That's not me!

[novapsyche]

Last year, I submitted some poems to a magazine. The editor wrote back, accepting two of my pieces but asking if he could do a huge edit on the longer. Basically, he wanted to gut the entire ending. I wrote back, stating why the portion was essential, & asked again that the piece be accepted as is or not at all. I never heard back from the editor, so I assumed that I'd been too forward, the pieces were not going to press, e&.

Imagine my surprise when I found a contributor's copy addressed to me.

Leafing through it, I saw that neither of the poems were edited. Huh, I thought. Maybe this turned out after all.

Then I flipped to the biographies. (It's funny--the bios are almost the first thing I check out in a contributor's copy; I think I want to know who my neighbors are.) The bios were in alphabetical order by first name--not a good sign. I read with interest an entry for the author of a poem I particularly liked; the entry noted other journals in which his work had featured--it was a standard bio, which was a good sign. In short order, I got to mine.

I share a last name with several celebrities, such as a basketball player (my high school government teacher used to call me by that male's first name to underscore that fact). I also share it with a well-known scientist. You may guess which one when you read the bio the magazine in question decided to give to me:

[Name here] is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. She was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and was a fellow of New College, Oxford. [She] came to prominence with her 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term "meme".

Considering some of the spelling, it's obvious that this bio was in all probability lifted from somewhere else. God knows I didn't supply this biographical information.

I don't know what to do about this. Of course, I will write the editor & ask for a retraction. But, in many respects, the damage has been done: whomever hunts down a print copy of this magazine (say, in an attempt to authenticate my CV), that person will see that very wrong bio.

I've just never heard of such a problem in the publishing industry. Not saying that this is the first time something like this has happened--who knows--but it's not a common enough problem to have been identified & collated for advice gurus to tackle.

Comments

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Too true.