Peter LaBerge, poet and founder of The Adroit Journal, talks about how to navigate the stages and momentum of a writing career, the Adroit submissions and selection process, and what he’s up to with his new Ellipsis Writing project with Trish Hopkinson in our new Submissions Interview Series. Listen in to what these two poets have learned as they work toward multiple goals at various stages in their writing and professional careers.
Video Transcript:
Trish:
Hello, everyone. I couldn’t be more pleased with today’s guest poet and founder of The Adroit Journal, Peter LaBerge. He founded the journal in 2010 and since they have published some of my favorite poets in 37 issues selected from almost 100,000 submissions. They do some incredible work in the literary community, including the annual Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose for secondary and undergraduate work writers, the annual Djanikian Scholars program for emerging students and non-student writers, and the free Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship program for high school students from around the world.
Trish:
Peter has been recognized from TED to Teen Vogue for his work as a writer and publisher. He is the recipient of the 2020 Pushcart Prize and his work has appeared in Best New Poets, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Pleiades, and Tin House among others. He is also the recipient of a fellowship from Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry. So welcome Peter, and thanks for taking time to chat with me for the Tell Tell Poetry submission interview series.
Peter LaBerge:
Thank you so much for having me, Trish. I’m really excited to be here.
Trish:
Yes, thank you. It’s really, truly a pleasure to speak with you one-on-one.
Peter LaBerge:
I know.
Trish:
We’ve interacted online quite a bit.
Peter LaBerge:
[crosstalk 00:01:24].
Trish:
Yes, very great to be here with you.
Peter LaBerge:
Likewise.
Trish:
With the accolades and success that I just read, my first question is really what has surprised you most about the success of Adroit?
Peter LaBerge:
Honestly, I would say that it has been successful. I mean, I started it when I was 15. I was so sure or rather, I guess I was so doubtful that it would take off that I didn’t even tell anybody in my life about it. I didn’t tell my English teachers, I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell any of my other family. I didn’t tell most of my friends. I started it and brought on two friends pretty quickly. But other than that, it was basically the three of us for the entire first year.
Peter LaBerge:
It was very much sort of just this impulsive idea to found a sort of bridge between the world of student writing and the world of professional adult writing, because I was looking for that and it didn’t exist. And so, when you encounter something that you want that doesn’t exist, most of the time I would say it doesn’t exist for a reason. And so, I mean, I really had no idea both what I was doing and what I was getting myself into with starting a publication, because I mean, I had like three or four months of writing experience and no marketing experience, no management experience. I mean, I was 15. I had no professional experience to speak of really.
Peter LaBerge:
And so, just the fact that people really took to the idea and helped to elevate it and told their friends about it and supported the first couple of issues and contributed to the first couple of issues. There have been a number of fantastic mentors that I’ve had outside of the classroom and just friends that I’ve had who have been really wonderful supporters of the journal since issue one. And when they contributed, I wouldn’t even think that somebody at that caliber of career would be even aware of it, let alone receptive to a 15-year-old’s email.
Peter LaBerge:
At the time, I think there literally wasn’t a website for the journal. Some of these people, the ones that come to mind most immediately are Dorianne Laux and [Laura Kasischke 00:04:13], who both contributed to the first issue. The fact that they would trust their poems with a 15-year-old with no website or writing experience, it was really inspiring to just keep going. Of course, there have been many, many, many surprises over the last what, 10 and a half years. But I think that that’s the biggest one. That’s the one that keeps giving. It’s part of every subsequent surprise, I think.
Trish:
That’s so great to hear because I think building community around any project that you start is so important. And when it happens, especially organically, I mean, I had a very similar experience with my website when I started posting information to share them on my blog. It was really about, this is the stuff I’m looking for. These are the things I want to keep track of, so I’m going to post them on here. Maybe I’ll share a few on social media.
Trish:
And then people just started coming and I really started building kind of this community, which was completely unexpected. Just like what you were saying, I had professional experience in a completely different industry. Software is nothing like the literary community. I did have that to fall back on, but I didn’t know any of those things either, how to market or how to network and how to really build that community. It was something that I learned and I’m still learning and still getting so much from, like you said, the surprises that come pretty continuously. That’s really awesome. I’m going to put you on the spot just a little bit.
