Write, Publish, and Shine: Recent Episodes
Rachel Thompson
Dear writers, I'm thrilled to present the 100th episode of the podcast! I have delighted in each of the conversations and episodes I've been able to share with you, and talking to writers and covering topics on how to write, publish, and shine.
Thank you to the writers who listen to each episode and especially those who share what they gleaned or the little ways they were encouraged to keep going.
This episode is a moment to reflect on where the podcast has been and where it's going and includes listeners sharing their favourite moments on the podcast and how they influenced their writing lives.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/100
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Memoirist Yolande House sits down with me for a book club conversation about Kae Tempest’s On Connection. It was a real pleasure to read this book alongside her and compare notes. And I hope those of you reading alongside us in our book club enjoy it.
About On Connection: This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other.
After we discuss the book, stick around as Yolande House also shares highlights from her disability reading list.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/88
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The Write, Publish, and Shine podcast, hosted by me, author and literary magazine editor Rachel Thompson, celebrates its 99th episode! I reflect on the podcast journey and past episodes, highlighting eleven essential writing tips from literary magazine editors who have been guests on the show.
Listen if you need encouragement to write, publish, and shine. Editors share how and why to read deeply, tell your truths, and continue your creative journey with resilience and passion while connecting with the broader social and political contexts that influence your writing.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/99
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In the conversation with Amy Friend, the artist discusses her creative process, the influence of her personal experiences on her work, and the themes of loss, longing, and home that pervade her art. Her childhood experiences, growing up in a neighbourhood populated by immigrants, and the stories she heard from them deeply influenced her work. She emphasizes the importance of play, openness, and letting go of control in creating art. She also discusses her fascination with old photographs and how she uses them in her work. Friend shares her perspective on artistic community, rejection, and the role of literary magazines in fostering dialogue and inspiration.
This episode is part of a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was the lead editor. (You can check out the full run of episodes, starting with Episode #80.)
Amy Friend’s art truly resonates with me on a deep level of nostalgia and grief, and this is also because of the incredible artistry she uses with photographs, turning those difficult experiences into beauty.
Even after over a decade of editing for Room, we're vibing in those themes of loss and longing. I spoke with Amy Friend about how she makes her photographs, what draws her to these themes, and how photography as a medium inherently communicates memory, loss, and absence.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/86
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We are playing summer reading bingo these next few months, with 24 squares representing categories of books you can read. And you are invited. Grab your card to play along with us, then choose a row, column, or diagonal line, or complete the card.
Why are we, a writing community and I, an instructor of writing courses, doing this book bingo? I answer this question in the episode.
Listen as I dig into some of our summer book categories, why we chose them, and how reading books in these categories will improve your writing.
More episodes to check out if you are looking for a craft book in a genre new to you:
- Episode 68: Writerly Love Community members Jennifer Robinson and Candace Webb joined me to talk about quite the throw-back book, The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. At the time, Jen and Candace were fairly new to poetry and found that this book helped them journey into a new genre. So, listen here if you’ve been writing short stories and want to try verse.
- Episode 72: Another community book club chat on Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto by Sonya Huber. Listen to our book club conversation with Writerly Love Members Louise Julig, Lina Lau, and Wendy Atwell if you need help to shake up conventional wisdom on writing craft.
- Episode 88: I know I’m not alone in reading and writing for connection. Kae Tempest’s On Connection helped me understand how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other. Hear me talk about the book with Yolande House.
- Episode 78: Author Kavita Das joined us to talk about her amazing book Craft and Conscience, an intentional journey to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet, is an act of political writing.” Dig into this vital topic for writers and a great book to read, whether you’re crossing off a bingo square or not. Listen to our conversation with Kavita Das.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/98
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Writer and Room contributor ViNa Nguyễn discusses their choice to deliberately write about joy as a writer who writes about grief and nostalgia.
We also talked about their experimental writing and, in particular, the brilliant piece, A Nesting of Bracketed Bodies, which I published in Room's “Ghosts” issue; they also read from the work for us, so prepare your earbuds for some delightful fiction writing.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/85
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Listen if you’ve been looking for books to support your writing practice, or maybe a list of books to give another writer in your life, or if you’ve been wanting to read with a community of writers, too, and need some guidance to get started.
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Lina Lau, writer, mother, and owner of too many notebooks, has published short memoir in X-R-A-Y, Prairie Fire, Hippocampus (where she is now a reader as well), Carte Blanch, and Little Fiction/Big Truths.
We discuss how flash memoir writing captures a moment and the characteristics required of memoirists. Lina also reads a 100-word story, bringing us into the experience of writing and publishing this work on Five Minute Lit.
Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/89
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Welcome to our last instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities.
I’m so happy to end this with the wonderful Cicely Belle Blain, the final member of my writing community who kindly agreed to join us to discuss limitations and disabilities when it comes to writing.
Reading from Cicely’s bio: Cicely Belle Blain is a Black/mixed, queer femme activist, equity and inclusion consultant, and writer. Their bestselling poetry collection Burning Sugar was called “an intimately powerful debut” by Quill and Quire. With laughter and fearlessness, they harness a passion for justice, liberation and meaningful change via transformative education.
They talk about their consulting work as well as writing and how the fairly recent journey of learning about their ADHD intersects with both of these practices.
Cicely also reads work on the theme of grief, aptly bringing to the fore the subtext of what is often the experience of having limitations and disability.
Their bio mentions their passion for justice, and so, of course, they shared their sage perspective, which underscored the enormity of this series of themed episodes—not asking for simply understanding of their or others' individual limitations and disabilities but solidarity with those attempting to resist the expectations of writing, the publishing world, social media, social capital, deadlines, and capitalism.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/97
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Welcome to our semi-final instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities.
In this episode, writer S.L. Shuter, a member of my Writerly Love Community, talks about embracing an identity related to her diagnosis and the push back she received for this.
Set L. Shuter is a writer, filmmaker and storyteller from Toronto. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The University of King's College and is currently querying her horror-comedy medical memoir, Ovaries Gone Wild. Her essays have appeared in The Toronto Star, Chatelaine Magazine, Understorey Magazine, CBC, and Creative Nonfiction Magazine.
Set reads from an essay about access to medicine related to her condition published in a special COVID-19 edition of Understorey Magazine.
Listen to how she embraces humour related to her limitations but more recently finds more kindness for herself as she writes and makes films about chronic illness.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/96
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Welcome to the next instalment of this string of episodes on writing with limitations and disabilities.
In this episode, Crystal Randall Barnett, a member of my Writerly Love Community, adds to the conversations we’ve been having in this series of episodes on writing slowly and listening to your body.
Crystal Randall Barnett is an emerging writer from Ontario. She has been published by The League of Canadian Poets and Blank Spaces and her first-place short story appeared in a 2023 fiction anthology from Chicken House Press. Her writing is physically impacted and creatively influenced by her disability, Persistent Post-Concussion Syndrome.
Crystal shares how she adapted her reading habits when her experience of persistent post-concussive symptoms made reading on the page a barrier. She also shares a simple hack to make audiobooks even more accessible—one I’ve implemented for myself.
And she reads from a poem I had the pleasure of publishing as an editor with Room.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/95
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Welcome to the fourth instalment of this string of episodes on the theme of writing with limitations and disabilities.
Andrea Martineau is a writer, poet, bibliophile, and phytomaniac (I had to look that one up: a plant lover!) with a penchant for heritage buildings and their paranormal tenants. Her poetry has previously been published and shared in untethered magazine, Blank Spaces, [SPACE], Figroot Press, and The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause.
Andrea is a wonderful part of our membership community, has such clarity around her practice and finds ways to work with her limitations. She calls on us to believe writers with limitations and disabilities when they say what they need or need to pause or bow out from doing something during a flare-up or when it doesn’t work for their health and wellness.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/94
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Welcome to my next conversation in this run of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations.
In this episode, I sit down with Amy Yuki Vickers, a new writer in our community and a recent alum of my Lit Mag Love course. Amy is the author of the blog and newsletter The Intentional Hulk, writes short stories and personal essays, and is at work on a memoir.
And, as she says in her bio, because she’s autistic, she see-saws between intense occupation and recovery. This is just one subject we discuss in our conversation. She shares her experiences as a writer and how she has set up her writing life to work for her.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/93
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Welcome to the next episode in this run of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations.
In this episode, a wonderful Writerly Love Community member, Olwen Wilson talks with me about following joy and writing with a chronic condition. We discuss labels and their conflicting appeal/repellent nature. And, what I suspect will be a through line of all these episodes: listening to our bodies and how we’re feeling. Olwen reads a slantly-written short piece then generously gifts us with details on a practice called Rainbow Walks. Listen in to hear from a writer who does things their way, someone I deeply admire for this spirit.
Show notes: https://rachelthompson.co/92
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Welcome to the first interview in my series of episodes on writing with disabilities and limitations.
I sit down with a wonderful Writerly Love membership community member, Shantell Powell, a two-spirit author, artist, and self-described swamp hag who grew up on the land and off the grid. Her publication credits include Augur, Solarpunk Magazine, MetaStellar, The Deadlands, and honestly keep racking up—we talk about how she does this in the episode, and she has an excellent hack for writers with ADHD to track submissions that I think is brilliant and would be helpful to many writers, myself included.
We get into her often very visceral writing; she reads a piece that I would describe that way, visceral, and speculates a little about why that flavour comes out in her work. For this series and focus, we talk about how she works with her various limitations and disabilities, which include neurodivergence and now long COVID-19, among other conditions and limitations.
Listen in to hear from a singular writer whose writing practice shows that there is not one way to be a writer.
Show notes: https://rachelthompson.co/91
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The Write, Publish, Shine Intensive, which brings together my three courses: Write and Light, a course to get writers generating new, more profound work; Revision Love, my course on learning to self-edit your writing; and Lit Mag Love, my flagship course on getting published in literary journals.
All of the resources mentioned in the episode are in the show notes at rachelthompson.co/podcast/79
Learn more and sign up for the Write, Publish, Shine Intensive at rachelthompson.co/intensive
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In this episode, I sit down with our Community Facilitator, Meli Walker, to discuss what we do to make our online course community more accessible to writers with disabilities and limitations.
This episode marks the beginning of a run of episodes focusing on writing with limitations/disability. Coming up, you’ll hear me talk with writers with various challenges about what they need to write, how they get their needs met, and what it’s like to write when you have barriers in your own body’s ability and barriers that exist in our writing community.
My hope is that this series helps writers find support and ideas to help them engage in writing in a way that works for them. And, for this episode in particular, I hope it gives writers who teach on or offline some ideas for how to make their communities more open to all writers.
Because Meli and I are also just two people with our own limitations and neurodivergence, this is not an exhaustive list of what we’re doing and certainly not a complete list of what we COULD be doing.
Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/90
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“Nothing has to happen in the story. There doesn't need to be explosions or big shocking twists. It's just enough to have well-developed characters and a beautiful world.” —Terese Mason Pierre, Augur
Terese Mason Pierre is co-Editor-in-Chief of Augur, a Canadian speculative literature journal, and has published work in Hobart, The Puritan, Quill and Quire, and Strange Horizons. Her work has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and Best of the Net.
She talks about how Canadian literature in general is just a little bit softer than other kinds of literature, and how she brings forward the care that she received from editors of her work to her editing role at Augur.
You can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/49
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Lina Lau, writer, mother, and owner of too many notebooks, has published short memoir in X-R-A-Y, Prairie Fire, Hippocampus (where she is now a reader as well), Carte Blanch, and Little Fiction/Big Truths.
We talk about how flash memoir writing captures a moment, how Lina reads a 100-word story and brings us into the experience of writing it, and also about the characteristics required of memoirists.
Flash memoirA Five-Day Mini Course in Short Creative Nonfiction FREE this month!
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Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/89
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All craft is political. It’s how we, as writers, resist injustices and dream up better worlds. So, listen to this conversation with the brilliant Kavita Das, and then take up your pen.
Kavita Das really takes us on an intentional journey with her deep knowledge of social justice work. She challenges us to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet, is an act of political writing,” regardless of intention.
Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das, was published by Beacon Press in 2022.
You can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/78
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During the Lit Mag Love course, writers can join Q&A calls with editors. In this replay episode, you will hear one such call with Mark Drew of the Gettysburg Review.
Note that this call happened in the first year of the pandemic, so you’ll get an editor’s perspective on the kind of reflection missing from most writing during an intense moment—at least for this journal. You’ll also hear about the kinds of work Gettysburg accepts, the qualities of the work they look for, and the editorial experience you’ll get, should you place work with them.
The Lit Mag Love course will help you get a big YES for your writing from a lit mag you love.
Learn more and sign up here >>
Show notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/59
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In this episode, it’s my pleasure to welcome Christina Brobby, a wonderful lyric writer and instructor, to the podcast. We start by getting into what exactly lyric writing is, if you’re wondering, so that will be cleared up right away. Christina also delves into how the “filter is the form” as she wonderfully sums it up.
Listen for more of our exploration of empathy for writers. And Christina also kindly and insightfully brings in the necessity of practising empathy with yourself as a writer. And listen for ways she’s used the form to explore the impact our surroundings have on us, to see working in fragments as a feature and not a bug in our memories as creative nonfiction essay writers and to generally get excited about the variety of brilliant voices using lyric essay forms to tell their stories.
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Links and show notes are up at rachelthompson.co/67
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Memoirist Yolande House sits down with me for a book club conversation about Kae Tempest’s On Connection. It was a real pleasure to read this book alongside her and compare notes. And I hope those of you reading alongside us in our book club enjoy it.
About On Connection: This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other.
After we discuss the book, stick around as Yolande House also shares highlights from her disability reading list.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/88
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OPEN NOW: LIT MAG LOVE!
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This is the final episode in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine that take a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue.
Today it’s my delight to speak to another artist whose work we accepted for inside the issue.
Sarah Esmi (she/her) is an Iranian-American mother, writer, collage artist, producer, director and lawyer. She told me about her collage practice and how the artistic interpretation of her visual work differs from her poetry.
I loved her art so much, and to learn more about what went into the piece we published called “Insides” plus collage as an art practice.
All the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/87
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OPEN NOW: LIT MAG LOVE! Get a big “YES” for your writing from literary journals you love in this five-week guided course. rachelthompson.co/litmaglove
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This is the seventh, wow!, in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with our cover artist, Amy Friend, who was also the cover artist for the very first issue I edited for Room, called Mythologies of Loss.
Amy Friend’s art truly resonates on a deep level of nostalgia and grief with me, and also because of the incredible artistry she does with photographs, turning those difficult experiences into beauty.
Clearly, we’re vibing even over a decade of editing for Room, in those themes of loss and longing. I spoke with Amy Friend about how she makes her photographs, what draws to these themes, and how photography as a medium inherently communicates memory, loss, and absence.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/86
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This is the sixth in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, I spoke with another incredible writer we published in the issue, ViNa Nguyễn.
Our conversation went in many beautiful directions, including their choice to deliberately write about joy as a writer who writes about grief and nostalgia.
We talked about ViNa Nguyễn’s experimental writing and, in particular, the brilliant piece, A Nesting of Bracketed Bodies, that we published in the issue, which includes, as advertised, nesting brackets as an element in the work—plus their inspiration on this experiment. And, I’m delighted that they also read from the work for us, so prepare your earbuds for some delightful fiction writing.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/85
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This is the fifth in my series of special episodes as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this episode, a luminous conversation with Room’s Book Reviews editor, Micah Killjoy.
We delve into reviewing as a practice for writers to understand craft, what Micah did differently with the reviews for this haunting issue, and how reviewing has changed in the age of BookTok and user-generated reviews.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/84
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In this replay episode, Ellen Chang-Richardson and I both speak as editorial collective members at Room, and as editors of the (then) upcoming issue of Room’s Ghosts issue.
Ellen and I get a little into how things work behind the scenes at Room, and how we (the collective) are many people, all rolling up our sleeves to create space in literature, art, and feminism.
This episode was recorded live on Zoom in front of writers from my writing community, called Writerly Love. So you will hear us answer their questions toward the end of our discussion, too.
Get the episode show notes and a full transcript at: https://rachelthompson.co/63-replay.
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The fourth in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue. In this issue, to my delight, I sat down with Room’s publisher, Nara Monteiro. We delve into the role of Publisher and what they do day-to-day at the magazine and get into some Ghosts-issue specifics and a slightly unusual story of reaching out to one potential contributor to the issue, so listen for that story.
All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/83
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WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters
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Welcome to the third in my series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue.One of my jobs as editor is to commission one established writer to be featured in the magazine. To do so, I started by searching for writers working in the genre of ghosts and scary stories and was pleased to come across an anthology of Arctic horror stories, Taaqtumi and thought, oh, yes, when I read Aviaq Johnston’s piece in the anthology. I invited her to be our commissioned writer for Room 46.3 and she said yes.Aviaq Johnston is a young Inuk author from Igloolik, Nunavut. Her debut novel Those Who Run in the Sky was released in the spring of 2017 and shortlisted for a Governor General’s award that year. In 2014, she won first place in the Aboriginal Arts and Stories competition for her short story “Tarnikuluk,” which also earned her a Governor General’s History Award.You can pick up your copy of Room 46.3, Ghosts (digital or print) at roommagazine.com.All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/podcast/82—WRITERLY LOVE LETTERS: Sent each week to your inbox. rachelthompson.co/letters
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Welcome to the second Ghost-themed special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, Ghosts, where I was lead editor of the issue.Why do lit mag editors choose the pieces they do? One answer to this question is “deeply personal”—by which I mean we pick work that resonates because of the deeply personal revelations and subject matter inside. In this episode of Write, Publish, and Shine, hear from two writers working in that deep, personal space in their writing, Reyzl Grace and Annette C. Boehm. You can pick up your copy of Room 46.3, Ghosts (digital or print) at roommagazine.com.All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/podcast/81—LAST DAY TO JOIN (as of this release): Do you crave support and structure so you can write your most luminous work? The Write, Publish, Shine Intensive starts soon. Write, Revise, and Publish Your Luminous Writing with lots of support from me. Learn More + Register at rachelthompson.co/intensive.
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Welcome to the first in a series of special episodes of Write, Publish, and Shine as I take you on a deep dive into the creation of Room magazine issue 46.3, where I was lead editor of the issue.When we made our call for submissions we invited writers and visual artists to come haunt us. And they did. In this episode of Write, Publish, and Shine, you’ll hear my conversation with two writers we published in the issue, how and why they submitted their ghostly-themed writing, and learn more about their writing, submitting, and publishing practices as emerging writers.You can pick up your copy of Room 46.3, Ghosts (digital or print) at roommagazine.com.All of the notes for this episode are up at rachelthompson.co/podcast/80--Do you crave support and structure so you can write your most luminous work? The Write, Publish, Shine Intensive starts soon. Write, Revise, and Publish Your Luminous Writing with lots of support from me. Learn More + Register at rachelthompson.co/intensive.
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It felt like the right time—in this season when people join writing programs and restart sending out submissions to lit mags—to replay this episode on Staying True to Yourself. Even if you already heard this episode, I suggest a re-listen because it’s a lesson we’re all apparently learning and relearning together…This is a special episode of the Write, Publish, and Shine Podcast where you will hear from three writers on their publishing experiences and the journey they took to stay true to themselves as they write and publish their writing in journals.Find the show notes for this episode up at rachelthompson.co/podcast/61Do you crave support and structure so you can write your most luminous work? The Write, Publish, Shine Intensive starts soon. Write, Revise, and Publish Your Luminous Writing with lots of support from me. Learn More + Register at rachelthompson.co/intensive.
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We talk all about the Write, Publish, Shine Intensive, which brings together my three courses, Write and Light, a course to get writers generating new, more profound work, Revision Love, my course on learning to self-edit your writing, and Lit Mag Love, my flagship course on getting published in literary journals.Grab all of the lessons and resources mentioned in the episode up at rachelthompson.co/podcast/79And learn more and sign-up for the Write, Publish, Shine Intensive at rachelthompson.co/intensive. (Starts soon!)
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Kavita Das really takes us on an intentional journey with her deep knowledge of social justice work and challenges us to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet, is an act of political writing,” regardless of intention.Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues by Kavita Das, was published by Beacon Press in 2022 http://www.beacon.org/Craft-and-Conscience-P1859.aspxYou can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/podcast/78
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Kavita Das really takes us on an intentional journey with her deep knowledge of social justice work and challenges us to unpack our motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet, is an act of political writing,” regardless of intention.
If you’re just tuning into my podcast, welcome. I’m on a break, but I will be back in late August. Pick up a copy of our book club read, Craft and Conscience by Kavita Das, to join our book-club conversation, which will appear in this feed here in August.
To catch up over the summer, I encourage you to listen to my recent episode series on Agency for Writers, starting with episode 73 in this feed.
