Recently I was turned on to Dzanc Books, an independent publishing house out of southeastern Michigan. Although I am originally from Michigan, I haven’t lived there in a number of years and have been completely out of tune with the current literary scene in the state. I was stunned and impressed when I fell upon Dzanc, however, as they are almost exactly the kind of house I think about when I think about the perfect independent publisher. Created by Steve Gillis — Eastern Michigan University writing professor, founder of 826 Michigan, and prolific author — and Dan Wickett — founder of the Emerging Writers Network and organizer of the very awesome Ann Arbor Book Festival — Dzanc was founded in 2006 to, in their own words, “advance great writing and champion those writers who don’t fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses.” Yes, Dzanc is a non-profit publisher with 501(c)3 status and a desire to educate people of all ages. This house is for real.

Even during these tumultuous times, where the publishing industry is gnashing its teeth and beating its breast to try to stay afloat, Dzanc is successful enough to not only offer their writers “contracts and monetary compensation commensurate with the best literary houses,” they also have the extremely generous Dzanc Prize. This prize isn’t just for a great writer; the Dzanc Prize couples excellence in literary fiction with excellence to community service. An applicant not only submits their literary work, they also submit an educational community service project pertaining to advancing literacy.

The 2007 winner of the Dzanc Prize was Laura van den Berg and Dzanc has just recently published her first collection of short stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us. I got my hands on a copy to not only explore Dzanc, but to explore a new modern writer. Van den Berg has been published in One Story, the Boston Review, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, and various other great journals. She has received numerous positive reviews and accolades for her debut, being talked about in The Millions, The Believer, and Guernica. My experience with van den Berg’s collection, however, was mixed and I feel like the odd one out. She definitely explores many different locations and perceptions with her stories, with settings spanning the globe and people of all walks of life. She gives a voice to people in professions at whom you may raise your eyebrow; a bigfoot impersonator, Loch Ness monster hunters, and a biologist who specializes in rainforest primates. I read the collection cover to cover, the stories in order, which is something I don’t normally do with short story collections. What The World starts off very strong, and ends strong, I think, but the overarching theme, which I am unsure whether or not was the conceit of van den Berg, wasn’t very effective to a reader like me; each story includes a woman, either the narrator or a primary character, who is in the midst of marital or relationship troubles.

Half the writing in the world is about somebody struggling with love, so that shouldn’t be a problem for me. But the fact that every story comes back to this idea, so much so that I found myself asking, “so what’s messed up with her relationship in this one?” every time I started a new story, really proved difficult for me to deal with. I also found the location jumping, the fact that the stories were pushing some sort of exoticism on me at every turn, hard to swallow. With so many locations, and too few actual descriptions of the places, I feel as though the author really has no first hand experience with the places we were visiting. There’s nothing wrong with that idea, I suppose, but then… why are we reading about these locations? Just for the sake of exoticism? There was a disconnect for me in that regard; I never really felt like I was in those places and I’ve actually been to many of the places written about. They say “write what you know” and when you try something beyond what you know, the encyclopedia can only take you so far.

What I felt overall about the collection was that the stories themselves are fine if read on their own in journals, or perhaps randomly and spaced out by weeks or months, but digesting them all within a week or two in a linear manner makes them feel very similar to one another. What reading the collection like I did made me think was that van den Berg needs to write a novel; she has this theme, whether it is realized or not, about a faulty romantic relationship and an obsession with varying locations, and I feel her ideas are much more conducive to the long form. I get a sense that maybe she feels this, too — not a single story in the collection ended with a meaningful resolution. I think the modern short story has devolved into this very cloudy thing, something that goes along strong until a wishy-washy, “it is whatever you think it is” ending. I have felt this in my own writing, as well — the ending is never what you want it to be and you just trudge through it and deal. This is because writing a short story is very hard to do. I don’t think this problem is van den Berg’s fault; it’s what the modern short story has become. Writing something start to finish in twenty pages, having it purport some meaning and satisfy the reader at the end, is crushingly difficult.

But all that being said, What The World is a solid debut by an up-and-coming author and I’m sure something van den Berg will easily be able to build upon, especially with all the great support she has received. With the excellence of Dzanc Books behind her, van den Berg is sure to have a great publishing career. You should support both Dzanc and Laura van den Berg, and you should do so by purchasing her short story collection. If you have also read van den Berg’s debut, I would love to hear your opinion on it; while my experience with her book had its ups and downs, a good argument can always sway my opinion.