Peter LaBerge:
You’re fine.
Trish:
Surprise question. When did you get that feeling that what you were doing was important? How far in?
Peter LaBerge:
I would say, I mean, I found it to be important as soon as it was having an impact on other areas of my life. I had friends in, in real life, too, but my closest friends started to be my friends that I was working on the journal with. They were from all over the place because of course, the staff is remote and from around the world. And so, there were times when I was lucky enough, just somebody would be traveling through, or we would be meeting at a camp or something like that, where I would meet people that I’d talked to.
Peter LaBerge:
And of course, you know this experience I’m sure. Most do because AWP exists, but AWP doesn’t exist in high school. And so, when you have that kind of experience where, oh my gosh, I’ve read your work and I love your work and you’ve read my work and we know each other’s work and maybe you’ve been on the staff with me, or you’ve just been another person in the community. When you have that kind of experience, I think it really reinforced specifically Adroit’s mission, which is to bring these writers together, many of whom are the only poets that they know at the age of 14 or 15 or 16. And so, to give them the permission that frankly they already have, but maybe don’t know that they have to take themselves a little seriously and at least see what’s out there.
Peter LaBerge:
Honestly, I mean, that was part of… Not to get off tangent, but that’s the whole reason why I was so passionate about the journal in the first place was this idea of visibility of the literary world. I know one of your questions later is, is how would you change it? But to get a little spoiler, one thing that I found challenging about the literary world at the beginning was the fact that it is very insular. Once you’re in, it’s very expansive, but it’s difficult to find your footing as you’re trying to get into it. It’s very intimidating from the outside. I remember that.
Peter LaBerge:
And so, I found myself thinking, we have so many resources connecting people with mentors, older mentors in STEM areas and even other humanities areas, but we really don’t have that, or we didn’t have that with the literary world. I just found that to be so strange and such a missed opportunity. And so, I mean, that’s why I founded the mentorship program. And I think to this day, the mentorship program is at least for the students that we’re able to accept into it, the most impactful arm of the journal, maybe. Anyways-
Trish:
No, that’s great.
Peter LaBerge:
That’s a big part of the whole journal’s mission, I would say.
Trish:
I love that the parallel that you mentioned comparing the literary community and that whole world to STEM. I mean, I think that’s a really great comparison and something we need to do more often really, because we should be emulating some of the great work that they’re doing, which I mean, you’ve certainly taken on quite a bit of that.
Trish:
I will tell you that if I had come across something like Adroit when I was in high school, it probably would have completely changed the trajectory of my life because I was writing. I was writing like mad, but all I had for resources was what I could find at the library. This of course was in the 80s so things were even more separated. I can see that that’s to make a huge impact for those kids. It’s a really wonderful project.
Peter LaBerge:
Thank you.
Trish:
I’m just thrilled to see that it exists and to talk to you about it. We can be fluid here, so we started dabbling into it. We were talking about things that maybe we missed or that we created that are now starting to form these broader communities and start making those connections more accessible. What else would you like to see more of?
Peter LaBerge:
I think what I was speaking about is something that there is no maximum when it comes to mentorship and outreach and support. And so, of course that would be wonderful to see, particularly for marginalized writers. I think that should apply to marginalized writers who know that they want to be writers who are further along. Maybe they’re in college and they’re creative writing majors or English majors, or maybe they’re in grad school. Maybe they’re just trying to navigate and get those first couple of publications. That’s a stage of mentorship.
Peter LaBerge:
But also, like I was saying, there’s the high school stage of mentorship. There’s the middle school stage of mentorship. These are all stages. The further along you get, the more difficult it is for somebody to do a hard right turn and pivot into something. I mean, every writer is different, so I don’t want to generalize anything, because I know a couple of writers that have taken that hard right turn, even maybe after a whole career in something and decided to pursue poetry after that.
