Changing of the Guard

Literary Journalism farewells ‘Fitz’

Literary Journalism, the newsletter of the IALJS, will be saying goodbye to its current editor Jonathan D. Fitzgerald shortly as he moves on to new and exciting projects.

My name is Dr Ben Stubbs, and I will be stepping in to his position with the newsletter as we move towards this year’s conference. I am a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia where I’ve taught feature writing and creative non-fiction for the past 11 years. I am a relatively new member of the IALJS, though after attending the 2024 conference in Sydney, I felt like I had found my academic ‘home’ after spending the week listening to a fascinating selection of presentations and meeting like-minded academics from around the world. To hear Ted Conover, Joan Didion and Joe Sacco mentioned in conversation might not excite every academic, though I found it quite thrilling.

Prior to academia, I was a features and travel journalist for publications such as the New York Times, The Guardian, The Toronto Star and the Sydney Morning Herald. I have written five books on various aspects of travel, immersion and literary journalism, including Ticket to Paradise, the story of the New Australia socialist utopian colony in Paraguay for HarperCollins. Within academia, I’m now interested in the margins of literary journalism and exploring how different ways of telling stories can invite in new audiences for the future.

To mark the changing of the guard, I sat down with Fitz to ask him some questions about his time running the newsletter.

Can you give a brief intro for how long you’ve been at the helm of the newsletter and a few highlights along the way?

I became newsletter editor at the start of 2023, after about a year working with the former editor, Kate McQueen. In terms of highlights, I’m proud of the work that Kate and I did together in migrating the newsletter online. Prior to 2020, the newsletter was a PDF that was sent via email, but Kate and I felt like it was time for a change. Now, the newsletter publishes on our website and sends out a digest email when new articles are published.   Another highlight was publishing a couple of pieces by Ömer Özer, a scholar from Turkey. This story needs a bit of background: In September 2022, we published Özer’s piece “Literary Journalism in Twentieth Century Turkey,” edited by Kate. It ended up winning the prize for best article in the newsletter that year, which comes with a $250 award, or as Özer wrote, about 6,590 Turkish Liras. In the interim, February 2023, Turkey experienced a major earthquake and nearly half of Özer’s hometown, Islahiye, was wiped out. When Özer found out about the cash prize, he knew just what to do with it — he sent it to his brother Enis who was a school principal in Islahiye. According to Özer in a follow up piece we published, his brother “immediately slaughtered a sacrifice and distributed the meat equally among the families in the villages. With the remaining money, he bought clothes for the poorest.” Thus, Özer wrote, “the $250 reward I received brought joy to a handful of earthquake victims.”   That was a rewarding experience, to be sure.  

As a relatively new member of IALJS, I’d love to get to know our members in greater depth, so this is the perfect place to start! We’re all here because we connect with literary journalism in one way or another. What is it that draws you to this form, and what is the one piece of LJ that you keep coming back to?

I find it difficult to trace the exact moment that I discovered literary journalism because it feels like there were a number of moments throughout my life as a writer and scholar when the genre seemed to be calling to me, before I even knew what it was. But, for the sake of the question, I often go back to the first time I read David Foster Wallace’s piece “Consider the Lobster,” which was originally published in Gourmet magazine purportedly as a report on the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival. For most of the essay, that’s just what it is, until Wallace writes, “So then here is a question that is all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S.: Is it alright to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” All of the sudden, this well written but otherwise relatively straightforward report turned on an existential question, and I was hooked.   Of course, before that, I was a fan of Jeff Sharlet’s work; I’ll never forget reading his “Teenage Holy War” article in Rolling Stone. I was in love with Joan Didion, obviously, and I just remember really wanting to do whatever it was these writers were doing. I’ve had a few opportunities to write some things approaching literary journalism, but I’ve long felt more comfortable reading and thinking about it.  

Finally, what’s next for Fitz in academia and literary journalism?

Well, I’m settling into my new post as an associate professor of English and coordinator of the Professional Writing concentration at Salem State University here on Boston’s North Shore. I’m loving the opportunity I have to teach courses that are firmly in my wheelhouse like Digital Writing, Opinion and Commentary Writing, and, this coming fall, Literary Journalism Workshop.   Beyond that, I’m collaborating with fellow IALJS member David O. Dowling and his grad student Raleigh Darnell on a book about what Transcendentalist writers have to say about the importance of local journalism, tentatively titled The Ballad in the Street. And, at the same time, I’m on the board of local news startup in my hometown trying to bring community journalism back to our area.