Anil Menon, chief editor, TBLM: ‘There’s no moneyed road to great narratives’
On The Bombay Literary Magazine’s plans that include carrying more translations, and on being one of the few Indian literary journals that pays contributors
Recently, The Bombay Literary Magazine (TBLM) became one of the rare Indian literary journals to pay writers for work published in the magazine. What made you explore the option to pay?
Actually, we see it as an honorarium, rather than payment. Seen as a payment, the amount is hardly commensurate with the effort involved in good writing. Also, I imagine all magazine editors would like to compensate their writers financially. When we learned we could, we decided to do so. The only worry was whether we would be able to sustain the model or whether we would become too attached to the funding. We realized we were worried, nodded gravely to ourselves, and proceeded anyway.
Who is the funder? What is their vision?
It’s a new organisation called Kolam EdTech, privately funded, and the vision is to help the literary arts flourish. In concrete terms, this means funding mentorships, residencies, magazines, and workshops.
What has your experience of paying writers taught you?
The main difference is that we get a lot more submissions now. Specifically, about 1,000 submissions per issue from which we have to select about 20. Many of these are from outside India. And because we’re a “paying” magazine, we get featured in various ‘submit here’ lists. All these outcomes are relatively new developments for us.
However, this doesn’t necessarily translate into the availability of a greater volume of work worth publishing. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much of a correlation between creative quality and financial opportunities. For example, graphic artists are paid very well, but in my view, there isn’t much innovation or cutting edge work in the Indian graphics scene. It mostly seems to cater to what well-meaning adults consider suitable for upper-class children. In contrast, poets earn practically nothing. They’re homeless church mice. Yet, the Indian poetry scene is extraordinary. It’s tightly connected, aware of what poets around the world are doing, and very active. Short fiction in India is somewhere in between. It does have a market, especially internationally, but much of the stuff we get at the magazine is either old fashioned, anecdotal or derivative. As you can see, there’s no moneyed road to great narratives.
This initiative is part of a revamp in the masthead of the journal. How and why did the revamp come about?
(Author and editor) Tanuj Solanki had run the magazine for eight long years. He was thinking of winding it down. That would’ve been an honourable choice – nothing should last forever. But he was willing to give someone else a try at the job. I was tempted because (Writer, arts curator) Pervin Saket was with the magazine, and I knew what she was capable of. (Writer) Kinjal Sethia and Tanuj also agreed to stay. But I didn’t like the idea of lying to authors that magazine exposure would serve as compensation for publishing their work. Unfortunately, a funding opportunity materialized at just this time, and I ran out of excuses not to join the magazine. Soon we were joined by others – some we actively sought out, others were recommended to us – and things got underway.
In what ways has TBLM changed to reflect the interests of its editors?
Editors are also curators, and they have a responsibility to shape how literature is presented, commented upon, or serve as a starting point for other kinds of writing. That’s why we now add introductory notes to the content. During the revamp, it became clear to us we very much wanted a “writerly” magazine here; that is, a magazine with an emphasis on the “how” of writing. This naturally leads to an essays vertical with a focus on craft. We’re especially keen about getting the subcontinent’s writers or more generally, from the “global south”, to write about writing. There isn’t much writing by subcontinental writers on writing.
Are there any upcoming initiatives you’d like to discuss?
We hope to set up a translations vertical; that is, to find editors who handle translations and nothing but translations. I love reading translations, and most of my exposure to the world’s writing, especially the subcontinent’s writing, comes via translations. But as an editor, I’m nervous about accepting translations. We get quite a lot of them, which is good. But they’re hard to vet for quality and fidelity, which is bad. We’re trying to find the right balance between accuracy and effort.
I see my job as making sure the team has the resources to do their jobs. We are a little overwhelmed at the moment because the magazine has grown quite rapidly. This is especially evident with social media. We have to make our minds just how engaged we want to be. In short, there are a lot of “little” things we need to get right as far our internal processes are concerned.
We’re some distance away from the desired reflection of our interests. Everybody is all for learning from failure until people actually make mistakes. But I came from the software world. Bugs are some of my best friends. We’re going to keep trying different things and make a hash of things for a bit. I’m confident we’ll eventually have a magazine that’s worth all the stress and effort and the pain of holding onto a difficult dream.
Suhit Bombaywalal is an independent journalist. He lives in Mumbai.
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