Peter LaBerge:
And so, that’s an entirely different situation, but the further along you get, the more daunting something like creating art can be, I think. I think it lends itself well to the sort of ethos of childhood and just sort of doing what you want to do and doing it the way you want to do it. That’s very much, I think [crosstalk 00:12:49].
Trish:
And feeling like there’s a set timeline, like you can never catch up if you start too late.
Peter LaBerge:
Exactly.
Trish:
Which is a really unfortunate perspective. I can say that from experience. I love what you’re saying there.
Peter LaBerge:
That’s definitely something else that needs to be talked about more. I think it’s unfortunate that I think it’s especially attached to age. There is a fair amount of that with stage. You’re in, I don’t know, Best New Poets. Now it’s time to go publish a book or something like that. You’re [inaudible 00:13:32] your MFA, now it’s time to go get that thesis as a finalist somewhere or bridesmaid it around all the different presses. That’s something. That can put pressure and be problematic for writers.
Peter LaBerge:
What I’m seeing more and more and more and more of is 16-year-olds saying, well, okay, Ocean Vuong won Pushcart when he was 22. And so, therefore I have to win a Pushcart by the time I’m 22. And no, no you don’t. The writers that have really high visibility are of course the ones that are accomplishing incredible things and breaking these quote, unquote “records.” I mean, you have it all the way down to there have been high school students who get into Best New Poets, or they get into the best of [inaudible 00:14:26]. And suddenly, that’s an expectation that every writer now has. That’s not something that just happens. It happens-
Trish:
You can’t force it. I mean, in some cases, if you’re really prolific, maybe that is something that might come and I shouldn’t say come easier, but everybody has different pace. That was something I kind of learned the hard way where I found that had to give myself permission. I hosted a poetry reading series in Utah for several months. And one of our featured readers, Kimberly Johnson, who teaches at BYU, she teaches poetry there and she’s amazing, but she stood up and talked about how she was such a slow writer. And she hasn’t had a book out for like 10 years or something.
Trish:
A light just went off above my head. I went, yes, I can go at whatever pace suits me best and fits my work and gives me that room to work on craft or to nurture another community or to read for Adroit or these other things that feed into the creative aspects. You have to feed yourself from different angles.
Peter LaBerge:
Absolutely. I’ve had the same experience, honestly, because I put a ton of pressure on myself when I was in high school and college. When I was in college, I was publishing all over the place. In fact, I still use in my bio a couple of places that are from college. I pushed myself hard and I just pushed myself harder and harder and harder because once you have that magic momentum that writers that we talked about have, you’re like, oh my gosh, well, I can’t lose it. I have to use it. I have to built it. This is my shot or whatever.
Peter LaBerge:
And so, it’s really difficult to keep writing and to write in a healthy manner when you have that kind of pressure mounting. It may not even be external pressure. It may not even [inaudible 00:16:36]. Where’s the collection? But in your own mind, you’re like, I have these things that have gone well, so I need to keep building on that.
Trish:
Got to keep going. Yes, that was exactly what I was up against with it.
Peter LaBerge:
A dangerous mindset.
Trish:
I just really felt that way. When I let that go, it was the best gift I could have given to myself. Now I get more of the surprises that you were talking about. Things come more organically and when they come, you go, that good thing happened, and it wasn’t a forced thing.
Peter LaBerge:
[inaudible 00:17:14]. I see this a lot with emerging writers now where it’s relief. If they get into something or if they get some award, it’s relief. And I’m like, that’s not the emotion. Not the emotion we should be feeling when something highly subjective happens to work out in your favor. It’s not relief. It should be joy.
Peter LaBerge:
I found myself feeling the same. I don’t know. There though, I definitely have shifted heavily from that mindset in college. I graduated from college in 2017 and I went out to work in tech in San Francisco, which was quite a turn from my creative writing major life. I got out there and just didn’t write for two whole years basically. It was highly disconcerting because I had no plans to not write it, but suddenly I just had no ability. I just had no accessibility to the mindset that I needed to write.
Peter LaBerge:
I remember also at that time, I’d just come out with a whole project, like a chapbook. I was not even sure what I wanted to write next. I didn’t have any idea what was going to be next. And so, those two things put together, I just didn’t write forever. It sort of broke this whole spell of, I’m going to build on it and I’m going to build on it. What else can I do? What else can I accomplish?
