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| THE REJECTS: Jarrod Harelik (left) and J.D. Reid, the fathers of “the mother of all literary magazines.” photography by Brian Harkin |
“I got a novel rejection letter from a literary agent once,” says J.D. Reid, recalling how he decided in May 2007 to start Wide Array, a locally based, do-it-yourself publishing house with his friend Jarrod Harelik. “She said something along the lines of: ‘It is smart, funny, and entertaining, which is exactly what doesn’t sell.’ Jarrod and I felt like we had two choices: a) start our own company, from which we could publish anything that we deemed worthy, regardless of sales potential; or b) write something great, then kill ourselves, John Kennedy Toole-style. The Wide Array board voted 6–4 for A.”
That vote, thus far, has resulted in Upstart Crows, a smart, funny, and entertaining collection of short stories from a talented group of on-the-verge writers (including Elijah R. Darkor, Gayla Chaney, and Benjamin Harvey). The book also features two authors who were up-and-coming a century or so ago: stories by Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe round out the book, as “an homage to creative effort,” Harelik says.
The other group of authors is more what Wide Array is about. “The purpose here is to showcase new talent, stripping away the fat of commercialism and revealing the bare bones, blood, and guts of human emotion,” Harelik says. “We call it a book, though it could also be called the mother of all literary magazines.”
In that way, Wide Array (www.widearrayonline.com) is mining similar territory as Dave Eggers’ lionized lit outpost McSweeney’s. Securing a McSweeney’s-like devoted cult of readers, however, takes time, and more books. More are coming: next up is an anthology of horror stories set to be published later this year.
