by Leah Pietrusiak
(originally published April 11th, 2003 in Citylink)
Brett Van Emst is doing it. He got a degree in English and now he’s running his own publication. [Zine. Magazine.]
And it’s successful, too? Yeah — Brett has graduated from depending on acquaintances, colleagues and friends for content — to establishing an advisory board, and writing to authors like Denis Johnson and Jim Harrsion, and then publishing their responses to his inquiries in the pages of MIDNIGHT MIND MAGAZINE.
It’s not just a literary magazine, but more of a “cultural review” — kind of an artsy gumbo of creative non-fiction, fiction, poetry, art, and book, CD and magazine reviews. And hey, it even has tidbits of things of stuff you may not know — like that the airport in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is actually in a national park.
After school at Michigan State University in 1998, Brett, a 27 year old Portage, Michigan native, started a publishing company and then moved to New York City, He worked as an assistant editor at Random House, and then at an ad agency, and in the spring of 2001, he launched MidnightMind.com, and the first issue soon followed. He moved to Chicago last June because “it was time to leave New York.” And he wanted to camp and fish again. And he missed driving.
MIDNIGHT MIND is published twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. Past themes have included “GOING HOME AGAIN” (MM#1), THE GUIDE TO SAFE CAMPING” (MM#2), “ON THE ROAD IN AMERICA” (MM#3, featuring the first cars of well-known authors, sold out in six weeks), “THE CHICAGO CULTURE ISSUE” (MM#4, with commentary on the overlooked art of matchbooks. getting kicked out of Iggy’s, and Mark Bowden, author of BLACK HAWK DOWN, sold out in 26 days).
MIDNIGHT MIND NUMBER FIVE “THE GUIDE TO LIFE” will feature “The building of a Timber Frame House — a story told in pictures, the first book memories of Elwood Reid, Michael Palmer, and James W. Hall, and “I’d die if I could come back new — a fiction collective.” This edition will also feature CD and Magazine reviews for the first time.
And this fall, Midnight-Minders will take to the road in a trailer and travel from the East to West coast on a MM#5 book tour, hosting contributing writers from around the country at local bookstores around the country.
Brett, along with MIDNIGHT MIND contributors Ben Tanzer and Shoshauna Shy will read at Quimby’s Bookstore (1854 W. North Ave) on Friday April 11th at 7:30pm, teaming up with CLAMOR magazine and VENUS ZINE to bring you a question answer session regarding independent publishing and independent media.
I was so intrigued by the fact that Denis Johnson wrote back about his first car — a VW bug — that I really had to know more about how all this came about — which opened the door to discussing the dynamics behind starting up a new publication. From where the themes come from, to keeping a tight network of writers.
CITYLINK: (Being intrigued by getting personal essays from famous authors while riding in the car)
BRETT VAN EMST: . . . yeah, [Jim] Harrison’s story was great — it was about some like ’54 Ford — and there was this weird line, but he said that he had had so many people puke in the car, that when he turned on the heat, there was this odor of stink in it — and he was like, “I’m sure you understand” And that was awesome — like that happens to everyone — everyone has people puke in their car, it was great.
And everybody has a car story, you know. And for the new issue — “The Guide to Life” — I contacted a bunch of authors about how they felt after their first book got published, or after it got picked up, of after they saw the book. This author, Michael Palmer who writes medical thrillers, wrote me back like this awesome typical first book story — he was absolutely broke and his phone had been disconnected. His agent called him at a friend’s house and he found out he got $250,000 — in 1981. But he had to wait till the next morning to call his relatives to tell them he had sold the book, like waiting at the payphone. And he wrote it in dialogue with his agent so it was like, “Guess how much” — “$5000” — “More.” — “$10,000” — “More.” — and finally he’s like “I can’t take it anymore . . . “In the next issue, I’m going to ask about different crime stories — getting robbed, having your house burglarized. I didn’t do this for the first two issues though.
Leah breaks from being impressed inside Filter and starts asking other questions.
C: So why “Midnight Mind”?
BVE: There’s a poem — it talks about the ramblings of the midnight mind. And then in college, I found that poem again and I was like, “Oh!” The first publishing company I started was 3 A.M. Publishing because I was up every night at like 3am working, so. Then I found that poem and I had the Midnight Mind writing contest, and then came the idea for the literary magazine — so we were looking for names for the magazine and it came up.
It’s sort of the tracking down of obscure facts — not so much in the fiction or poetry — but a lot of the non-fiction fillers. Like things that you don’t necessarily know. Like we did a list of things that we learned from last issue — like that eggplant is a fruit — just the sort of things that when you hear it, you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” Or like “The Mistakes That We Made Last Issue” section.
So it’s that whole searching out of obscure things — it’s sort of the midnight mind. Like this bar conversation the other day — this girl says to me: “Do you know the difference between rain and sleet?” And she thought it was just bar talk but I was like “No, what?” like, getting ready to write it down.
C: How do you pick your themes for the upcoming issues?
BVE: Let’s see . . . how do I pick the themes . . . I sort of weighed what could make an interesting issue with how much writing I thought I could get on it. I try to stick to the basic theme of culture — because I’ve picked some weird stuff that I could probably only get like three pieces on. I picked the Chicago and the road trip issues because I was interested in them — and I used the magazine to find out more about them. That’s probably the ulterior motive.
I thought about making it quarterly, but I like time to kind of go through a piece, pick it apart — see where it fits. I like to do that and have the edition work as a whole, so it’s not just a collection of pieces.
With “The Guide to Life,” MIDNIGHT MIND MAGAZINE was going to try to claim to be the first major magazine ever published from a camper — thus making it completely mobile. But it ends up that they are second (Trail-R-News in the 1960s claims the same thing), but they are the first to go completely mobile in the era of desktop publishing. The Midnight Mind Magazine Mobile Lounge is a restored 1970 Coachman “Space Age” travel trailer.
C: Tell me about your upcoming trailer tour.
BVE: We’ll leave around Labor Day — it starts out east, and then we go across the northern U.S., go down to Arizona, and then up the West Coast. It’ll give us a chance to meet a lot of the authors at the readings.
(A break in the discussion of the importance of editor/writer relationships).
BVE: There’s a trust there. It’s like they send something off to me — someone I’ve never met, and I say, “Yeah, I’ll take it” and suddenly they trust me to get it out — to publish their work, to get their name out. So then it becomes a trust issue, and I’m always trying to live up to that trust. On the web site (MidnightMind.com) we have profiles of all the authors, and we update it really well. It’s one of my big things. I let writers know to let us know if they have any new info, and we’ll update the bio. That way if they have a reading or something, they can announce it on the site.
Brett’ll probably be moving again soon, keeping MIDNIGHT MIND MAGAZINE mobile.
BVE: I think I have to keep moving until I find something that stops me. Probably multiple things.