Peter LaBerge:
It gave me permission to not care about any of it, which on the one hand it was sort of scary because it was kind of a free fall. You’re like, am I ever going to go back to this thing that has meant so much to me? But on the other hand, you can sort of write and engage with it on your own terms, which has been lovely. And now, I’m in my MFA and I have sort of these cycles where I’ll be a little bit more productive and then I won’t be productive for like three whole months, which when you’re in an MFA program and trying to write weekly is maybe a little bit of a problem.
Peter LaBerge:
I’ve found, I think, a cadence that feels like I’m not forcing anything. And honestly, I watch a ton of deadlines just go by and I forget to submit at this point. I’m like, well, that’s progress, I guess kind of.
Trish:
That took me some getting used to.
Peter LaBerge:
In one way, it’s like, okay, my career is not happy about that. But on the other hand, I’m not basing my self-worth as a writer on any of that anymore. That was a super hard mindset to break, but once you do, it’s a whole different experience of writing and sharing what you’ve written, I would say.
Trish:
I mean, I completely agree, and I used to watch deadlines like crazy and put them on my calendar and all this stuff. I totally don’t do that anymore.
Peter LaBerge:
[crosstalk 00:20:27].
Trish:
There are always opportunities. There are always, always opportunities. There are always things that you can do later. So I think that’s really important and that kind of permission is super important. Since you brought up submitting, I’m going to pivot just a little bit to mention that Adroit is currently open for submissions.
Peter LaBerge:
We are.
Trish:
I’m going to combine a couple of questions here and just let you speak to this a little bit. They’re currently open for poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art. I mean, we talked about almost 100,000 submissions at this point since you started really working with Adroit. I’d like for you to talk a little bit about, how do you manage that many submissions? What is your selection process like?
Trish:
You said a word subjectivity earlier, which I think is something that everyone needs to consider as they’re submitting. And then also, as you kind of explain that to us, then just kind of finish up with like some of the things that you really wish you were seeing come in. If you could comment on just all of those things, that would be great.
Peter LaBerge:
Definitely. To kick things off, I mean, the sort of role of the staff reader has evolved tremendously over the years because obviously almost a 100,000 submissions, which is wild to even think about, but that has not come in in a linear way. We’ve gotten way more submissions in the last five years than we did in our first five. And so, in our first five, it was like, whoa, people are starting to take notice, but it was much more manageable. Whereas now, we have a gigantic staff. We were talking about this earlier. It’s a community where everybody has other things going on because it’s a volunteer role at least for now.
Peter LaBerge:
And so, everybody’s got other things that they’re doing, but everybody is united by this passion for Adroit, as well as for elevating exciting new poetry or exciting new fiction or non-fiction, or art or whatever genre they may be happening to read. That is such a wonderful component, I think, of my daily life over the last 10 and a half years. You don’t necessarily notice it. By you, I mean, I guess I don’t really notice it peeking into my life every day, but it does. Every single day there’s been some sort of thing from Adroit.
Peter LaBerge:
I took a trip internationally for like two weeks in 2013. I was off because there was no internet. I was in China, so there was no internet. But other than that, I’ve been online in some way, shape or form and engaging with the journal in some way, shape or form every single day for the last 10 and a half years. And so, at this point, it’s growing. You don’t notice the day to day, but you suddenly just look back and you’re like, oh, I have facial hair now or my voice has dropped. Or I just graduated from college. I can’t believe that because I remember being five.
Peter LaBerge:
It’s the same sort of thing with watching the journal develop. I mean, I think that’s perhaps an expected metaphor, Adroit being a child, but I think that’s really apt because when something goes wrong, it’s like, okay, well, throwing out whatever I was doing today. I have to go firefight or I have to go talk to people or I have to go sort out this issue or I have to go find a stand in or whatever fire may be happening. That’s very much sort of the way and the priority that one must have to work on it.