Show notes and episode transcript: rachelthompson.co/podcast/agency/
Megan Beadle ran her own literary agency for several years. So, if you’ve been listening to the last run of episodes, that word, agent, rings a bell. Ding, ding! We’re still talking about literary agency with the intention of both demystifying the role of agents a little and encouraging you, dear writer, to follow your path with intentionality and self-knowledge.Trends come and go, as she says, by being honest with yourself, you can always be proud of the work you produce.If you’re new to the podcast and started listening here, I encourage you to go back and check out those previous conversations, starting with episode 73, where Lacey Yong talks about how she found an agent and kept her own agency in the process, episode 74, in which Jessica Waite talks about navigating family relationships when publishing a memoir that spills some family tea, episode 75, in which my colleague at Room Geffen Semach takes us through the vast landscape of literary folks who work behind the scenes, and episode 76, in which Wendy Atwell talks about making her own map, finding the shape of her non-traditional formed memoir.Find a transcript and all the show notes for this episode on http://rachelthompson.co/podcast/77
This is the continuation of our agency theme on the podcast...I interview another luminous Writerly Love community member, Wendy Atwell, who is earlier in the process than our previous member guest who secured agents, Lacey Yong and Jessica Waite.Wendy is writing and revising her memoir, and I think it’s the perfect time to check in with her because she has made some great choices for her work that took a lot of intention and self-trust, i.e. agency.She is also someone who takes in a lot of information about writing from great teachers and books and then—with lots of agency—discerns what will serve her story, including finding an unconventional structure for her work.You can find the show notes for this episode at rachelthompson.co/podcast/76
As this is the third episode in the mini-series of episodes on the theme of agency and finding agency with your writing, we spend the most time talking about Geffen Semach's experience working as a Literary Agent’s Assistant and then cover the multiple roles they have held in the literary business. We also talk about audiobooks, and Geffen’s current role as Publishing Coordinator for Audiobooks at Penguin Random House Canada. And I use our time wisely, as they just completed editing the lovely issue called, Ley Line, for Room and I, at the time of recording, was in the final throes of copyediting the Ghosts issue Room, and clearly in need of a bit of a pep talk to keep going.Episode show notes and transcript are available at rachelthompson.co/podcast/76
The second in our series exploring the theme of agency for writers, our double-entendre theme of both intentionality and finding an agent. Jessica Waite, the author of the forthcoming memoir, The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards, shares her story of finding an agent slowly and then all of a sudden, and having her book sell very quickly BEFORE it could even go to auction with the big publishers.
The first in our series on the theme of agency—a term both literal (i.e. about finding an agent) and abstract, in that we talk about pursuing your writing life with intentionality. In this episode you'll hear from Lacey Yong, learn about her YA historical fantasy, writing in multiple genres, navigating writing as a new parent, and the idea of agency.
In this episode it is our Book Club Conversation and we talk about Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto by Sonya Huber, sharing who we think the book is for, how it helped with our writing, and what it adds to our ongoing conversation about craft.Find episode show notes at https://rachelthompson.co/podcast/72
Reflections on cool loneliness: When I’m not writing enough, I lose track of what I believe, who I am, and who I truly want to be. Also, Book Club Conversation is coming up. Also, Book Club Conversation is coming up. Be sure to check out Voice First: A Writer's Manifesto by Sonya Huber and then listen to our next episode for the low-down on the book.Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters on https://rachelthompson.co/letters. Get show notes, transcripts, and more details on this minisode at rachelthompson.co/podcast/cool
In this episode it’s part two of our most recent six senses showcase.
The writers you will hear all participated in the workshop series I offered last year on the six senses.
As I mentioned in part one of this series, we had so much goodness, that we did our showcase over two episodes. That’s why you’ll hear us mention the readers and speakers from our past episode, number 69, which featured Whitney French on the sense of sound, Cicely Belle on the sense of smell, Sarah Munn on the sense of taste. So, if you haven’t yet, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode found at rachelthompson.co/podcast/69
In this episode, we feature Tamara Jong on the sense of touch, A.L. Bishop on the sense of sight, and Candace Webb on the sixth sense.
Listen to learn about how we’re comparing our “brain notes,” as our guide to sight, A.L. Bishop called it. Hear how the writers shifted their approach to these three senses and how that helped them bring their more embodied writing to life. (Or intuition in the case of the sixth sense.)
At the end of our discussion, I will offer prompts on the sense of touch, sight, and the sixth sense for you to do some starter writing, a little free-writing that will help you hone in and bring more specificity, concrete, felt experience, and clarity to your own writing.
You can download twelve prompts, two for each sense, in a PDF in the show notes for this episode. This is episode number 71, so you would go to https://rachelthompson.co/podcast/71/
Download Now (PDF)Six-Senses-Writing-Prompts-from-RachelThompson.co_
Resources from the Episode + Tamara Jong: www.tamaraljong.com + Tamara mentions this study on the lasting impact of neglect (and not being touched): https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/06/neglect + Tamara mentions Brown Girl Dreaming* by Jacqueline Woodson + A.L. Bishop: albishopiswriting.com + Rachel describes the condition called Aphantasia https://aphantasia.com/what-is-aphantasia/ + Candace Webb: candacewebbauthor.com + Candace mentions proprioception and the vestibular system. * Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters—they are filled with support for your writing practice and sent every other week. rachelthompson.co/letters Transcript for Write, Publish, and Shine Episode 71Transcript to come soonABOUTPODCAST
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The post 71 // Touch, Sight, and the Sixth Sense in Your Writing appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
In this episode, it’s a little peak behind the scenes with my Writerly Love Community Facilitator, Meli Walker. I have some real #transparency moments around what I’m hearing back from writers in our broader community, which—in case you don’t know—includes you!
Links and Resources from this Episode: Episodes with recent guests who facilitated guest workshops are Naomi J. Williams, Lyndall Cain, and Christina Brobby. * The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez * Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses * Critical Response Theory by Liz Lerman * Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto by Sonya Huber * Revision Love course registration * Writerly Love membership which includes a self-guided version of the Platform Sparkle course * Rachel invited feedback by email on an affiliate program for the Writerly Love membership. Rachel’s email: hello@rachelthompson.co * Rachel is editing an upcoming issue of Room* Magazine
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters—they are filled with support for your writing practice and sent every other week. rachelthompson.co/letters
TRANSCRIPT*Episode 70 transcript to come soon...*
The post 70 // Special Episode: State of our Writing Community with Meli Walker appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
In this episode, we come to our senses again. We had another LIVE showcase of writers in the Writerly Love community.
The writers you will hear all participated in the workshop series I offered last year on the six senses.
This is our second showcase. A first group of writers also showcased the senses back in episode 64 (https://rachelthompson.co/podcast/64/).
This time, we had so much goodness, that we’ll do this showcase over two episodes.
In this episode, you will hear the first three of six writers discussing and reading their sensory work. So, today it’s all about Sound, Smell, and Taste.
Listen to learn how these writers shifted their approach to these essential senses and bringing that embodied writing to life.
At the end of our discussion, I will offer prompts on the sense for you to do some starter writing, a little free-writing that will help you hone in and bring more specificity, concrete, felt experience, and clarity to your own writing.
When you get to the prompts, you could hit pause to write.
Or, you could download all of the prompts in the PDF in the show notes for this episode:
Download Now (PDF)Six-Senses-Writing-Prompts-from-RachelThompson.co_
Resources from the Episode + Whitney French: whitneyfrenchwrites.com + Cicely Belle Blain: cicelybelleblain.com - Cicely mentions a study on https://www.verywellmind.com/why-do-we-associate-memories-so-strongly-with-specific-smells-5203963 - Burning Sugar by Cicely Belle Blain - Cicely also mentions The City We Become by N.K. Jemison + Sarah Munn: Instagram - Sarah references The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister - Sarah references Black Cake* by Charmaine Wilkerson * Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters—they are filled with support for your writing practice and sent every other week. rachelthompson.co/letters Transcript for Write, Publish, and Shine Episode 69—coming Soon!Transcript for Write, Publish, and Shine Episode 69—coming soon!
The post Sound, Smell, and Taste in Your Writing: Six Senses Showcase appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
This episode is the second in our mini-series of three episodes on the theme of empathy for writers and a really interesting and unique take on empathy, as my guest is a curator and writer of fiction, Lyndall Cain.
So, listen to Lyndall’s exploration of curation and really concrete ideas about how to find objects that build a whole world in writing and then sign-up for the workshop she will offer on Sunday, which gets even more hands-on about bringing your stories to life with objects.
I’m such a fan of her writing and am thrilled she said yes to offering this unique workshop in our community this month.
You can learn more about the three workshops held in February and sign up at rachelthompson.co/workshops
As Lyndall Cain puts it in our interview, “Your characters don’t have to be the only things alive on the page.”
Listen to hear about some fascinating collections and ways to think about collections and some brilliant examples on bringing stories to life with objects.
Links and Resources from this Episode: Lyndall taught curation at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Capetown. * Lyndall’s mentions student Nathalie Viruly’s “Of Matter and Meaning: A Bird’s Egg Collection” Michaelis School of Fine Art (2018) which looked at ornithologist Peter Steyn’s egg collection https://www.objectecologies.co.za/2019/university-of-cape-town/notebook-2-nest-records-mainly-eggs-in-drawer-3/ * Lyndall mentions the exhibition by Mark Dion called “Tate Thames Dig” (1999), Iziko Social History Centre as part of the Iziko Museum, The Museum of Innocence (Turkish: Masumiyet Müzesi) a novel by Orhan Pamuk * “In the Event of My Father’s Death” by Roxane Gay * “Who Will Greet You At Home” by Lesley Nneka Arimah * The Social Life of Things edited by Arjun Appadurai * “thing theory” which came into use in 2001, in Bill Brown’s introduction to a special issue of Critical Inquiry titled ”Things”* * Learn from Lyndall at her workshop on Sunday, Feb 26. Find details on our February workshop series at https://rachelthompson.co/workshops * Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every-other week and filled with support for your writing practice. The post Empathy for Objects in Your Writing with Lyndall Cain appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
In this episode, I talk to six writers in my Writerly Love writing community about writing through the senses.
This conversation was a follow up to a series of guided writing sessions we did, with each focusing on prompts related to the senses.
You’ll hear from these writers all emerging and many in various stages in the process of writing their first book-length projects in various genres.
In this showcase, you’ll hear each writer represent a sense and how they apply it to their writing and they will read from their work as well.
My aim here is to help make sensitivity really grounded and specific. I also offer a taste of the experience we had in our six senses of writing workshop with prompts for each sense. So, bring a notebook and hit pause to do some free-writing around the senses.
All of the prompts appear in the show notes below.
I’m so grateful to our six writers:
- Wendy Atwell discussed the sense of sight and her project to notice more with the senses (she also recommended the book Self Portrait in Green by Marie NDiaye)
- Crystal Randall Barnett talked about the sense of smell and its inherent link to memory
- Miche Genest brought her unique chef perspective to the sense of taste
- Andrea Martineau read a poem that felt meant to be heard as she illustrated the sense of hearing
- Meli Walker brought great insight to how touch is really about where our body ends and the world begins
- Kimberly Peterson as a nurse and a sensitive poet really brought home our mission as sensitive writers to be fully aware of how we move in the world
Thank you also to all of the writers who participated in our Six Senses of Writing series, which provided the genesis for this conversation. All of the writers involved really brought their most sensitive, warm and generous selves into that experience and created something beautiful in their writing and in our community.
