Paula Mendoza’s work has appeared in Parcel, Bat City Review, Washington Square, PANK, and elsewhere. She reviews poetry for SCOUT, blogs for the Michigan Quarterly Review, and is an assistant poetry editor at Newfound | Art & Place. She lives and writes in Denton, Texas.
What do you do at The Offing?
I’m the essay editor for The Offing, and I get to read people’s personal stories and share them with the world. I love how writers say of their work when it’s published that it’s “found a home.” I suppose it is one kind of home-making, being an editor. There is care and love in this labor, and The Offing‘s mission directs this mindfulness and attention. It’s an approach that allows us to make space for voices, experiences, and ideas that range wider and farther than the current median of literary magazines.
What doors does The Offing open for you?
The work I do for The Offing broadens my scope daily, it challenges and delights me. It makes me a better reader, and re-affirms my faith in language.
Is there a piece you’ve worked on or found at The Offing that’s been especially meaningful to you?
I don’t want to play favorites! The ones I’ve had the chance to work on — I’m very proud of each. It sounds like a copout, but… because we don’t publish towards an aesthetic and because we actively work against our personal tastes and biases, each essay is very much its own beast. And I love all our beasts.
What would you like to see us do with the donations we receive during our fundraiser?
I’d love for the money we raise to go towards paying editors and raising contributor payments. Because so many editors are also writers, and we love and believe in this work we do, sometimes it’s easy to justify that our labor go uncompensated. But this work is still hours out of days already crowded with day jobs and other obligations. It’s crazy-making to devote time and effort into something that, however spiritually fortifying, cannot practically sustain you. Payment helps keep one’s sanity.
Anything else? Tell us something about your experience with The Offing and why this work is meaningful to you.
Poetry is my mother-tongue, but prose, and specifically the prose of essays, like the English of my immigrant experience, offers access. Essays are a means of thinking and making, and when I read through submissions, I am deeply appreciative of this access — into others’ thinking, their voices and lives.