Peter LaBerge:
But anyways, your question of what the selection process is like, you’re right to call out subjectivity because of course it’s subjective. We get so many submissions. We have so many different readers. Every single submission that Adroit receives, whether it’s for a contest or for regular submission has at least three voices on it before any decision is rendered. A lot of times, particularly if it’s stalemate. I’ve seen a couple stalemates, maybe you have, too, where people are passionate. There are people that are never, and then there are people that are like, I’ll quit if this doesn’t get accepted. People get in discussion.
Peter LaBerge:
And so, those pieces get the most voices out of all of them, but everything gets at least three. Of course, we have more than three readers, obviously, many, many more than that. And so, every time it gets a different reception, and it’s interesting to see, or not necessarily to see it, but just to think about the way that that affects the overall issue. Because maybe if somebody else had seen this first piece or they’d seen this piece first, brain, they would have up-voted it, which would have signaled it to other readers. Maybe they left a really enthusiastic comment and maybe that piece would have landed in discussion with the editors and who knows what would have happened from there.
Peter LaBerge:
That is something I think about when I try to get into the submittal and get through as much as I can personally, as well as encouraging our editors to get through reading as much as they can to identify things that maybe they think that we should be talking about. That has happened a couple of times where our readers have been like, Hmm, not sure, not for me. And then somebody or I will come in and be like, what? This is genius. We’ll wind up taking something from it. Or vice versa where we won’t see the magic in something, but a reader will come along and say, nope, this is amazing. And here’s why. And we’ll be like, oh.
Peter LaBerge:
That’s the value of having a diverse staff, aesthetically and otherwise. That’s one of my favorite things to see happen in the journal. I mean, unanimity is wonderful, when everybody’s like, I’m obsessed, but that’s not the reality in most cases, as I’m sure anybody who’s ever read for any journal knows. There’s always, always, always for the most part diversity in opinion.
Trish:
Yes, it’s true.
Peter LaBerge:
If there’s not, maybe you need to reevaluate the way that you’re picking staff members. But anyway, that’s a little bit about, I guess, in terms of the hard and fast process of the journey a submission takes, the journey a successful submission takes. It’s open for all of our readers to read. And then I’ll go through, or a member of our editors team will go through and amass all of this missions that are getting some sort of positive attention and we’ll make a big spreadsheet. I’m a sucker for colorful, organized spreadsheets. I generally hop in and do my thing and organize it for everybody. And every editor has a column and it’s a whole thing where we all go through and we read and we log our votes.
Peter LaBerge:
And then we all have these editorial calls every month or so, maybe every other month, in off seasons. We just work through, we just talk about poems and of course prose, it’s the same thing, but I’m more on the poet side, so that on that. That’s the way that things work. And so, we have these editorial calls where we’ll talk about pieces that individually maybe struck us or that the whole group admired or that the whole group wasn’t feeling. From there, we obviously make our decisions and then we put together the issue and decide which issue it should go in and so on and so forth. That’s the path that things take.
Peter LaBerge:
One of the things I was just going to say, which is just funny is that we rejected a piece by a writer. This was maybe, I don’t know, three years ago, four years ago. Actually, I have two different anecdotes. This piece three or four years ago is a poem. We rejected it. I believe we close called it or something. And then the writer accidentally resubmitted it, same version, everything. He withdrew it and he was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe I resent this piece that I’d already sent.” And we were about to accept it. It was a really funny email that was like, yeah, that was our bad. We actually love this piece. And so, it just got three readers the first time. And then it got three different readers the second time. It went from three nos to three yeses and landed on our plate and there it went.
Peter LaBerge:
The other funny thing I was going to say… I mean, it’s not even funny so much as it’s just reality is that we’ve rejected pieces that have won Pushcarts and they’ve landed in Poetry or the New Yorker or the Atlantic or the New York Times magazine or whatever they call it, all of these and more of course. Poems and stories that we’ve rejected have landed everywhere. Of course, poems and stories that other people have rejected have landed here. It really comes down to that subjectivity thing.