Write, Publish, and ShineThe Write, Publish, and Shine Intensive is a four-month program for writers who want to generate, revise, and publish new works of writing with expert support and a community of writers at your back.
At the end of your intensive you will have polished several stories, poems, or hybrid work, submitted your work to publications that fit you, prepared for a big “YES” for your writing and your writing dreams, and found your place in a community of writers.
If you are ready to write, publish, and shine, this intensive program is for you.
You can learn more about the Write, Publish, and Shine Intensive and sign up at rachelthompson.co/intensive
Learn More + JoinSensory Writing PromptsSight Prompt: Visual Art Writing (Ekphrasis)Think about a memorable work of art you have viewed, including sculptures, paintings, mixed media work, performance art, sidewalk chalk, graffiti, fashion, and any other visual creations you have witnessed.
Write about this work of art and really let the visual senses go wild. You could choose to do this from your point of view or the point of view of a character you’ve been working with.
Smell Prompt: Earliest MemoryChoose one of your earliest memories. You could choose to do this, and all of our prompts from your point of view or the point of view of a character you’ve been working with.
What did this earliest memory smell like? Describe this.
Taste Prompt: Prepare a MealWrite instructions for how to prepare a meal—make it food you enjoy cooking with others, or on your own, or to have cooked for you.
Think about:
- Who are you (or your narrator) instructing how to cook? And why?
- Describe all of the flavours of the ingredients as you prepare your instructions.
- Tune into all of your senses when it comes to the preparation of the food—the colours and textures and sounds as well as the flavours.
Hearing Prompt: Sounds Around YouWrite a list of all the sounds you hear around you. You might need to take your headphones off for a moment. Choose one of the things you hear and write everything you know about this item.
Touch Prompt: Missing TouchWrite about a character of your choice who misses something they cannot touch. What is it this character longs to touch and why can they not touch it? (This could be character you or another character you’re working with or a character you read recently.)
Sixth Sense Prompt: What has your sixth sense been telling you?What has your sixth sense been telling you today? You could take this as intuition or write about the systems that control balance and movement in the body. And you can always write from another point of view.
The post Using the Six Senses in Your Writing—Showcase PLUS Prompts appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
In this episode, Ellen Chang-Richardson and I both speak as editorial collective members at Room, and as editors of the upcoming issue of Room’s Ghosts issue. That is issue number 46.3, if you’re counting. And submissions are due on January 5, 2023, which is very soon!
Here is our call for submissions:
Come haunt us. Room seeks writers of marginalized genders for poems full of folklore, creative nonfiction on rattling encounters, transient fiction, and other such spirited words. Send us writing and visual art that is acutely aware of the apparitions around us. Show us the spectres, the relationships with revenants, the ancestries of time and place, the imprints, and the echoes. We want your best work in any genre, work that breaks with traditional form, for Room issue 46.3, Ghosts, edited by Rachel Thompson, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Melissa Barrientos, and Lena Belova.
Ellen and I get a little into how things work behind the scenes at Room, and how we (the collective) are many people, all rolling up our sleeves to create space in literature, art, and feminism.
But what you really want to listen for is what we want to see in your submissions to our Ghosts issue. Ellen and I share our relationship to the subject of Ghosts and what we think the theme is about—and also how we want you, writers who submit to the issue, to surprise us with new interpretations of the theme, too.
This episode was recorded live on Zoom in front of writers from my writing community, called Writerly Love. So you will hear us also answer their questions toward the end of our discussion, too.
The Write, Publish, and Shine Intensive is a five-month program for writers who want to generate, revise, and publish new works of writing with expert support and a community of writers at your back.
Links from the episode Room 46.3 Call for Submissions * Ellen Chang-Richardson * 10 Books and Stories That Haunt Us From Room Magazine’s Ghost-issue Editors * The Foghorn Echoes by Danny Ramadan * Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi * Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories by Audrey Niffenegger * I Become a Delight to My Enemies by Sara Peters * Autobiography of Red* by Anne Carson The post Ghosts and Haunting with Room Editor Ellen Chang-Richardson appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
Listen if you’ve been looking for books to support your writing practice, or maybe a list of books to give another writer in your life, or if you’ve been wanting to read with a community of writers, too, and need some guidance to get started.
Maybe you have found yourself feeling compromised by the publication process. Maybe even by just anticipating the publication process you have bent your writing into something that doesn’t feel authentic to who you are and what you are here to say.
If you recognize yourself in either of those statements, you’re not the only one. We write to be read and it can be hard to hold that confidence it takes to stay the course and be ourselves with our writing.
Hear from three writers, who are figuring this out, too: where they went wrong with staying true to their voice and authentic selves and how they found their own unique grooves and continue to work on staying true to them.
A special thank you to Meli Walker who helped create this episode with interviews and production support.
Chill Subs is making the submissions process much easier and less stressful. That’s the mission statement on this database of places to send your writing. Well, that’s what it started as and it’s already growing into a bigger resource for writers.
If you’re looking for a vibe that is warm and creative to learn and grow as a writer, registration is currently open for my Writerly Love Community: rachelthompson.co/join
Learn more about the series: Six Senses of Summer Writing at rachelthompson.co/sixsenses
You’ll hear Mark Drew of the Gettysburg Review in this episode answering questions from the live cohort who came to our call attended by writers in the Lit Mag Love course. [rachelthompson.co/litmaglove]
When you’ll listen you’ll note right away that this call happened in the first year of the pandemic and you’ll get an editor’s perspective on the kind of reflection missing from most writing in the moment, at least for this particular journal. And you’ll hear about the kinds of work Gettysburg accepts the qualities of the work they look for and learn more about the editorial experience you’ll get should you place work with them.
Here are five things editors want in your writing submissions to journals. This is all based on my experience reading submissions, publishing work in a lit mag, and talking to dozens of editors from other literary journals who do the same.
If you'd like to find assignments to help you get more of each of the five items in your writing, check out my article here: https://rachelthompson.co/w-r-i-t-e/
In this episode, Rachel Thompson talks with Lilly Dancyger of Narratively, about the responsibility of editors to elevate voices left out the conversation, why you should know what conversations have already been had about the subjects of your writing, her experiences with memoir writing both deep and shallow with ideas on how to find the deep stories that resonate with readers and editors.
“Write rhymes with fight for a reason. We’re not all meant to be at the front line. I’m way more comfortable sitting down and trying to figure out how to write back against something that I really dislike.”
The Humber Literary Review celebrates diversity and is built upon the idea that a healthy and vital community—artistic or otherwise—is an inclusive one, without barriers or discrimination.
Work from the HLR has been featured in Best Canadian Poetry, Best Canadian Essays, and has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. They are always looking to publish and promote more emerging artists.
Listen to hear about Lue’s Afrofuturistic writing and for insight into how things work at Room magazine where we are both collective members.
As in the midst of this vaccinated pandemic life, I have had many awkward social moments and truly stressful interactions where I don't feel connected to myself and who I am.
And each time that happens, I realize I haven't been writing enough. I've missed the opportunity to practice my “cool loneliness.”
In this episode, I talk to Tamara Jong about celebrating writers’ publication wins.
Tamara Jong (she/her) is a Montreal-born mixed-race writer/cartoonist of Chinese and European ancestry. Her work has appeared in Anomaly, Carte Blanche, Room Magazine, The New Quarterly, Invisible Publishing and Body & Soul; Stories for Skeptics and Seekers.
Listen to her take on holding each other up as writers, jealousy, and persevering to publish. Plus she talks about how to get started in narrative comic art.
I'm reissuing this interview as a companion to a piece that was just posted on my website, written by Lucy Wilde, a writer in my course and membership community, about publishing with Atticus Review in a series of articles called "How I Published With..." You can find this article on rachelthompson.co/articles.
As Lucy, my student, writes, "There are two main reasons I wanted to see my work in Atticus Review, the quality of the writing and the fact that they are interested in publishing hybrid, unconventional work that pushes boundaries."
There is a lot to love and a lot of helpful instruction about how to write publish and shine in this conversation with Atticus Review’s former Managing Editor, Dorothy Bendel.
“I think there is too much pushing forward in a way that is not motivated by pleasure, that is motivated by shaped ambition or greed or some sense that people have as to what they should want. Zooming over everything else. And to me that is not literature. That is careerism.” —Wendy Lesser, founder of The Threepenny Review.
You probably already know, or have heard, that rejection is a big part of writing to be read and submitting your work to lit mags.
You probably also wish you could snap your fingers and become immune to rejection, but, sorry, it’s unavoidable. It just feels bad—we're wired for that. And, unfortunately, were we to totally avoid feeling bad about rejection, it would make us pretty bad writers. To be blasé about being turned down would likely require turning off all our feelings. And feeling is an occupational requirement for us writers.
Before we leap right into those bad feelings of rejection, I asked the writers with us today to go through some of the things they learned they can do to minimize the chance of rejection for their work.
Ellen Chang-Richardson is a poet, writer and editor of Taiwanese and Cambodian Chinese (or Chinese Cambodian) descent, whose writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Vallum Contemporary, and Watch Your Head, among others—including Room, which you'll hear about coming up.
Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri is Norwegian-Canadian translator and writer. She had her first story published in English in 2013 and has since chosen that as her writing language.
Lori Sebastianutti is a writer and teacher and former managing editor of the Fertility Matters Canada blog. She has published in The New Quarterly, The Hamilton Review of Books, and Nurture, which you'll hear all about in this episode.
Angela Wright is a writer, historian, and political analyst based in Toronto, Canada. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Catapult, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, and The Brooklyn Quarterly. She has performed her poetry in venues across the United States and Canada, including at Canada’s National Arts Centre.
These are four writers who actively submit their work, who persist at it and who publish. Among what they have in common is that they each found their “lane” in writing, and that lane gave them the traction to publish in lit mags and succeed by their unique definitions of “success” for their writing.
They didn't necessarily start out in their lane, so you'll hear from them about finding that sweet spot, that place where what they are writing and where they are submitting fit.
"Really, the thing that keeps me writing is knowing that at some point I will have some kind of shared connection with readers." —Meli Walker
In this episode, host Rachel Thompson speaks with Meli Walker about writing about grief and finding connection.
They talk about their new joint-venture project, the Writing Grief Podcast (writinggrief.com) and how Meli is, herself, writing grief.
Content Warning: those with younger folks around them might want to use headphones for this subject matter, and those not able to listen to (mainly indirect) talk about childhood abuse and trauma might take a break this time, if you need it.
Listen to hear them talk about the difference between writing about trauma with an eye to publication versus writing about trauma to heal and how to discern the two.
