Hard to believe. I mean, with this current beard I appear to be 87 years old, but 20 years ago today I did something that would be the beginning of the Emerging Writers Network. I penned a review of Alyson Hagy's novel Keeneland. I posted said (ugh, so poorly written) review on Amazon, and then believing the only people that would ever read it would be those already looking at the book page there. So, I emailed that review to everybody I had email addresses for. That's right, 21 poor family members and friends. Two or three of them replied kindly and wondered what else I'd read recently. That was it.
To me, that was a request for more and through the rest of 2000 any title I read had a (ugh, poorly written--that's really never changed) review written and emailed to what had become a growing number of emails. I had the audacity at the time to track down email addresses of some of the authors I was reviewing, somehow positive they'd want to know what Dan Wickett thought of their work. What I found was a community--of writers, readers, publishers, etc. that actually were fairly interested in being included on such an email list. The group expanded from those initial 21 that had little choice in the matter to up to between 2500 and 3000 individuals that had actually asked to be included.
Over the next half decade over 500 books were reviewed, over 100 authors interviewed, virtual ePanels were set up with various industry types (over 100 literary journal editors, dozens of publishing house editors, publicists, reading series directors, and so on). The Emerging Writers Network was name-checked by the NY Times, and subsequently trashed (though not by name, it was obvious) in an opinion piece in the LA Times.
The EWN led me to many friendships that are maintained to this day (there's ZERO other reasons that when my daughter posted about a heart-related issue a few years ago that the comments of good wishes seemingly ran forever). It led to my meeting one of the greatest people in the world, Steven Gillis, and led to the forming of Dzanc Books, which in turn led to my being involved in bringing the words of authors such as Roy Kesey, Suzanne Burns, Kyle Minor, Peter Markus, Jac Jemc, Robert Lopez, Dawn Raffel, Colin Fleming, Kim Church (and I'm stopping here before I simply type out every author's name) to the world. It led to the "creation" of National Short Story Month which you'll hear about next month, and not just around these parts.
Twenty years ago today I did something that began the thing I'm probably most proud of beyond the trio of kids that have now all grown into great young adults. This is the year that I hope to find the same dedication to the site and idea that I had that first full decade.
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