Peter LaBerge:
I don’t even remember what it was you said, but it made me think of this idea of… Oh, I remember. You were saying something about whether or not being at that momentum makes it easier to achieve. I think it really boils down to, regardless of your momentum or regardless of what stage you’re at, it comes down to how many opportunities you’re going for. Which of course, there’s this whole discussion about financial security and being able to submit to things that have submission fees versus being not able to do that, but going for every single opportunity that you can go for, that you’re eligible for, that you can afford, that’s what you can do to help your career today, as opposed to what I’m doing, which is just letting submission deadlines go by.
Trish:
They’ll be there later, Peter. I promise.
Peter LaBerge:
[crosstalk 00:32:02]. They’ll reopen. It’ll be fine. I don’t have enough work right now, so I need to focus on that right now.
Trish:
That’s what I’m doing as well. I completely appreciate that. Even if you don’t feel like you’re really 100% ready, still taking advantage of those opportunities, it [inaudible 00:32:25] everything that you’re doing, because it pushes you to write more. It pushes you to write a little bit better. You get some sort of response, which sometimes it can just be that one little personal rejection that makes you go, I’m going to work on that a little bit more and send it out like 20 more places. That’s an exaggeration. Maybe don’t do that because that’s a lot of [crosstalk 00:32:46]-
Peter LaBerge:
Maybe not.
Trish:
… when it does get accepted. Maybe a handful. But it is somewhat of a numbers game, right?
Peter LaBerge:
It totally is.
Trish:
And give yourself better odds. Certainly there are plenty of no fee opportunities that come up all the time. There are a lot of places to go find those, trishhopkinson.com is one. Obviously, there are a ton of opportunities. So I really appreciate you circling the conversation back to that.
Peter LaBerge:
Yeah. One more thing I’ll say, sorry, I know I’m talking for hours-
Trish:
No, this is a excellent conversation. Loving it.
Peter LaBerge:
One more thing I’ll say is that I have experience as an editor and also as a submitting poet. The power of sending work that doesn’t get accepted, both in what you’re saying. I’ve had a poem, I think I submitted it like 34 places over the course of like three or four years, and it finally got taken.
Trish:
That happened to me, too. I have one that was 32, I think, really close to that finally got picked up. I loved the poem and I just was like, nope, it’s going to get somewhere.
Peter LaBerge:
If you believe in your work, then I really feel it’s inevitable that it will land somewhere. It’s just about finding the right home, finding the right pair of editors that see what you see in it. It’s everybody else’s loss. And so, thinking about it that way, I mean, it can breathe bitterness. But also, it preserves your belief in your work, which I think is more important than any publication, obviously, not to get all mushy. That’s the first thing.
Peter LaBerge:
The other thing I would say is I’ve submitted something and the editors have been like, no, sorry, but we really enjoyed this. And so, just send it to me personally next time or mention me in your cover letter because I want to read it next time. Or they’re just like, send again more generally. I have definitely forged friendships with editors that have resulted from that kind of exchange.
Peter LaBerge:
And obviously, going up to those sorts of people at AWP, if you’re able to, that can be really meaningful as well. I’ve definitely been in that situation as an editor, especially where somebody I’ve closed called like seven times comes up to me at AWP and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I love your work. Do you have a submission with us?” Or, “Send to us right after AWP and I’ll go take a look.” That’s just kind of the way that the road to publication sometimes happens. Just names are recognized as submittable for better or worse. I definitely recognize people that I’ve close called a number of times. People think maybe I don’t. I totally do. And I seek out the submission. Maybe that’s just me.
Trish:
No, that’s really great insight. I think everything that we’ve talked about, I think is really important. I think there are questions that all writers and poets have at all different stages of their career and the imposter syndrome is real for everybody. It ebbs and flows. So I think this was all super valuable.
Trish:
I do have a couple more questions for you. One is I was reading that you are starting an online creative writing college counseling company called Ellipsis Writing. I want to know what you’re up to with that. We talked about what we want to see more of in the literary community, so I want to know what you’re trying to accomplish with that to maybe fill another one of those gaps.