And listen to get to know Rachel’s co-host for the new Writing Grief Podcast (writinggrief.com).
”Grief writing is about using our own experiences or peak or definitive or transformative experiences as material for writing, but also because that material is something that we deeply want to understand, and we know that it might not be about flowers.” —Meli Walker
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/53
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every-other week and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
Host Rachel Thompson explores going from the intimate to the broad, the personal to the political, and how to reach out to the world with your writing with the help of six writers and editors.
“I think anything that’s written about well can be interesting.”—Shashi Bhat, EVENT
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with EVENT Editor, Shashi Bhat about how no subject is off-limits and her urge for you to find your original take. You can also listen and experience someone doing something for the first time! Let this episode inspire you to try something new in writing or other creative pursuits.
This episode is brought to you by the Mom Egg Review. Submit your poetry, fiction, creative prose, and art to Mom Egg Review’s “Mother Figures” issue by July 15. Info and guidelines: http://momeggreview.com/submit.
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/01
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every other Thursday and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
“Trust that the reader came with you, trust that you did a good job and that you brought us there.” —Emily Wojcik
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Emily Wojcik about trusting your writing and how the Massachusetts Review is more interested in the world than the self when it comes to writing they publish.
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/35
This episode is brought to you by the Mom Egg Review. Submissions to their "Mother Figures" issue closes on July 15. http://momeggreview.com/submit
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every other Thursday and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
"Poems, no matter what they are about or how they approach the world, have to need to happen." —Rebecca Salazar of Plenitude.
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Rebecca Salazar, Associate Poetry Editor of Plenitude. This interview a lot of topics, including what exactly is CanLit, RuPaul's Drag Race, and why submitting to contests isn't always the best choice. They also talk about representation and appropriation and Rebecca Salazar says what matters and is to be willing to be wrong, because you’re going to be wrong more than once.
This episode is brought to you by the Mom Egg Review. Submissions to their "Mother Figures" issue closes on July 15. http://momeggreview.com/submit
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/20
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every-other Thursday and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
“We both really like having, essentially, the guts to look at not just issues in their full complexity, but also not to try to gloss over the ugliness.” —Amy Mitchell, The /tƐmz/ Review
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Amy Mitchell and Aaron Schneider about the introspection they want to see in political writing, the care and knowledge required to write about cultures, classes, and communities that you don't belong to, and taking the risk to be ugly in writing. (And the surprising thing they discovered when they have published that ugly, risky writing.)
This episode is brought to you by the Writerly Love Membership Community.
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/51
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every other Thursday and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
50th Episode!
This special episode is all about you, the listeners. Rachel answers your questions, mostly about submitting and publishing in lit mags.
Questions cover writing contests, the questions of whether to re-submit or not to re-submit, should you or should you not message editors who say they like your work, how quickly does writing about current events go stale. Plus, Rachel shares a little out-there theory about when you should time your submissions to lit mags.
The Lit Mag Love course starts soon! This is the last time I plan to offer the course in 2021. So get yourself registered now if you want to get a big YES for your writing from a lit mag you love. You can learn more and sign up at rachelthompson.co/litmaglove
Find a full transcript of this episode at http://rachelthompson.co/50
“Don’t give up and recognize that the writing is a thing in and of itself as well. You need to be able to love doing the writing and just love being in this world that you create with your characters, over and above wanting your name on a book.” —Amanda Leduc
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Amanda Leduc of the Festival of Literary Diversity about disability in literature and how the literary culture has started to make a place for writers with disabilities.
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/14
The Lit Mag Love course is open for early registration now! I offer this live, guided course only a couple of times per year. If you want to get a big YES for your writing from a lit mag you love, learn more and sign up at rachelthompson.co/litmaglove
“Nothing has to happen in the story. There doesn't need to be explosions or big shocking twists. It's just enough to have well-developed characters and a beautiful world.” —Terese Mason Pierre, Augur Magazine
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Terese Mason Pierre of Augur magazine about the “whole” characters and “human” stories that they publish and about letting things get messier in her writing during this pandemic year. Listen to their conversation on writing, and her reading, plus her vision for the future of literary circles...
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at http://rachelthompson.co/podcast/49
SEND IN YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT WRITING AND PUBLISHING to podcast@rachelthompson.co and Rachel will answer them in the next episode.
“We’re excited if the forms that come in are not an arc. We’re not just looking for one direction of the piece, it doesn’t have to use linear time or linear form.” —Katelyn Keating, CRAFT.
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Katelyn Keating of CRAFT. Listen to their conversation on the mechanics of story openings and the emotions in their endings, reckonings still to be had in the literary discussion of the canon and what qualifies as short stories, and for behind-the-scenes details on how CRAFT editors read, accept, and work with writing submissions.
“I’m interested in asking different questions and in the vulnerability of language that allows for an honest attempt at expression and a way to investigate complex questions.” —Janice Lee, Entropy Magazine
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Janice Lee, Executive Editor of ENTROPY, in this interview from 2017. Listen for conversation about writing when language fails you and the community-first approach to ENTROPY magazine.
This episode is brought to you by The Nasiona.
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/08
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every-other Thursday and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
“You’re kinda playing with fire when you delve into trauma writing. It’s possible to push yourself past your own limits and touch on things that are more tender than you thought.” —Josh Brandon of Black Warrior Review
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with Josh Brandon, Editor of Black Warrior Review, about taking a break when writing is difficult and about submitting and publishing your writing with their journal.
This episode is brought to you by The Nasiona.
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/47
Sign up for my Writerly Love Letters sent every-other Thursday and filled with support for your writing practice at rachelthompson.co/letters
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with editors from Qwerty magazine, based at the University of New Brunswick, about sumptuous food writing and, of course, everything you need to know if you want to submit and publish your writing with Qwerty.
Host Rachel Thompson speaks with three editors from the online journal Okay Donkey about weird poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Téa Franco, Genevieve Kersten, and Elizabeth Upshur discuss weird writing's significance and purpose in these weird times, how social media has helped us find our weird community and created all the extra weirdness available, and, of course, everything you need to know if you want to submit and publish your writing with Okay Donkey.
“I think that when a writer doesn’t have a good understanding of who they are and what their beliefs are...they are going to necessarily lack the conviction in their writing to go daring places, and ask daring questions.” —Alicia Elliott Alicia Elliott is a Tuscarora writer and the new Creative Non-Fiction editor at The Fiddlehead magazine. She is also someone both daring in her writing, and solid in her beliefs.
She talks to host Rachel Thompson about the craft of creative nonfiction, editing your own work, and how to write about trauma without having to really write about a traumatic event. She also shared what happened when she took a year off to write. (The answer may surprise you!)
For an episode transcript and links to articles and works mentioned in the podcast, go to rachelthompson.co/podcast/11
In this episode, Ploi Pirapokin and Rachel Thompson start deep, jumping right into discussing estrangement for writers. Ploi shares about writing through immigration statuses and her Genius Visa. There is A LOT of laughter in this episode. (Rachel edited the big bursts of them, so they don't blast your eardrums.) You will find Ploi's joy as infectious—in the best way—as Rachel did during the interview. Ploi Pirapokin also reads from her award-winning lyric essay, “How to be Extraordinary in America.”
This episode is brought to you by Lit Mag News Roundup: Stay up to date on all the latest news in the lit mag world by subscribing at litmagnews.substack.com, and by the Lit Mag Love, the five-week course that helps you get a big “YES” from a journal you love, and then another and another, taught by your podcast host Rachel Thompson. Learn more and sign up at rachelthompson.co/litmaglove
Find all the show notes and a full transcript of the interview at rachelthompson.co/podcast/44
The biggest epiphany I had about my writing in the last year is that there is nothing special about my story. This sounds like a terrible epiphany, I realize! But it was so liberating. Let me explain.
Full episode transcript available in the show notes on rachelthompson.co/podcast/43
Emerging author, Rowan McCandless shares how she built her writing community. She and Rachel discuss the four different forms of writing groups she engages. She also shares a racist experience she had in a writing course.
Plus you can hear Rowan read from Persephone's Children, her forthcoming book of essays, out from Dundurn Press in September 2021.
` In this first solo episode after the Write, Publish, and Shine podcast reboot, I talk about the five things editors want in your writing submissions to journals. This is all based on my experience reading submissions, publishing work in a lit mag, and talking to dozens of editors from other literary journals who do the same.
If you'd like to find assignments to help you get more of each of the five items in your writing, check out my article here: https://rachelthompson.co/w-r-i-t-e/
I have an announcement about this podcast, but before we get to it, I want to thank you for continuing to listen in this almost year since I released new podcast episodes. I feel you out there, I see the numbers, too, so I know you’re still out there listening and waiting for new episodes. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for your patience.
Find the full transcript of this episode here: https://rachelthompson.co/podcast/reboot/
The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal founded in 2005 by Leah Browning. Published in the spring and fall, each issue features a collection of poetry, short fiction, and personal essays.
Apple Valley Review editor, Leah Browning, has worked as a freelance writer and editor since 1995. She is the author of three short nonfiction books for teens and pre-teens and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction.
Mom Egg Review is a literary journal about motherhood. It promotes and celebrates the creative force of mother writers and artists. Mom Egg Review is about being a mother, in its many varieties. It is also about being a daughter, worker, partner, artist, a member of cultures and communities, and explores how these identities can collide and coexist.
Writing may be the only pursuit that M. Paramita Lin hasn't accidentally stumbled into. In between hanging out with triad members and living in a succession of haunted flats in Hong Kong, she's also been a paid companion to the third wife of a tycoon, toured the world with musicians, and apprenticed as a goldsmith in Italy. Lin's stories are mostly set in Asian cities, and they are often funny, occasionally strange, sometimes scary, but always true. She is represented by the hardworking Kelvin Kong at K2 Literary.
“Editing is a position of power that I take seriously. I’m a writer, author, creative in different ways and I experienced the negativity of being a victim of systems of oppression,” Julián Esteban Torres López.
Julián Esteban Torres López is a Colombian-born journalist, publisher, podcaster, and editor. Before founding the nonfiction storytelling organization The Nasiona, he ran several cultural and arts organizations, edited journals and books, was a social justice and public history researcher, wrote a column for Colombia Reports, taught university courses, and managed a history museum. He’s a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee and has written two books on social justice. Torres López holds a bachelor’s in philosophy and in communication and a master’s in justice studies from the University of New Hampshire and was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, where he focused on political science and Latin American studies.
The Nasiona is a nonfiction storytelling organization that amplifies the marginalized, undervalued, overlooked, and forgotten voices and experiences of our communities. Guided by a social justice compass, they cultivate the seeds of nonfiction through a podcast, publishing house, and creative nonfiction magazine, as well as by offering editing services and an internship program. They are currently focusing on the following story topics: being mixed-race, LGBTQIAA+, diaspora and immigration, and womanhood and trauma.
