The Uncertain Future of Bloom

Opening Night

JANUARY 2004—I am waiting anxiously for one of my two readers to arrive for the launch of Bloom, a queer literary journal I had spent the past year creating. We are at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street in New York City, and the room is packed with people I know and, more important, people I don’t know. A friend who works for the Associated Press weaves through the crowd, saying, “I know the editor!” as if he is working the red carpet at the Oscars. By the time I start speaking, the room is full, past its capacity of one hundred, standing room only. We actually have to turn people away—for a queer literary journal reading, seriously?

began while I was working at the Academy of American Poets, where it seemed everyone was also working on a literary journal and expanding the literary conversation. My coworker, while Aimee Kelley coedited with Brett Lauer, who worked at the Poetry Society of America. “Local” publications like (1998), (2000), and (2002) were building a national audience. Publishing a journal looked exciting and, best of all, possible.