Gambling on the future: The New Quarterly rounds the 100 issue mark

The award-winning literary, The New Quarterly, based at the University of Waterloo is celebrating 25 years of publication and its 100th issue. They haven't gone crazy, but they have splashed out on a full-colour cover. There's a long and admiring article in the Record newspaper.

(Shown are Editor Kim Jernigan, and managing editor Rosalynn Tyo -- photo by Peter Lee, the Record)

TNQ was launched with $3,000 of seed money from three writers: Farley Mowat, Edna Staebler and Harold Horwood. And it has kept going with some incredible volunteer dedication. It's a magazine that publishes no reviews (""We celebrate writers we like as opposed to denigrating writers we don't like," says Jernigan, who has been with the magazine almost from the beginning. "We have a sense of humour. We don't think literature is high seriousness.") But it has published some of Canada's better known writers like Jane Urquhart and Leon Rooke, often before much notice had been paid to them.

The magazine operates out of a tiny office that is provided free by St. Jerome's University (affiliated with U of W) but it is resolutely independent.

Editors are like gamblers, Jernigan told the Record; they bet on the future literary careers of their authors.

"You're trying to choose the work that engages you and moves you . . . one that has a long shelf life. You also hope writers you publish early on will go on to a career of interest."

Writers praise Jernigan and the magazine's editorial collective for their choices, and their willingness to nurture new writers.

"Kim's eye is keen," [Guelph author Sandra] Sabatini said. "She's got some kind of radar."

But Jernigan is quick to credit the magazine's 10 to 12 volunteer editors, some of them writers themselves, who pore over almost 200 story manuscripts and countless poems for each issue.