An Introduction of East Meets West, American Writers Review

So who is EAST MEETS WEST, AMERICAN WRITERS REVIEW?

East Meets West, American Writers Review are two women, Patricia Florio and Sue Richter, who want to share a great publishing idea for fiction, creative nonfiction, personal essay writers and poetry writers.  In our complicated world, how often are we told we need experience before anyone can consider publishing our work?  How can you gain experience and know if you have any talent if no one is willing to give you a chance? That’s where Sue and I come in. 

While I was working on my M.F.A. degree in creative writing at Wilkes University I had this idea for a literary review.  Since the students at Wilkes are separated into what's called cohort groups, I named the journal The Cohort Review and solicited writing submissions from the all the groups, from the first-year students to the alums, the mentors/faculty. 

The program at Wilkes is relatively a new low residency program.  I think my class was the sixth graduating class in January 2011.  I believed in my project as a journal for Wilkes, but soon found out that The Cohort Review would only be a limited edition to prove that I could handle the publishing aspect of my course work.  That’s where Sue came in.

Both Sue and I write for different online news services, Examiner.com and travel articles for Stripedpot.com.  Sue owns and operates Sera Publishing Company in Temecula, California on the West Coast and I live in the Historic Town of Ocean Grove, the Jersey Shore, on the East Coast.  Because of technology, we managed to find each other. 

I got an email from Sue interested in my project.  She said she’d love to be the publisher of this new literary journal that I had running around in my head and gave me an offer to print The Cohort Review that I couldn’t refuse.

So now that East Meets West, Patricia met Sue, we decided we wanted to continue our love of creative writing and publishing American creative writers to entertain the masses.  We decided to offer prizes by running a writing contest that my M.F.A., The Cohort Review inspired. You can register for the contest at www.SeraPublishing.com  

We hope you’ll be as excited as we are about our bi-annual journal. Please respond by entering our contest.  And sharing your creative writing thoughts on this blog.  I know that we will enjoy reading your work and so will our judges (whose names will be posted soon).