Questionnaire #12: With Beth Pratt (1988-1990 Fiction Editor & Staff)
Note: this partiular Questionnaire came with a series of photos from Beth. I have received her permission to publish both the photos and the Questionnaire below. These photos are explicitly hers, I am just reproducing them here to provide context to what student publishing looked like in the 1980s and 1990s.
Question #1: Would you mind introducing yourself, when you were at UMass, and how you came to edit Howth Castle? What issues did you work on?
A) My name is Beth Pratt and I am a wildlife conservation leader. I attended UMass Boston from 1987 to 1991. In 1988 I was attending a student activity fair on campus, and saw a table for Howth Castle. I spoke with Richard Rooney about the project and volunteered on the spot. I worked on the 1988-1989 issue as Fiction Editor, and the 1989-1990 issue as staff.
Question #2: If you remember, what was the editorial ‘culture’ like? Did you all meet anywhere, for example.
A) We had a really wonderful team—a great mix of talents in multiple literary genres. Many have gone on to be published authors. Pretty informal culture—we would have frequent staff meetings in the office. I remember the blind voting process for submissions and all the stacks of submissions—we took out the author names so there would be no bias in voting. Some of us played racquetball together. And we did a big party at the end at my house in Plymouth.
Question #3: Do you remember, if at all, how many copies you printed? Was it 100 copies, or 500 copies or more?
A) I don’t remember. Richard Rooney might.
Question #4: What was distribution like on campus? How did you get books into students hands?
A) I think we had magazine racks with them displayed. And there was a place at the student center for them as well.
Question #5: A lot of copies I’ve seen of Howth Castle have advertisements in the back for local bookstores in Boston. How did that work?
A) We didn’t do advertising in either of the issues I worked on.
Question #6: Would you say that faculty and admin on campus were supportive of Howth Castle?
A) Yes. I remember for the first issue I worked on, we had a reception. I think the Mass Media covered it.
Please note I have cropped this photo because of the address and the hand drawn map leading to the address at the bottom.
Seated person is to be used for scale, but the corkboard is the interesting thing here
I am in particular a fan of the sign that says Howth Castle Whyth Not?
