Working writers and artists share their commiserations about life on the Z-list.  Jo sent out a call for funny, snarky, and sometimes sad stories.

Each contributor finished this sentence: You know you’re on the Z-list when…

Susan Straight‘s latest novel is Take One Candle Light a Room. “When you finish your reading at the ________ Public Library and find out your overnight accommodations are in the librarian’s house, in the bedroom of her son gone off to college, and the wallpaper has baseballs and bats, which make you miss having a brother.”

Orville Stoeber, Venice musician, “found” object sculptor, and performer. He most recently composed, arranged, and performed the soundtrack for Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Year of the Flood. “There is a fine line between funk and bleached cat shit,” he says. “I’ve been on the Z list for so long, I didn’t know there was another list. My first review in New York was ‘the music by Orville Stoeber is lousy.’ That was Variety 1969, the Ronald Tavel play, Boy On The Straight Back Chair.”

Long Beach poet Clint Margrave has recent or forthcoming work in The New York Quarterly, Ambit, 3AM, Pearl, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, among others, as well as in the recent anthology Beside The City of Angels: An Anthology of Long Beach Poetry (World Parade Books).  “You know you’re on the Z-list when you work in the bookstore you’re reading at.”

Judy Kronenfeld‘s third book of poetry, Shimmer (Word Tech Editions), will ripple into the poetry world in early 2012.  “You know you’re on the Z-list when your poetry reading audience is 80% people you know plus a clutch of winos who wanted in from the cold.”

Cati Porter is the editor of Poemeleon and the author of several poetry collections that don’t suck. “You know you’re on the Z-list when you’re giving a poetry reading and someone in the audience begins to snore.”

No matter the struggle, Zen on the Z-List means freedom!