Peter LaBerge:
Sure, yeah. The idea for Ellipsis came to me in stages. At the beginning, I was just working personally with a couple of students who emailed me and just wanted to work with me and they maybe didn’t get into our mentorship program or they missed the deadline or they wanted additional support during the school year because the mentorship is only during the summer. And so, I was receptive to that, but I was very cautious because I was working full-time in Silicon Valley. And obviously, that’s brutal for work-life balance on top of also running Adroit while I was working in those full-time jobs.
Peter LaBerge:
I already had a lot on my plate, but I was open to the idea of building this very, very on the side, side hustle that could then also do some good and help some kids refine their craft, identify opportunities, put their best foot forward, kind of all of those stages of emerging writerdom that I struggled with and eventually figured out, arguably. I was finding I had a lot of useful input that I could impart on writers.
Peter LaBerge:
So founded that. But again, it was a super side hustle. And then decided at the end of 2019 that I was going to leave Silicon Valley, I was going to leave tech. At that point, I saw just a gap because I knew that I was going to apply to my MFA that cycle. And I did. And so, I ended up hearing back in February, March making a decision and then COVID happened. I had this four month period where I was like, okay, well I have nothing to do except wait. And so, I decided to just build my business. And then COVID happened and I really had nothing to do except wait.
Peter LaBerge:
So I just kept building and building it. I found that an online tutoring company was exactly what a lot of creative writers were looking for during COVID when so many in-person programs were canceled. And so, I just went to a bunch of my friends and said, “How do you feel about teaching some kids this summer?” There was a lot of interest. And so, it just scaled out. There was more interest, there was more demand, there was more interest, there was more demand.
Peter LaBerge:
And now we’re at a point where we’re working with, I think there are 131 or 132 students that we are working with for summer workshops this summer. And then we have an additional 40 or so that are working with one-on-one tutors. All of that put together, it’s a decent community. And now the thing that I’m focusing on is how can I build that community into a better, more year-round, more lasting, support system for a lot of these kids who then go back and they’re like the only one in their schools that are interested in creative writing again.
Peter LaBerge:
That’s what I’m focused on right now for Ellipsis. But basically, the purpose behind Ellipsis is of course, supporting emerging writers and extending that accessibility beyond people who happen to come out at the very top of the Adroit mentorship selection pool. Because at this point, they’re taking like 5% or 6% of writers and that’s it. The program is huge at this point. It’s like 82 or 84 writers. I don’t know if it can get much bigger, so that’s just been.
Peter LaBerge:
I mean, there’s been 95% of the writers that honestly all deserve mentorship of some sort because they’re passionate about writing, but the program just doesn’t have the ability to scale to meet that. That was my predominant motivation to found Ellipsis. Of course also, to find a way to have a full-time job that’s more congruent with my work with the journal so that I can better balance my work with the journal with my full-time job, with my life.
Trish:
Yes, yes.
Peter LaBerge:
[crosstalk 00:41:22].
Trish:
You need a little more flexibility to plan. I completely understand, definitely understand that. I just want to thank you. This conversation was amazing. I think that what we talked will be helpful to a ton of people.
Peter LaBerge:
I hope so.
Trish:
Adroit is just up to so many good things, so hopefully this gets spread around, some additional students get to see some of the programs and some of the specific calls that you have in contests that you have for students. And then really, how do people sign up to get updates from Adroit? What’s the easiest way?
Peter LaBerge:
Important question. You can go to any of our guideline pages, our mentorship page, our regular submission period page, our Djanikian Scholars page, our Adroit prizes page. I think also our homepage has a little banner. But you can go to any of those pages and just sign up for updates. It’s like a form on the website. That’s the easiest way. Also, if you submit to us, you’ll be automatically put on our mailing list as well as if you are RSVP for any of our events. We have events, by the way. They’re online, Zoom, readings, panels, all that good stuff. That is the best way, but also you can theoretically just email editors@theadroitjournal.org and say, “Hey, I want to get on your mailing list. How can I do that? Or sign me up.” That’s how, theadroitjournal.org, A-D-R-O-I-T.
Trish:
Perfect. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I so appreciate you taking the time.
Peter LaBerge:
Of course. Thank you for asking me.
Trish:
Yeah. No, it’s been a real pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your evening.
Peter LaBerge:
You too. Take care.
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