Is it a ripoff, or is it flattery?

A friend of mine emailed me yesterday to say she'd read one of my stories online, which she found when Googling for this blog. Normally, I'd be happy to hear this news, but this particular story, originally published in the Bellevue Literary Review, was not online as far as I knew. So I googled myself along with the story title and found this.

On one hand, I felt flattered and glad that a major university is using my story for a class in the Medical Humanities. On the other hand I felt kind of ripped off. Why didn't anyone notify me that they were going to do this? What about copyright? Electronic rights? I gave the Bellevue Literary Review first-time rights and then they reverted to me. So now anyone can use them?

I've been on the other side, too. I photocopy stories from anthologies and use them to teach my classes. I read the copyright guidelines which says I can use a short story, once, in the limited field of my classroom. But what about online rights?

I admit to feel a little "once bitten, twice shy" about this whole thing. When Amazon first came up with its "Search Inside the Book" function, I searched for myself and found, to my horror, one of my stories excerpted in a book called Families In Later Life: Connections and Transitions. Again, thanks for the flattery, but that editor totally ripped me off. I found over a dozen references to my story throughout that book as well.

Once, about four years ago, I picked up a copy of a literary magazine in a Borders bookstore and started flipping through it idly. There was a story of mine! I couldn't believe it. When I contacted them, they stuttered that they had "forgotten" to send me an acceptance letter (and a contract). AGHHHH!!

The first time was the worst, though. It was over fifteen years ago, and the Internet was new. I joined an online writers' group on Compuserve. Naively, we posted our work and shared feedback. A few months later, one of the other members of the online group emailed me and said, "I have something to show you." One of the
other members, a woman, had proudly sent him a copy of her first published book (published by MIT, where she was a professor!) - which included one of my poems that I'd posted on Compuserve, with just one word changed. I was stunned. Ironically, the poem was called "Missing Children" and was about kidnapped and "disappeared" children in Latin America. And here my own poem had gone kidnapped.

I fretted over it for months. I wrote to her. I wrote to MIT. I had written that poem in a workshop in my MFA program, and I had everything from my first pencilled drafts to many versions scribbled on by my professor and classmates. No response. The man who had originally sent me the book warned me that he thought she was suicidal (her own mother had committed suicide) and that if she were "outed" as a plagiarist, it might send her over the edge. I declined to follow up, but many years later, re-published the poem (with my own name!) with Poets Against the War. That felt better, and like I had taken it back and given it an appropriate home.

(oddly, I have never been able to find any reference to My Plagiarist after 1994, when she gave a reading of the book including my poem - did she read my poem out loud? - and wonder if she really is still alive)

These are the times that I think I really need an agent. Miss Snark, where are you?