In an age when telling the difference between reality and delusion is frighteningly labyrinthine, they focus on creative works based on facts, truth-seeking, human concerns, real events, and real people, with a personal touch.
This episode focuses on working in close relationship with writers, and thinking through all your relationships as you navigate choices for your writing and in your writing community.
Jessica Johns is a nehiyaw aunty and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta and is currently living, working, and learning on the traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She is the new Managing Editor at Room and the former poetry editor for PRISM international, and is a co-organizer of the Indigenous Brilliance reading series in Vancouver.
Room is Canada’s oldest feminist literary journal, and has published fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, art, interviews, and book reviews for forty years. Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases writing and art by women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit and nonbinary people. We believe in publishing emerging writers alongside established authors, and because of this, approximately 90% of the work we publish comes from unsolicited submissions or contest entries. Jessica Johns is a nehiyaw aunty and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta and is currently living, working, and learning on the traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She is the new Managing Editor at Room and the former poetry editor for PRISM international, and is a co-organizer of the Indigenous Brilliance reading series in Vancouver.
Room is Canada’s oldest feminist literary journal, and has published fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, art, interviews, and book reviews for forty years. Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases writing and art by women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit and nonbinary people. We believe in publishing emerging writers alongside established authors, and because of this, approximately 90% of the work we publish comes from unsolicited submissions or contest entries.
The Swamp publishes work that evokes a sense of place, which, for The Swamp, is broadly defined. “We look forward to reading work that we can inhabit, no matter its geography. We do give preference to the southern gothic, to poems and stories wrapped in a heavy coat of humidity. With that said, we seek to publish all work that surprises us with new territory, with characters and landscapes we don't get the chance often enough to read about.” It is an annual print magazine that welcomes art, poetry, essay, and short fiction submissions. Send them place-based work that grounds them and with something to say that moves them.
Literary Mama believes that all mothers have a story worth sharing and honors the many faces of motherhood by publishing work that celebrates the journey as well as the job.
Felicity Landa earned her Bachelor’s in Creative Writing and Literature from CSU Long Beach in 2013, where she was awarded the Horn scholarship for her novel. She is currently an MFA student in Fiction and Screenwriting at UC Riverside Palm Desert. She serves as fiction editor for Literary Mama and nonfiction editor for The Coachella Review. She spends her time reading, writing, editing, and raising her daughter, in Santa Barbara, California, where she lives with her family.
Founded at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2005, the award-winning magazine features writing and art that reimagine place, and our authors interpret this charge expansively. An ecotone is a transition zone between two adjacent ecological communities, containing the characteristic species of each. It is, therefore, a place of danger or opportunity, a testing ground. The magazine explores the ecotones between landscapes, literary genres, scientific and artistic disciplines, modes of thought.
They are particularly interested in hearing from writers historically underrepresented in literary publishing and in place-based contexts: people of color, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, gender-nonconforming people, LGBTQIA+, women, and others. And they welcome the work of emerging writers.
Rachel Taube is an MFA candidate in Fiction at UNC-Wilmington, and Managing Editor at Ecotone.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament (University of North Texas Press, 2017), winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize. The recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in literature, she teaches at University of North Carolina—Wilmington, where she is the editor of Ecotone and Lookout Books. She lives near the Cape Fear River.
Hear how these editors work to publish voices missing from lit mags and confront the liminal space we are all in as our environment changes.
Blanket Sea features work created by people living with chronic illness, mental illness, and disability. “There aren’t many places where writers and artists with illness and disabilities can express themselves in a safe, open, and welcoming space. We want Blanket Sea to be that space.”
"A rejection letter doesn't mean it's not working." —Caroline Knecht of Whiskey Island
Founded in 1977, Whiskey Island is a nonprofit literary journal published by Cleveland State University. They accept submissions of original poetry, fiction, and creative essays during two reading periods: August 15th through November 15th, and January 15th through April 15th.
"Our impulse is to trust writers and follow their lights. In cases where we’re editing and working closely with them, it’s to help them get to that place that they’re wanting to get to, but might want some structure or help getting there."
"I think intersectional community asks us to be open and mindful of difference. It asks us to have a posture of listening that requires a lot of effort, it requires a lot of heart, it requires a lot of humility in many ways. Because we are being asked to really give attention to another person’s experience that we might not have any relationship with. This is a crucial point of connection for me because if we are artists or writers, what we really want is to connect with people."
Room Magazine’s Turtle Island Responds, is creating an online library of lived experience, offered in verse.
In this episode of Lit Mag Love: A podcast for creative writers who want to publish, host Rachel Thompson interviews Doyali Islam from Arc magazine.
Their conversation covers offering an emotional truth and creating some kind of intimacy with the readers. They also discuss how poets and readers of poetry feel a sense of belonging through poem. Doyali is someone who recites her favourite poems to keep herself company as she moves invisibly about the city. If you spot her in her cat-print dress, though, she would love to connect with you. (She describes just how to do so in the episode.)
In this episode of the Lit Mag Love Podcast, host Rachel Thompson talks with Alexandria Petrassi from So to Speak journal.
Their discussion covers how the “canonical” writer has changed. “When I started reading poetry, I didn’t read anybody living,” says Alexandria, adding “The fantastic part about this moment, is who people are reading now and who people will remember are so much different now. The quality of the voices, speaking their own truths, their experiences moving through the world.”
So to Speak Journal seeks poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art for one online issue and one print/contest issue a year—the contest issue has $8 entry fees, and they do not charge for submissions to the online issue and blog. (Check their Submittable page to see what they are reading before you submit.) They are looking for work that matches their intersectional feminist viewpoint, and for work by writers, poets, and artists who want to challenge and change the identity of the “canonical” writer.
Alexandria Petrassi studies poetry in the MFA program at George Mason University. She is the Editor in Chief at So to Speak Journal. She is the winner of the 2018 Mary Roberts Rhinehart Award in Poetry, and her work has appeared in CALAMITY, Crab Fat Magazine, and Sweet Tree Review, among others. You can find her on Instagram @alexandriapetra.
In this episode of the Lit Mag Love Podcast, host Rachel Thompson talks with Sakina Fakhri and Diana McClure, founders of Azure magazine.
Azure accepts literary fiction, creative non-fiction, excerpts, screenplays, stageplays, fragments, meanderings, philosophy and poetry, in submissions of up to 50 pages. They don’t charge fees for submissions, and here’s something interesting—if your submission is part of a novel-length work or feature-length screenplay, there exists the possibility of publishing it in installments in future issues.
They talk about the connection of interiority to empathy—how writers give readers that inner experience of something they don’t understand. Listen to this conversation with Sakina Fakhri & Diana McClure to learn more about the unique, cerebral and empathetic writing they love to publish in Azure.
We talk about how their collaboration works and extends to the writers who submit to the journal. We cover jealousy in art and how the poems and stories they publish need to be ready for their solo appearance. We also get pretty specific about the lengths of work in both flash and longer fiction. And the interview turns even more collaborative when they turn the mic on me to discuss our writing practices—they have lots to say about what has worked and what hasn’t when it comes to writing consistently.
In this episode, Rachel Thompson talks with Robin Richardson, founder of the Minola Review. She discusses how she overcame early critiques of her writing by men—critiques she internalized. And they talk about getting men to listen. Minola Review is named after the protagonist in The Taming of the Shrew after all. One theme of their conversation is taking control of your narrative.
"[Negative] voices like that aren't allowed in my life anymore and they were before and it has something to do with me. And I'm interested in women who can see those things about themselves and talk about them as well."
Writing from Minola Review Discussed in the Episode: PALM TREES, POST-RAPE by Cade Leebron BLITZED OUT by Lauren Turner ON TENDERNESS by Shannon Bramer LULLABY by T. Kira Madden (author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls) COLD HANDS by Paola Ferrante
Host: Rachel Thompson Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski Transcript Editing: Rachel Thompson Presented by Room magazine and the Lit Mag Love Course
In this episode, Rachel Thompson talks with Lilly Dancyger of Narratively, about the responsibility of editors to elevate voices left out the conversation, why you should know what conversations have already been had about the subjects of your writing, her experiences with memoir writing both deep and shallow with ideas on how to find the deep stories that resonate with readers and editors.
Lilly Dancyger’s essays and journalism on sex, politics, and culture have appeared in Rolling Stone, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, Psychology Today and more. She is the editor of Burn it Down, an anthology of women and nonbinary writers on anger and it’s forthcoming from Seal Press. Lilly is also at work on a memoir about her father’s art and heroin addiction and the legacy of both in her life.
Episode Links Lilly’s essay, Personal Narratives in the Trump Era
Writing from Narratively discussed in the episode:
- Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper
- My Childhood on the Run from the FBI
- My Ex the Drug Queen Pin
Episode Transcript Rachel Thompson: Welcome to Lit Mag Love, Lilly.
Lilly Dancyger: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Rachel Thompson: I know you’re quite prolific having caught up on a lot of your of your work recently. I know you write both creative nonfiction essays and reportage. I’m wondering then what’s your writing practice like how do you balance working in these different forms from day to day.
Lilly Dancyger: Well in my own work I kind of go in phases, I’ve noticed. I’ll get really into reporting and feature writing for a little while and I’ll do that a lot and then I’ll realize that I haven’t written a personal essay in a while and I’ve missed that. So, kinda dive headlong into that and write a bunch of essays, and then I realize I haven’t reported anything in a while and you know kind of goes back and forth like. The bigger challenge for me is really balancing my own work with my editing work. Nurturing other people’s work and editing and helping bring that out into the world. And then also finding time to write my own stuff. Once in a while.
Rachel Thompson: Oh yeah that’s totally relatable to me.
Rachel Thompson: Can you tell me more about how you became a writer and like your origin story? Did you know other writers growing up?
Lilly Dancyger: I was raised by two artists. My father was a sculptor, painter, printmaker, and my mother was a fashion designer. So I grew up around creative people and the creative process and art making of various kinds not specifically other writers, but that just kind of came to me starting very young. I wrote. A lot of poetry actually as a very young child, which I now don’t do at all but that was my entry—you know bad, weird kid poems. And that turned into, you know I was a big diarist as a teenager and I really loved Anaïs Nin. So journaling kind of transformed into personal essay and memoir. And then I studied journalism in school, so the two kind of came together.
Rachel Thompson: Nice, yeah I love that kid poetry was sort of your gateway into writing.
Lilly Dancyger: None of it was any good you know. But still a starting point.
Rachel Thompson: So I know you mentioned your father and and I’ve read that you said on working on a memoir about your father’s visual art and his struggle with and ultimate loss to addiction, you’ve said it was only in reflecting so deeply on the good and bad of his life that I was able to see him and myself clearly. And so I’m wondering when you were starting writing—maybe not in the bad poetry days, but later on—were you setting out in order to see yourself for or what other motivations do you have for writing?
