Getting
Shortlisted

TO: RALPH

FROM: Waterloo Press

Dear Lolita Lark,

We were delighted to receive your letter [asking for review copies] --- the first we've received not in email form since the Seamus Heaney Prize requested submissions --- which got us a shortlisting.

So expenses are being incurred both ways. You love the reek of paper and refuse e-books, and we have both. Some day they'll devise an e-book with a scratch quotient emitting the smell you'd receive on opening as a physical copy. We wasted at least 30 minutes of valuable work-time collapsing over your website. Onan has rarely seemed --- or is that seeded? --- so compellingly presented.

Despite the hideous expense, we'd like to send you at least one more book, that edited by David Pollard, of Simon Jenner. I enclose some plaudits below. and a review of his work in the highly respected Tears in the Fence, by Jay Ramsay. I could send that as an attachment but it may be easier to append it below the review snippets and excerpts.

--- All best wishes,
Kay Early
Waterloo Press
waterloopress@hotmail.co.uk

§   §   §

Dear Waterloo:

And what a kick to get an email from a publisher, one who actually reads our letter, and looks at our mag, and writes us something nice (and funny).

We'll take anything you send us, and if you include a note that says "Send to Lo asap" it will get to me ... well, asap. What we are most interested in are collections.

And you're lucky: no prize committee ever approached us to award us a prize.

Maybe the Boobie Prize Committee, but we haven't heard from them for awhile.

Thanks for making our day.

L. Lark
Ed