friends and their family to buying it and hoping that their local, you know, press might cover it or it just expands the potential marketing and publicity realm for that one particular title. Which is not true when it's one author out there to get the world to pay attention. Yes. So are there any other questions out there from the audience? And we do have a question from Lucy, which I think is more directed at our Writers Conference based panelists, which is, does the Writers Conference permit simultaneous submissions and what's the reading period? We had submissions from February through, I think we closed the end of July. We don't make it exclusive. We have had people withdraw their entries when they have been accepted elsewhere. So it's, if you do simultaneous submissions, it's important to let the other publishers know or the other contests know if you need to bow out because you've then published somewhere else. We did have one that became a finalist before they were picked up by an agent. And so we couldn't publish their entry. So we just published a note of congratulations to them. So, you know, we're not exclusive in that way. We want people to make connections and get published. That's our goal. We were the first 1500 words of your book. So it's, and you can taper it off or end it in some way so that it feels complete. But then we always publish a bio like this is from this book. So if they are planning to self-publish and many people are planning to self-publish when they submit that this is a piece of advertising for them. This is how you sell this book and you like it, get the rest of it. So most of what we're publishing is not a complete story. It's a sample. It gets you interested. It's a great sort of marketing tool for the authors that are in it. Thank you. Any other questions from the audience? Cheryl, I actually have a question that emerged for myself, which is when people were talking about their anthology projects I just thought that a lot of these projects sounded almost like literary journals. So what's the difference really between an anthology and a literary journal? Or is there just a great area that exists between the two? Who would like to tackle that question? I appreciate that, but what projects that I worked on wouldn't fall under that description. I'm sorry, you froze and we didn't hear everything you said. I just said that the projects that I worked on wouldn't fall under the description of a literary journal. Right. The literary journals that I have seen usually contain a very narrow straight line theme of work. So for example, if it's a historical fiction literary journal, they want what they consider to be literary level, whatever that means these days. Stories about historical fiction and it might be even segmented into a silo of Gold Rush, California. Those are the literature. The anthologies that I have been a part of have had themes but you could basically write a story within that theme from any perspective unless you were told that it was basically fiction or non-fiction memoir if you were given a genre. For example, the San Francisco Writers Conference Contest has broken up into how many segments do you have? You have poetry, you have four segments. Poetry, adult fiction, adult non-fiction and Kiddlet which is anything from books through YA. Right. And so you don't have a theme. Right. So you just submit within those genres any story. I mean, I wrote a story about a outer space person. And in the Colossus Home Anthology the theme was home, but I submitted a fable. So it really just is determined by what is being requested. And I would say that the literary journals seem to be more strict than the just free flowing themed anthology. I don't know how do you all feel about that? I don't know, I could be wrong about this but I think when I think about a journal I think about something that has a predictable like it comes out yearly or it comes out quarterly or where the timing is. And I mean, at least for Colossus we don't have any kind of particular timing. It's sort of like we work on a theme and a book and we put it out and we try to get people to buy it and then when there's another issue that feels like super compelling, we dive into that one. And gather the forces. Yeah, it could be two years between anthologies it could be nine months. Okay. Let me ask you all, each of you, what do you have coming up? I wanna give you some time as anthology creators to talk about what you might have coming up. How about you go first, Jenny? Well, I'm actually, you know, the thing to sort of shepherd and make happens ultimately either one of them wanted to go through with it but I would still say there's a very strong need for somebody to get together an anthology where it's the parents' voices talk about talking about their experiences with their children transitioning. Particularly those families are all of a sudden be literally made into criminals for God's sake. It's a sudden everybody's got them. Excuse me. And yeah, so anyway, I just wanna say that there's a huge need for that. So please somebody put that anthology together. It was, I was never gonna have anything to do other than just trying to help somebody do that. It's not my book to write, literally. And I think, you know, this is Cheryl, that more recently I had a lot of fun researching and writing a book called Churchill, A Drinking Life, Shannon and Cognac and Drinking Life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is not an anthology. It's a little frothy gift book that was, it's totally cute, the way that the publisher put it together and packaged it. It's a cute little hardcover book. And so I had so much fun doing that. I'm just totally going back to the rabbit hole of having fun writing more books like that. I believe I'll do one about it in Fleming and James Bond. You know, how in Fleming created the world's most famous martini drinker. Very good, Jen. Is it just on the version of the book we saw today? Ew, Sarah. Well. It really exciting coming up for us is we're having the San Francisco Book Release Party for Colossus Body on September 23rd, which is a Saturday. It's gonna be at 4.30 in the afternoon at a bookstore called Medicine for Nightmares. And so, you know, I'd love, please come down. We have some really amazing poets reading work from the book. And as I said, if the money from the book does go to support Keep Our Clinics, which is an organization providing all sorts of very necessary healthcare all over the country, but particularly in the Southeast. And we'll also have other Colossus books there. And so that's our really exciting thing, you know, in the next couple of weeks. And mostly we're gonna have a bunch of, we're also gonna have a bunch of Zoom-based readings coming up. People can find out about those. Going to ColossusPress.org, that's our website. And you can also buy copies of our anthologies there. And again, all the funds from the books go to these different nonprofits. And actually, I was thinking about what Jennifer was saying and LGBTQ and trans issues is something that we've talked about as far as putting together, you know, who knows exactly what our next anthology will be. We've also talked a lot about water as an issue. Water is becoming, you know, has always been political, but is, you know, with climate change, it's becoming more and more of a critical issue for a lot of people. And so that's another possible theme for us for a coming book. But yeah, we'd love to see everyone on the 23rd. We also, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram under ColossusPress, so. Thank you, Sarah. And Lisa. Well, if either of you do pursue that book, let me know because I have a trans kid and have found myself doing a lot of advocacy. There's just so much misinformation out there and a huge chunk of money behind stories that are very anti-trans or people are de-transitioning. I can tell that they're paid stories that are getting pushed forward because they are not in any sense a reflection of reality. And we'd be happy to contribute. As far as what we're doing with the conference, we'll be announcing the contest winners on September 30th. We will turn around and have the anthology out by mid-November at the latest. We always think to do it within a month, but it sometimes takes a little bit longer to connect with everybody involved. That is one of the issues you might face if you're doing an anthology is communicating and hearing back from many, many people that are having all kinds of diverse life experiences that might be slowing them down. So that's coming out. And then our next contest period start right after the next conference through again, probably the end of June or July. I can't remember if we went to the end of June or July. If you look at the contest information on the website from this year, it will likely be exactly the same for next year. So all of your information should be in the chat in terms of how people can get in contact with you and make things happen. And when the next round of anthologies comes, I hope there's some of the people that are in the audience today are participants. There's more than enough variety just with these three wonderful ladies for you to find a space for your writing. I thank you all so much for being here today, Lisa, Jenny and Sarah. And I thank you Mechanics Institute, Nico and Alyssa, and I'll turn it back to you. What an honor it is to have Alyssa, Sarah and Jennifer join us as our panelists today. And obviously thank you again to our warm and steadfast moderator, Cheryl, for being here. I do want to remind the audience to mark your calendars for the next writer's lunch on Friday, October 20th. Once again, the topic is how to craft the coming of age story and it will involve three wonderful authors, that's Dara Williams, who is also here today, Daniel Bobka and Isidra Mencos. And we look forward to seeing you then. And once again, a round of applause, our snaps for our wonderful panelists today. Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you.