SMALL PRINT

Miami Herald, The (FL)
March 6, 1988
Author: TOM SHRODER Herald Tropic Editor

There is a new listing in Tropic's staff box at the bottom of the index page. It's been there a few weeks, but for reasons you'll see, this week happens to be a good time to point it out -- "Contributing writers: MEG LAUGHLIN, MICHELLE GENZ, T.M. SHINE, MIKE CLARY . . . " I wish this meant we have been able to go out and hire four new writers. No such luck. "Contributing writer," as used here, means: a writer who works long hours with consummate skill and almost masochistic dedication for very little money and no fringe benefits whatsoever.

In other words, a free-lance writer.

Tropic has long been open to publishing unknown free-lance writers, many of whom appear unsolicited and without introduction. This willingness to gamble our time on stacks of manuscripts and daily phone queries is often exhausting, and frequently weird. It is one of the most worthwhile things we do.

Just last month I sat down to an accumulated pile of manuscripts after work one night and the first six submissions had at least a touch of brilliance, an unmistakable aura of insight and expressiveness. One is the article that shares this page by Katherine Kourapis, an elementary school teacher in Liberty City. Kourapis has the rare ability of being able to see clearly and feel deeply, then communicate that feeling without hype or melodrama.

"I shut off the tape recorder and turned on the lights in the classroom. Martin Luther King's face still swayed lightly in front of us on our makeshift screen."

As soon as I read that, I knew that this was a gifted writer. In two sentences she had given us a fine detail, simply stated, that immediately created a mood and suggested a larger meaning.

For me, it is a moment of genuine excitement to come upon writing like that. And I have had more than my share of those moments in the three years I have been at Tropic.

In fact, two of the new names in our masthead first came to my attention in just that way. Michelle Genz, then a part-time staffer in The Herald's Treasure Coast office sent in a story about her family that was so honest, so real, it nearly jumped off the page. It turned out that was just the tip of the iceberg, and Genz's work has appeared in Tropic regularly ever since, including today's cover story.

T.M. Shine first arrived in Tropic in the form of an entry in an end-of-the-year column contest. We had read through about 500 pages of drek before we hit Shine's piece. It felt more like Shine's piece hit us, it had such power. It turned out that Shine, the manager of a drug store, could turn out fresh and marvelously insightful prose whenever we could coax him to sit down at a typewriter.

Mike Clary, the author of today's second story about the mysterious deaths of horses in South Dade, worked for The Herald's city desk from 1979 to 1982. He has written for four Tropic editors with such consistency and style that even though he has never been on the staff he has helped shape Tropic's personality. The same is true of Meg Laughlin, who has taken readers into the lives of dirt-poor Haitians, of the wealthy children of Colombian coke dealers, and of rising young starlets on the pop music circuit with equally vivid realism.

The term free-lance simply does not do justice to these kinds of contributions. Neither do a few words in small print, but it's a start.

Memo: FROM THE EDITOR
Section: TROPIC
Copyright (c) 1988 The Miami Herald