Confessions of a Literary Journal Editor

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An Interview with Pat Matsueda

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Novelist Angela Nishimoto (Isabella’s Daughter, 2022, Pueo Press), interviews the quiet (but sneaky ubiquitous) literary maestro Pat Matsueda on her 30th year as Mānoa Journal managing editor, founding the journal Ms. Aligned, what it takes to move up the ladder to an editorial position, what the work is like, how she balances her own poetry and prose, and—what else you got?

Three pros: Pay Matsueda, Jenny Foster, and Frank Stewart (L-R)

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Angela Nishimoto

You are a poet. When did you realize that poetry was a genre for you?

Pat Matsueda

Poetry is an immense river in which my little craft has floated, explored, been invited places, and been changed. Even though I’ve written poems that I’m proud of—that I want others to read—I would be unhappy if I were to write poetry only. Writers make literary material out of thoughts, feelings, words, and music—music being meaning, significance, depth, power, etc. Sometimes this material comes out as poems, sometimes as prose. I don’t think of myself as a good poet or someone who has chosen a genre. I’m like a traveler, moving around, trying to get to that place I don’t know yet.

In my most recent poetry chapbook, Bitter Angels (February, 2021), I was faced with many decisions and ended up changing some of them. Toward the end of assembling the book, my sister was very ill and eventually passed away. That affected my feelings about it. I came to see it as having its own mortality, and though its life might be brief, I wanted it to be intense and worth the struggle of being born.

Nishimoto

You also wrote a novella, Bedeviled (2017). (About Ted Koga, who by day works as a mechanic at a military base on Oahu, and by night leads a fantasy life at adult sites.) What made you move into prose at that time?

Matsueda

It was a desire to get Ted Koga’s story out in the world. About 80% of it is fiction and the rest based on real-life incidents.

Like many of my poems, Bedeviled is about healing and redemption, and I wanted people to read about Koga’s passage from a life of lying and falsehood to acceptance of his mistakes and the reasons he was so flawed. I hoped readers might get to know him and ponder his dilemma—to empathize with his efforts to tear apart the conventional notion of morality and to rebuild it from scratch, i.e., from the essential elements of his character. In this effort, I was greatly helped by my publishers, Tom Farber and Frank Stewart, who saw in the story a worthy book and suggested ways to make it better.

Recently I reread my old blogposts about Yi-Fu Tuan, the renowned geographer, and Robin Williams, and felt that I should maybe collect these and other posts in a book. You can find links to the posts here, here, and here.

People who read these and Bedeviled may see connections between them. I talked about impulses toward suicide and the terrors of being male.

Nishimoto

You recently retired from Mānoa Journal as the managing editor after 30 years. Is this the job you envisioned or had any idea about during your school days?

Matsueda

I received my undergraduate degree in English in 1977 and had several jobs before I started working at the journal: receptionist at KCCN-AM and what was then Hawai‘i Pacific College; administrative assistant at two arts organizations; legal secretary for real-estate lawyers; planner at the Office of Environmental Quality Control; and technical editor for the UHM Water Resources Research Center.

Faith Fujimura, who was married to Shakespearean scholar and UHM professor Thomas Fujimura, hired me to help her at the Water Resources Research Center. In late 1991 or early 1992, the position with the journal opened, and I applied for it. Based on my editing and publishing experience, Robert Shapard and Frank Stewart hired me, and I started working for them in April 1992. I was extremely lucky to be working at the journal and still feel that there was no better job for me.

Nishimoto

I've visited you in your office several times over the years, and I remember you at your desk, copyediting. It takes a sharp eye and sustained concentration to do that kind of close work. You’ve also succeeded as a freelance editor. Please tell me about the ins and outs of that kind of work. I remember that I've seen manuscripts in process, and some of the writing seems to need a guiding hand to bring out the special points of their work.

Matsueda

Well, there is a lot to say about the “ins and outs.” For Mānoa Journal, I would copyedit hundreds of pages of prose and poetry a year, proofread, typeset, work on our website, help with marketing copy, draft grant applications, administer projects, handle email correspondence, and so on. Because the staff is small, such multi-tasking is necessary. Despite my having done most of these things for almost 30 years, I was still learning.

To do our editing and production work, we have come up with detailed procedures. We use desktop publishing software, Excel spreadsheets, and other tools to keep track of dozens of literary works and produce a book-sized issue every six months. As the head of the office, Frank Stewart reviews my editing before it goes to the author. When we disagree, we talk about it until we reach a compromise we can both live with.

In our office, business correspondence is critical to developing trust, forging relationships and agreements, reaching satisfactory compromises, and so on. “Correspondence” sounds dry and limiting, but it draws on precision, self-awareness, confidence, understanding of human nature, diplomacy, discretion, sense of timing, and other qualities. In teaching me how to conduct the business of the journal through correspondence, Frank has been an invaluable mentor.

