1. How do I join? When is the first meeting?

Joining AmLit couldn’t be easier. We want to love everyone—AmLit is like that dog that humps everybody’s leg. At our first meeting of the Spring 2010 semester (Wednesday January 20 at 8:30PM in the McDowell Formal Lounge!), we will be passing out applications for anyone who wants to be a staff member. Once you fill out this application and are invited to join the staff, you are OURS and we will suck your brains out and shackle you to a chair in the office! Mwuahahaha! But seriously, once you are invited to be a member of our staff we do expect you to commit to AmLit (ah, beloved internal rhyme)—that means coming to every meeting and giving your very valued opinion on all matters of AmLit business great or small. We realize life gets in the way and minimum wage jobs need to be worked and congressional internships need to be completed and getting swine flu might impede being on AmLit, so all we ask if that if being an AmLit staffer is no longer a reality, please let us know as soon as possible so we can mourn alone in the darkened office and sniffle into old magazines, and then face the reality that you cannot be on staff anymore.

2. How much of a time commitment is AmLit?

Involvement in AmLit is like those old choose-your-own-ending Goosebumps novels. You can devote tons of time to it, or you can just come to the weekly meetings and a few review sessions, call it a day, and still have been a valuable member of the staff. However, if you want to commit to being a full-time staff member, we do expect you to come to every weekly meeting (which will always be at 8:30 on Wednesday, so you can write that on your schedule or program it into your iPhone or other newfangled doodad) and at least one review session. If you are an editor or hope to be an editor someday, AmLit will be more of a time commitment. It is really up to you.

3. Where is the office?

The AmLit office is located in MGC 248. The directions to get there are fairly straightforward—go up the stairs leading to the second floor of Mary Graydon. From there, walk straight across the lobby and past the elevator doors. You will run into a hallway and see a set of bathrooms. Cross the hallway (do not turn left or right, do not pass Go, do not collect $200) and head towards the bathroom. The AmLit office is directly across from the bathrooms and right next door to the janitor closet.

4. Do you have to be a Literature major to be on AmLit? Will I be ostracized if I’m in Kogod?

The prevalent AmLit stereotype is that it is comprised of snobby Lit majors who wear thick black glasses and tight t-shirts who have the paperback collection of Tennyson poems stuffed in their back pocket. And while I freely admit that I own the black glasses and some of us might wear tight t-shirts, the fact is that AmLit is made up of a colorful rainbow of AU characters. Every type of major is represented (the Co-Editor-in-Chief is an Econ and SIS major). Every type of personality is brought to the table to be jostled and challenged and loved. We even have Republicans. That being said, AmLit does have an artistic bent. So if you hate art…you probably shouldn’t be on AmLit. But that is pretty much the only type of person who wouldn’t fit in. All in all, AmLit is one of the most accepting, non-discriminating organizations on campus. A lot of us are kind of weird, and we will gladly get to know your weirdness too.

5. Can I be on staff and still submit to the magazine? Do I have to be on staff to submit to the magazine? Do I have to be on staff to get into the magazine? Does being on staff make my chances of getting into the magazine greater?

It’s so great that this non-existent person is so enthusiastic about submitting. The answer to your first question is yes, absolutely. Staff members can and do submit to the magazine with zest.

The answer to your second question is no. The only requirement for submission is that you be a member of the American University community, which is a pretty nebulous requirement if you think about it. You can be an undergraduate, a graduate, a faculty, or affiliated with the university in any way and you are gold.

As far as your third question, the answer is also no. If you are a brave soul and have read the extensive explanation of the submissions process, you know our process is completely blind. Meaning that the participants at the review sessions don’t know a thing about the person who submitted the poem, short story, photo, or art sitting in front of them. They could be sitting right next to you…furtively slide your eyes to the right…or they could be sleeping in their dorm room or in the Berks (review sessions can sometimes be uncomfortably early in the morning). So staff at the review session have no idea if the submission is from a staff member or not.

Finally on to the fourth question—as you know by now, our submission process is blind (“what! Blind! I haven’t heard this concept before! They haven’t been yammering on about it all over this website!”). We honestly don’t know who submitted what, and there is no dark secret conspiracy to make it so the magazine is only comprised of AmLit staff material. This is obvious by reading past issues. However, by nature AmLit staffers are passionate about the very things that go into the magazine—poetry, art/design, prose, and photography. Passion usually leads to proficiency, so staff members are usually pretty good at what they do and as a result they make it into the magazine sometimes. But we have no idea of that until after the review session.

6. What does a general staff member do?

Fetch me coffee and look pretty. Beyond that, general staff members are the oil that keeps the nuts and bolts going. Or maybe they are the nuts and bolts themselves. It’s clearly getting late. Anyway, good old general staff members are essential and we need to think up a sexier name for them. The most important duty of general staff members is coming to the review sessions and voting on submissions—essentially, they decide what goes into the magazine. They also assist in general AmLit chores, like setting up events and give their wild and varying opinions on everything—themes for the magazine, suggested improvements, and anything else that goes along with the magazine. Like the time commitment thing, being a general staff member is really what you make of it. But whatever you choose to do in the role, it is vital to keeping the magazine going.

7. Will you guys give me feedback on my work?

This question depends on timing. If you want feedback on your work before the review sessions and then plan on submitting said work, we can’t really help you because that would damage our whole blind submissions thing. In that case, some good creative resources would be your professors in whatever genre you are working with. They usually love to look at student work. You can also ask roommates and friends for their critique, although if they are an AmLit staff member know that by asking them to look things over means they will have to abstain in the review session.

If you have made a submission and it didn’t get into the magazine and you’d like a professional (well, an AmLit professional) critique, well, that also depends on the genre. Officially, we cannot guarantee to provide a critique of every piece of work. However, if you personally request a critique (as in, you send an email to amlitmag@gmail.com), we can forward that email to the various genre editors and they will probably be able to get back to you as far as what the staff members in the review session discussed, and make any suggestions. Many times people re-submit pieces after some revision and those pieces make it in the magazine.

8. How do I contact this mysterious AmLit?

The best way to contact us is by first sending an email to amlitmag@gmail.com. This gets checked religiously, especially since one of the Editors-in-Chief just got that new google phone that allows her to check email incessantly. After that, we will be able to set up a face to face meeting if neccesary.

Other ways to contact us are stopping by the office at MGC 248, calling the office phone at 202-885-6414, or doing the Facebook thing. Our facebook group is called “American Literary”, and if you search for that we should pop right up. But seriously, email is the best.

9. I’m really mad about something. Who do I talk to?

If you want to yell at someone about anything related to AmLit…well, hopefully there will be no yelling involved. But if you have any complaints, please send them to amlitmag@gmail.com. This is the Editor-in-Chief email, and we will be the ones addressing any complaints. And we are really scary.

9. Wait, I need submission help. Where do I go?

No fear! Go here!