Lilly Dancyger: Well with this project specifically I have been working on this memoir for almost 10 years now, but it was not a memoir at all When I started it. I started out writing an artist monograph. I wanted to put my father’s artwork into a book, and tell his story and write about his imagery and his process and kind of memorialized that. And as I worked on it everybody who read a draft consistently asked for more of my story, more about what it was like to uncover all this stuff, more about the process of spending a decade researching him and then investigating his work. And bit by bit I kind of crept into the story until it turned into a memoir, kind of regardless of my intention. So I definitely didn’t set out to discover myself at all, but that just kind of happened through the storytelling and through the finding of the story, which you I think is something that happens to a lot of writers, I think, you set out trying to understand the world and that. It kind of circles back and teaches you about yourself, and kind of go through that over and over again.
Rachel Thompson: Lovely. I think that’s really apt, and relatable to a lot of readers. I mean, speaking of personal narratives in that kind of self-discovery that happens a lot in writing in your essay Personal Narratives in the Trump Era, you identify one of the greatest challenges of the times right now is the effort to fight off emotional fatigue and talk about the need for this kind of personal narrative tied to the travesties that are happening in our own era as well. And I like how you use The Diary of Anne Frank as an example, and there isn’t a specific question in this but it’s more just a thank you for writing that with such insight and care and I really urge any writers who draw from their own lives to read it. And I’m just wondering, rather I’ll ask, what are the techniques that you use to ward off emotional fatigue and what fills your cup as a writer and editor, specifically about that project, which I imagine was over 10 years probably quite difficult at times and in other writing projects, too.
Lilly Dancyger: I mean really even the emotionally challenging and exhausting and draining material that I sometimes write about, writing really does kind of help me fight off that fatigue, because it’s it’s a direction it’s somewhere to put all of those emotions that exhaustion and it’s creating something out of it and not just kind of sinking into it and feeling despondent, you know. I think, being alive right now it’s very tempting to just give in to apathy and to disengage and decide nothing matters and we’re all screwed, so whatever. And I think for me writing is a good way to avoid that and gives me something to hold onto and work toward and remember that there are other people out there who are feeling what I’m feeling in that words are a way we can connect to each other and keep each other going and give each other the fuel that we need. So by attempting to provide that for other people it gives me a feeling of something that needs to be done, something that I can do other than just throw my hands up in despair. So, that’s kind of been the biggest thing for me.
Rachel Thompson: You have so much to teach really even about writing just from reading that article and other pieces that you’ve written, and what you’re saying now, and I know you do formally teach writing, and I’m wondering about your experience with writing mentors and if you have an experience with yourself as you were mentored yourself, or with mentoring other writers, and how do you see mentoring happening within your writing community?
Lilly Dancyger: Yeah I mean you know I don’t have the traditional idea that you think of as one mentor who you stick with for a lifetime and there you’re one person that you always go back to. I experience it in more of a communal sense or, I feel like there are lots of people that I look to for guidance, reassurance, inspiration, and I try to pass that forward to many people as well. Of course, there’s infighting and there’s drama and there are issues within the literary community, but I found the writers that I know to be really mostly generous and wonderful people who want to help each other. People who are farther along in their careers than I am are always gracious and encouraging, and happy to tell me that whatever frustrations I’m currently in the middle of, even if it doesn’t go away, you get through it. And so I try to provide that reassurance where I can to people who are just starting out. And I think that’s a really important part of it. Why would we each have to reinvent the wheel when we can help each other out. So I see mentoring, in my experience at least, to be less of the kinda traditional one-to-one and more of a practice and attitude and general way of relating with the literary community.
Rachel Thompson: What’s been the most rewarding part for you of editing and how has editing informed your own writing?
Lilly Dancyger: That’s very related to the idea of mentorship and it’s incredibly rewarding to be able to help somebody who has an incredible story to tell. And to help and tell it, you know, to help them shape the writing and guide the specific piece in a craft sense to be the best version of itself. And then also to be in a position to be able to say, Yes, I want to put this out in the world, come and give it to me I’ll share it with people. You know there’s a lot of talk about editors as gatekeepers. And that’s a big responsibility that anybody who is in that position should be very aware of, you know that editors do have a lot of power in deciding whose voices get to be heard, whose stories get to be told, but if you use that and if you are conscious and aware of that, and you use that to help elevate voices that have been left out of conversations, it can be really wonderful rewarding thing, as opposed to just perpetuating status quo and letting the same people speak over and over again. And to answer the second part of your question about how it’s affected my own writing, editing has definitely made me a better writer, because in editing I find myself giving the same feedback. A lot. You know there are just certain things that I guess it’s hard to see in your own work, and that an editor needs to come in for, a lot of things like often saying this should be a scene you know you’re telling me a lot of story but I’m not really seeing it. Bring me into the story and show me. Things about like how much context and background you need. Like reminders that somebody reading this story doesn’t know the rest of your story, they don’t know your whole life, they haven’t been there with you so you need to explain certain context of why something meant so much to you or affected you so deeply or whatever. And so making those same comments on so many other people’s writing over and over again eventually trained me to notice when I’m doing the same things, when I’m telling a lot of story but not showing it, or when I’m presuming foreknowledge in the reader that might not be there. Of course, I still need an editor. Everybody needs an editor. That doesn’t mean that I can always see that in my own writing but has definitely given me a little more perspective on the usual pitfalls and when I’m stepping into them than I had before I was editing.
Rachel Thompson: Yeah, I see that so much in my own writing too where you start noticing things you yourself do. I want to go back to the big responsibility as gatekeepers that you were talking which I think is a really important thing to identify and be aware of and then take action around and I’m just wondering what’s happening at Narratively, if we can sort of shift to the journal itself, what’s happening there to elevate writers left out of the conversation?
Lilly Dancyger: I always think when I get a story. We’re always looking like everybody is for the fresh angle of the new story, something surprising, something we haven’t seen before. And so I think about that in terms of the story the actual narrative what’s happening, but I also think about it a lot in terms of the voices that are being represented on the page. And I always look at the other pieces that I have scheduled coming up, the recent pieces I’ve done. And memoir and personal essay is a field that is chock full of white women. You know, there are a lot of amazing white women writers and a lot of white women who have interesting things to say, but they’re not the only ones that have interesting or important things to say and I try to make sure they’re not overrepresented in my section. Trying to bring in people of colour, I have a couple of really exciting pieces coming up by trans writers. I try to include disabled writers. You know everybody who, traditionally have not been able to tell their own stories. And another important thing that I think about a lot and I want to do better at, a task I’ve kind of given myself, is to include all of those marginalized voices but not exclusively to talk about the way that they’re marginalized and to publish the really amazing pieces: disabled writers talking about their disability, or people writing about their gender identity in an enlightening and nuanced way that a lot of readers might not have understood, and those pieces are really important and I’m happy to do them, but I also want to have queer trans disabled fat writers of colour writing about whatever random things are interesting to them and experiences in their lives that show the multitudes that they’re not reduced to their marginalized identity. That’s something I think the industry, in general, could do a better job of, you know a lot of times we talk about diversity, so that means OK come in find a writer to come in and be “our black writer” to talk about black issues. You know but that’s, I’m sure, emotionally draining and also limiting. You know, a black writer might have a lot to say about issues going on in the world today that affect the black community, god knows there are a lot of them and there are a lot of important things to talk about, but what if the writer also wants to write about Star Trek. Or whatever else that writer happens to be interested in, and not pigeonholing people. I think it’s important.
Rachel Thompson: Oh, I’m so glad to hear this say that. And I think that’s something that we’ve been working on at Room on an ongoing level too when we make special calls for contributors from different communities. Often the question is, Oh, do I have to write about being queer? Do I have to write about my marginalized identity?,like you’re saying. I think because the expectation is that that’s what people are being called in to do. And, I would read that story about Star Trek from someone from a different perspective, right? So I was talking a bit about Narratively and I want to talk about how Narratively is a cross between the typical news site and a literary magazine which is kind of neat because that’s actually the intersection that you’re writing live at, too. I mean you have said that you’re that Narratively is not as focused on the news cycle as straight news publications but you’re also not as freeform as some literary magazines, so what ties the publication together and what links these forums into the cohesive whole?
Lilly Dancyger: So we do personal essay and reported pieces. We’ve been doing a category we call A Hidden History recently, so it’s historical research pieces. And those might all seem very disparate but they’re definitely tied together in a particular voice and approach to storytelling and we really focus on narrative, as you might guess from our name. Really, we’re trying to create a vivid, engaging story that people can take a break from the bombardment of news and tweets and bite-sized things and really sit and settle and be engrossed in a story, and in a world that they don’t otherwise have access to. We think of our reader as a curious reader who wants to go somewhere that they don’t go in their own life, whether that’s you know reported stories about insular strange subculture and getting into the nuance of the characters and motivations within that subculture, or a personal essay about someone whose life looks very different than yours. So I think that’s what ties them all together really.
Rachel Thompson: Nice. And so for people who are contributing, like sending submissions to Narratively, what is the current slush acceptance rate?
Lilly Dancyger: It fluctuates, I estimate that it’s about 5 percent. Pretty low, but that includes everything, you know, including random way-off-the-mark submissions from people who are clearly just blasting out their piece to everywhere and have never even looked at our home page. You know, I would say the submission rate for pieces from people who have actually done their homework looked at Narratively, understand what we’re looking for, and send us something that at least kind of generally makes sense for us would be much higher.
Rachel Thompson: True. The number is kind of deceptive, because…our number is about the same at Room, too, but that includes the cis-gendered men who submit to us even though that’s not who we’re publishing.
Lilly Dancyger: Yeah that’s it. You know it’s definitely skewed by people who just submit blindly. We get fiction submissions, which you know we have never published fiction and have no plans to. We get 500-word diary entry style personal essays. We get all kinds of stuff that if you read two stories on our site you’d understand we’re not a fit. But things that are stylistically at least, within the realm, I would guess the rate would be much higher probably more like 20 percent. Or something like that.
Rachel Thompson: And of the larger percentage group, the ones that are kind of a fit, I know you’ve already told me that you see a lot of “my parent is ageing dying or dead and it’s making me reconsider my relationship with them” stories and a lot of “eating this specific thing makes me feel connected to my family or heritage stories”. And then as you said also ironically you get a lot of, “I want to talk about what it’s like to decide to get an abortion because nobody ever talks about it” stories. Is there anything else that you seem too much of that you don’t want to see for a while?