I should add that we coordinate our work with the journals department of the University of Hawai‘i Press, our publisher, and our designer, Barbara Pope Book Design.

My editing business is a modest enterprise, founded in 2004. (More about this farther down in this story.)

Nishimoto

I have curiosity about your founding of Aligned Press, from which you birthed Ms. Aligned, a series of publications. You explained the reasons for your founding of this enterprise in 2016, and it's been a success. The reasons for this literature existing, the situations we find ourselves living through, still occur. There seems to always be a need for explanations between people, male to female, female to male.

Matsueda

Yes, I certainly feel that the wisdom, insights, and observations gathered in the Ms. Aligned volumes have not lost their relevance. As I explain on the About page of our website: The genesis for this project was a presentation at the 2014 annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. The event attracted about a hundred people and was successful in generating both interest in the subject and thoughtful discussion.

It was the success of that event that inspired me to create the anthology. I’m happy that I did, as I explain on the About page: As far as we know, this is one of the few series devoted to writing by women about men. The contributors represent a diversity of cultures and ethnicities, and the stories they tell in their fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are complex—sometimes being about family, sometimes about society, and sometimes about country.

Nishimoto

In a course I took at UHM in English, guidance from Prof. Susan Schultz included: Find the puka, then fill it. What do you think about this technique in founding an enterprise?

Matsueda

I think that’s possible in small press publishing. In the case of Mānoa, we are part of an institution, the University of Hawaiʻi, so our procedures are more regular or formal. Frank Stewart and Robert Shapard proposed Mānoa in 1987 in response to a call for proposals from then UH president Albert Simon. The proposal was accepted partly because they said they would produce an international journal focused on contemporary literary work from Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas and featuring new translations. In fall 1989, Mānoa was launched with a double issue (spring and fall).

For small projects like Ms. Aligned or Vice-Versa ezine, it takes a great deal of commitment to produce a finished publication. Merely having a puka to begin with does not mean you’ll finish. You’ll come to rely on much of what you’ve learned and experienced to find your way to the end, and to get there you have to bring the force of your character.

Nishimoto

I remember your delight at good work. You said that you love publishing because you are always surprised. You never know what you'll get. Could you speak to this, please?

Matsueda

I don’t remember saying I am always surprised, though I might well have. What I do remember saying is that perfection can never be achieved, which drives us to try. When we publish the perfect book, we can quit. Until then, we will always be trying to perfect the design, editing, proofreading, and so forth.

Nishimoto

How many copies of Ms.Aligned have been sold? The three editions have been offered for sale from Lulu for the first, then as PODs from DeLeon Literary Arts, Mānoa Books, and Amazon.com. Have you realized profits from sales? Would you like to share that information?

Matsueda

Well, of the three editions, the third did best. This was mainly due to (1) the crowd-funding campaign we ran to raise money to produce the book (see msaligned.com/events) and (2) purchases by contributors who wanted copies for friends and family.

The series hasn’t yet been successful commercially, but it is an artistic success. Much of the writing we published was impressive, powerful, unique, and I am very proud of it. Each edition has its own character and presents a different facet of the effort by women writers to represent men.

There are many reasons to publish something—to go into publishing. Making a living has to be one of the least pragmatic. If you are thinking of publishing as a second career or profits as a second income, I would discourage you from taking it up. You will be disappointed.

You must have other goals or rewards. Doing something because no one else has done it or simply because you believe it should be done. Putting in book form the writing of someone you admire and giving readers the chance to discover it. For some of us, these are goals worthy of effort and sacrifice.

Nishimoto

You had a successful career with prize-winning Mānoa Journal. You retired in August of this year. What made you decide to move on?

Matsueda

Short answer: age.

The long answer follows. Several years ago, I asked Bill Hamilton, then the director of UH Press, why he had decided to retire, and he told me that I would know when the time came for me. He didn’t elaborate, but I eventually found that he didn’t have to. I have realized that no matter how good I am at my job, the journal deserves someone who doesn’t creak and ache the way I do, whose heart is still young and strong, who doesn’t think about how much she has done and how many years she has worked but who thinks about how much more there is to do, who wants to show up for tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that.

Nishimoto

Is there any one particular issue of Mānoa that stands out for you?

Matsueda

You can see all our issues listed here. There were many that we put heart and soul into, so I can’t really narrow the list down to my favorites. I can say that my favorite piece of fiction might be Intizar Husain’s “Stranded Railroad Car,” which appeared in Story Is a Vagabond. I consider that a great issue, one that could be compared with the great issues of other journals, but it isn’t the only one worthy of a world championship title. Mānoa has published many, and that is why it’s such an incredible publication.

Another favorite issue is The Mystified Boat, a collection of modern Chinese fiction. And there is The Zither, which features an achingly beautiful novella by Zhang Yihe as well as the tender story “Isobathic.” The latter is about a young boy teaching a cynical, jaded professor about the indestructible morality of innocence.

