Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public
MIDDLEBURY — Zig Zag Lit Mag is a literary magazine that showcases writers in Addison County. It’s been around for almost a decade.
The magazine was founded by A. Jay Dubberly. He’s a poet, author and teacher living in Bristol.
Recently, Dubberly hosted a release party for Zig Zag’s nineteenth issue.
🎧 This story was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a print version of the story below.
Q: Can you introduce yourself?
A: My name is A. Jay Dubberly. I’m the founder and editor-in-chief of Zig Zag Lit Mag. I also am an adjunct professor of film and writing. I teach at Vermont State Colleges and Champlain College. And I host trivia once a week at a bar. And I wait tables once a week at a fancy place in Middlebury. You gotta support your adjunct professor hobby somehow.
Q: When did your interest in writing start?
A: I was published in Highlights magazine when I was four.
Q: When you were four?
A: Yeah, I wrote a haiku about my mom. I only remember, because it’s a haiku, that it ended with ‘Bright, bubbly mommy.’ But I don’t remember the rest.
Q: What is Zig Zag?
A: It’s an arts and literature magazine for and by those who live, labor or loiter in Addison County. Most of our submissions come from Middlebury, Vergennes or Bristol, which are like the three big towns in Addison County. And by big towns, I mean the ones with like 2,000 people.
Q: How did Zig Zag start?
A: It started with a writing group that used to be called the Bixby Writing Group. I started that writing group the day after I moved to Vermont. And then we heard about other writing groups, so we went to visit them, and we saw that they had some local talent. And so we started Zig Zag through the Bixby [Library] with a Vermont Community Fund Grant in order to give people a place for publication, because submitting stuff is scary and getting rejected sucks. And then it kind of bloomed from there. And we’re no longer associated with the library, we’re just our own thing. And the writing group has moved locations a number of times, but it’s still going.
Q: Do you work on your own things in that writing group?
A: Yes. I very, very much work on my own things. It keeps me going. Running the writing group keeps me writing. It gives me a reason to keep going.
Q: Did you expect the magazine to last as long as it has?
A: No, no.
Q: Tell me about the community aspect of Zig Zag.
A: In Vermont, and in your life, it’s incredibly hard to make friends. Because friends are like real estate — it’s all location, location, location. And I love Vermont, and I’m a very personable person — all of my jobs are me standing and talking. But I am not an extrovert. I like to be alone for an extended period of time, and then I need a little bit of community.
So I think that the community aspect of the writing group and of Lit Mag is like, these are people I get to see from this avenue of my life. And then it’s very cool to see people who have met through Zig Zag that are still friends. So, I mean, creating [a community] wasn’t really what I had in mind with the magazine. I was just kind of creating a thing. But the community is the reason why it’s still a thing.
Q: Why do you ask people to read their work out loud at the release parties?
A: Because writing is a very lonely thing. And you have to write so many different things to get published. And even people who get published in this issue, most of them have submitted three poems, and we’ve rejected two of them. So I just think it’s cool for all of that work to happen at home, and then to see other people respond to it. Also, everyone deserves, at least once in their life, the feeling of getting a round of applause, especially for something as intimate as your own writing.
Q: Is there something special about Addison County that makes this work?
A: There is an old phrase in Vermont that ‘Vermont has more poets than cows.’ And because we are in New England, and New England is the oldest part of the country, there’s a lot of writing. Like, Addison County encapsulates the snowy woods that Robert Frost walked by. There are very successful writers [from Vermont]. But I think that no matter where you go, if you turn over a rock, you’re going to find enough people. I think that if you did this anywhere, I think it would work. I just think you need to commit to it.