Acting My Age, a memoir by Tom Farber published in winter 2020, is unusual in being one of our few nonfiction volumes. Tom talks about the dying of the oceans, animal species, the human species, and himself. If it’s possible to write about these things with sympathy and power and no sentimentality, Tom has done that.

Nishimoto

Every job has many facets and that your work calls upon various talents and skills. What part of your job do you enjoy the most?

Matsueda

The aesthetic, artistic part. The copyediting. Teaching students what publishing is. Corresponding with writers, translators, guest editors. Typesetting, layout, which I am not great at but enjoy nonetheless. Feeling that I’ve learned something, contributed.

Nishimoto

What part of the work you do at the journal will you miss the most?

Matsueda

I will probably most miss saying that I have a good job. I had wanted such a job for many years, and in early 1992, I was hired as the managing editor. Thirty years later, I am retiring, hoping that I won’t be too sad when I leave and the memories come rushing in.

Nishimoto

What publications have you spearheaded in the past? Are they still available to interested readers?

Matsueda

People interested in what I’ve worked on or produced can find a list (with links) on this page of my website.

Nishimoto

You are a successful publisher of anthologies, such as Vice-Versa ezine and Ms. Aligned. Do you have any advice for those who want to found a press and/or publication series?

Matsueda

It’s critical to find your tribe: that small group of people who will work with you to realize—make real—a project. And you must have read insightfully, carefully so that they value your judgement.

I would say one shouldn’t think of writing as a career. “Career” is something you do later in life. Writing is something that you do now, that you do because it is how you live your life, because you are someone who writes. If it’s not that for you, well, I would counsel you to think about what is.

Nishimoto

You also run a business, Peak Services. What kinds of services do you offer your clients?

Matsueda

The services vary. Around the end of last year, for example, I was contacted by someone whose book was coming out in June from a major university press: Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Ugo Corte needed someone to help him proof over 270 pages of text that had been typeset and composed into pages. I was working on Mānoa but interrupted that to help him, and it turned into an intense three-week experience that, among other things, made me consider going into sociology. Corte also paid me the highest compliment I’ve ever gotten as a person. I’ve been thinking of putting Unique and Clever on a T-shirt, though people who see me probably wouldn’t understand how humorous it is for me to boast.

For a fiction writer in California, Ben Schwartz, I produced a reader’s report on his novel-length manuscript “A Treasured Unimportance.” It’s hard to find the right adjectives to describe this work because it is so daringly and effortlessly creative in form. To top that off, much of it is about a woman or written in a woman’s voice. In my reader’s report, I pointed out parts of the plot that I thought should be developed more and events that I felt were inconsistent with the information he had provided about the characters.

I am at present editing a manuscript by Gregory Dobrasz, a former lawyer who is now a hairdresser. His is a vastly funny, insightful, and deeply moving look at human nature from the point-of-view of an intelligent thirty-something who went to cosmetology school and learned not only about hairdressing but also about himself. I admire Gregory for his candor, and delight in his wickedly funny descriptions of beauty tools and other objects of mystification. To those things he brings a compassionate understanding of human frailty.

Nishimoto

About your immediate future: Ms Aligned 4 is closed for submissions. Is there anything you’d like to say about this forthcoming publication?

Matsueda

That is a question I've been thinking about. Ms. Aligned is a project to create a literature about boys and men that is written by female, transgendered, and nonbinary authors.

I'm frequently surprised by how well—how tenderly, how sharply, how wisely, how penetratingly—we can see into the soul, the psyche, the mind when we write. Much of the work submitted has gone beyond what I tried to create when I started the series, and I hope readers have found it illuminating and enriching as well.

For these efforts—and for the continuing effort to try to understand across genders—I am thankful.

I look forward to seeing how other authors interpret the theme, Coming of Age. 

Nishimoto

You are retiring from your position at Mānoa Journal. What kinds of activities do you envisage for yourself after retirement? What do you plan to do?

Matsueda

For decades, I have been expecting an environmental apocalypse, and from what I've learned and read since 2022 began, I think the dire event will happen soon. (Articles I've read recently include ones on a so-called megastorm inundating California, poisonous fungi—due to the use of fungicides and other artificial practices—causing a pandemic, and Chris Hedges's argument that voting, lobbying, donating, etc. are as ineffective as expecting to be healed by the touch of a British king.)

Given the likelihood of an apocalypse, my agenda for the near future is short and sweet: trying to stay healthy; helping my BF stay sane despite the call of the wild Trumpers (yes, he's a conservative); and finishing my literary projects, which include a book manuscript and the fourth edition of the Ms. Aligned series.

What tempers my own call of the wild is caring for my cats—one of whom is a beautiful black-and-white kitty two years old—and listening to music on Soundcloud. I've discovered Japanese pianist Marukabis, Austrian composer Trent Ivor, and many other fantastic people. Listening to this music helps me break down time into moments and to be grateful for them.

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Images courtesy of Pat Matsueda.