Lilly Dancyger: You know I think, I gave as examples as tropes that I see over and over again, but I think the bigger issue, rather than a list of every angle that’s been done a lot, I think the best piece of advice I can give is that if you want to write about an experience familiarize yourself with what else has been written about that experience. Take the time to read other writers who talk about similar things or writing in a similar vein or writing about a similar kind of relationship or whatever it is because [00:19:17] you’re participating in a conversation. So you should know what has already been said so that you can push the conversation forward or introduce a new idea or a new perspective or look at it through a slightly different lens. [13.1] I know I’m not the only editor is looking for that—that’s what all editors are looking for, is somebody who is bringing something new to the table, something surprising and fresh and it’s impossible to do that if you don’t know what’s already out there. And I think with any topic there’s kind of the first note that gets hit and a lot of people just write that in the void, without looking around and realizing that that’s already been established that’s the kind of foundation and we’ve moved on from there and what else you have to say? What’s next?
Rachel Thompson: I like how you’re identifying that that’s not the tropes themselves it’s the approach to the trope, because I know there was a while when the publisher at Room was always talking about stories that we’d see come in and she identified as, “I’ve experienced another culture and now I have the feels” and as soon as she’d identified that, I that was like, “Oh yeah we’ve I’ve seen so many of those too. But then that same month I published one because it was totally different and fresh. And there’s something to it, so it’s not actually the tropes it’s more bringing something new to the table. And that love you’re encouraging people to read in order to know what’s out there so that you know what’s new that you can bring to the table.
Lilly Dancyger: Exactly.
Rachel Thompson: When a piece of writing that makes it past the first reading and you’re considering it for publication or maybe you’ve accepted for publication, what should a writer expect from you? Do you make any developmental suggestions, for example?
Lilly Dancyger: Yeah, I’m a very hands-on editor, which, I think most writers end up grateful for at the end even if the process still a little daunting. But most pieces that I end up running, I usually edit about three times at least, and usually, the first pass is a more big picture, kind of identifying moments that need to be blown up into scenes when they’re kind of just glossed over and any structural changes. And then a second pass kind of going through and getting more nitty-gritty, asking for more specific detail throughout. It’s always asking for more, more, more, more. And then a third pass going through and tightening back up and cutting anything that’s gotten repetitive or extraneous in the process of building it up.
Rachel Thompson: Can you describe any works that you recently published that stand out as important maybe or significant anyway that you’ve published in Narratively.
Lilly Dancyger: That’s hard because I love all of them, but, let’s see. The first one that pops into mind there’s a piece that we did recently that I really love, that did really well, too, which is nice to see that it’s resonating with other people. We published a piece called The Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper, and, you know, sex sells, people love stories about sex but, I personally love doing more nuanced stories about sex work and also more nuanced, realistic, stories about different ways of looking at the world, different ways of seeing the world, disability, developmental disorders, etcetera. So you know this piece was interesting because it wasn’t what you would expect from a story about a stripper, but it also wasn’t what you would expect from a story about being autistic. It was the intersection of the two that made it really special and unique and kind of was able to illuminate. Both aspects in a new way. And that’s always a good way to go about finding a new way into a story is where it butts up against something know that piece and it was a great example of that.
Rachel Thompson: I’ll link to that one in the show notes, that sounds fascinating. And what kind of writing are you eager to read in submissions that you haven’t had come in yet?
Lilly Dancyger: What we’re really looking for the most right now is not that we don’t get it ever but that I’d like to get it a lot more, is stories that are really about a unique spectacular experience. You know, that are really about something happening. We get a lot of personal essay that are very internal. It’s about, let me filter this kind of ordinary experience through a lens of a particular way of thinking about it, or you know let me reflect and reconsider and re-digest, and you know it’s almost kind of meditative, and more about looking at your life in a different way and with the action of the pieces about considering, and re-evaluating. And those pieces can be great. We published some of those. I’ve written several of those. There’s plenty of value to that. But, we’re focused right now on stories where the action is external, where it’s really of about the experience that only you have had. I think a lot of the reason that there are so many of that contemplative kinds of reconsidering essays out there is because one person can write an infinite number of those, whereas the stories that are about a truly extraordinary experience, most people only have one or two of those, so there they’re a little more precious and rare and you can’t just keep wringing out that rag and getting more and more and more, it’s really like this is your story to tell. This is the story that you have and I want more of those.
Rachel Thompson: You want people’s most precious jewels. Basically.
Lilly Dancyger: I want the big story and I want the story that is like the one you’ve been holding on to, the one that everybody tells you, wow you have to write about that, wow I can’t believe that happened. The one that you know tell people about it at a party they are like, oh my god, really? Which doesn’t happen if you if you tell them about how fostering a dog helps me deal with my grief, or whatever it is. You’re not going to get that big reaction from the more internal, reflective stories, you’re going to get that…the one that’s coming to mind that was most like that that we published recently was an excerpt from a great book by Tyler Wetherall called No Way Home, and the excerpts that we adapted as an essay, we called it My Childhood on the Run from the FBI. And it was about realizing that literally, her childhood had been running from the FBI because her father was a drug smuggler and they didn’t know it at the time; it’s about realizing that coming to terms with that. So this kind of epic adventure story as well as a family relationship story, but that’s not a story everybody can tell. You know there was another one called My Ex the Drug Queen Pin. Not to say the big ones are always about drug trafficking, but that one just came to mind as well. This one started from the writer and of idly googling the name of a high school girlfriend and realizing that she was on a Most Wanted list and kept going down the rabbit hole of discovering her whole life and investigating her and trying to figure out trying to solve her murder ended up absorbing his life. You know that’s an epic story about actually doing something. You can write that story sitting in your living room and thinking about your life. It’s about going out and living.
Rachel Thompson: But one aspect of that story that I think is interesting because the question that I hear from writers a lot, too, is feeling sometimes, fortunately for them I think, that their lives haven’t been that exciting or wild, but in this case it’s a case where it’s actually not really his story until he engaged into, oh my ex the drug queen pin, I’m going to go down this rabbit hole.
Lilly Dancyger: I’m glad you raised that point actually because that maybe that was not the best example because it gets into murky territory where you know he managed to pull it off and it became about him investigating. It became his story that was sparked by her story. But, to circle back to what I don’t want to see ever again—tropes of my life intersected with the life of someone very interesting or my life intersected with someone else’s tragedy, let me tell you about how that impacted me and how that made me feel. And that I don’t want. I don’t want submissions about, you know I live next door to a couple where there was a severe domestic violence and I could hear them to the walls and let me tell you how that made me feel. Sad and uncomfortable. You know I don’t want essays about your experience of someone else’s tragedy. And so the drug queen story is kind of an exception to that rule because there are always exceptions to these rule, right? And this was one where he took what could have been a very voyeuristic and exploitative story, but he made it work because it wasn’t just, I knew this girl and then this happened to her, isn’t that crazy? You know he really went in and took it upon himself to figure out what happened to her when nobody else was, and when she was killed and then that was it not the end of it. And he kind of took on the Investigator role of trying to figure out what happened.
Rachel Thompson: It’s like the challenge of writers who are writing memoir to dig up these stories that are from their own experience. And anyway I just create that example because it’s a great example of the case where, exactly, is exception to the rule where it’s appropriate because he’s dug so deeply into it himself.
Lilly Dancyger: Yeah, and I hear a lot of writers say like, oh my life isn’t interesting I don’t have anything to write about when that’s not true and they have lots of stories, they just haven’t yet developed the lens to look at them and feed the maybe quieter, but still very rich and compelling stories. But also, I think maybe this is the taboo thing to say, but sometimes it’s true. Maybe sometimes you don’t have enough stories and you have to go and live to write them, you know? And I think the idea that everybody can and should write memoir is incorrect. And I think it leads to a lot of forced or superficial writing and it definitely, it lead to the personal essay industrial complex of tons and tons and tons of kind of superficial fluffy exploitative pieces, where writers, especially young women, were kind of put on the spot to mine their lives for anything juicy or vulnerable, whatever because they’re searching to have something interesting to say. If you don’t have a story that you feel compelled to tell and there isn’t this, like, burning lava pit in the center of your life that needs to explode out in essay or book form, then write something else.
Rachel Thompson: Write fiction.
Lilly Dancyger: Yeah, write fiction, write journalism, you can still be a writer. Not everybody has to have a personal story. And if you don’t have those stories in your life that that need to be told, and I think more importantly that need to be read, then maybe you know maybe that instinct is true.
Rachel Thompson: I love the tough love aspect of that. That’s great. And I also have never heard the personal essay industrial complex, but that’s very apt. I guess on the flip side of that, though, there are people who do have these stories that need unlocking with inside them, and maybe they haven’t seen themselves, like you’re saying there’s a lot of white women that kind of dominate the memoir genre and, maybe they don’t fit into that category and so maybe don’t see themselves, so what stories do you think are missing from the personal essays that have been published in Narratively or elsewhere?
Lilly Dancyger: You know it’s hard to identify specific stories that that aren’t there. It’s like when I see them then I’ll know this is the thing. But if I knew that they were missing I would be out searching for them. I don’t know specifically like a story, I want a story from x kind of person living in x kind of place moving through x kind of experience, but I think that if you’re reading lots of my essay and you haven’t seen your story yet, then that means it’s needed. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong and it’s not good enough and whatever, all of that self-doubt. It means the opposite. It means that it is needed. If it’s missing, then we want it.
Rachel Thompson: Going back to the personal essay industrial complex, makes me think a lot about editorial responsibility too, right, so having people mine their deepest scars but maybe not being emotionally ready to write about. I’m wondering I guess as both a writer and editor how do you navigate that particular minefield?
Lilly Dancyger: As a writer I plan ahead. I have essays and books that I intend to write about experiences that I know I’m not quite ready to talk about yet. Whether I’m emotionally ready or whether my thinking on them isn’t fully developed yet. I keep notebooks. I track the development of those ideas. I write what I feel ready to write. And I collect material so that when I’m ready I can write something amazing. And that’s a practice that I learned from falling into the “It Happened to Me” trap earlier in my career. And writing short, pithy essays that could have been bigger, deeper, more important pieces, if I’d given them the time to germinate, and given myself the time to grow and understand more fully how I feel about those experiences. So that’s how I handle it in my own life. As an editor, you know as a said I’m very hands-on and do a lot of developmental work. I push writers pretty hard to really dig in to the core of a piece and to make those bigger deeper more important pieces rather than sitting on the surface and putting out things superficial that doesn’t fully do justice to the experience they’re writing about. So that works out one of two ways. You know, either I help the writer develop something real and meaningful that they can be proud of and that does show that the emotional and craft work. Or, they realize through that experience that they’re not ready. And I’ve had writers partway through the editing process say, like, this is more than I thought it was going to be, I’m realizing I’m not really ready to go there. I don’t have the answers yet for your questions or I’m not comfortable publishing the answers to those questions even if I do have them. And I always respect that and say you know, OK thank you for being aware of that I respect that and I leave the door open if in a year you want to revisit this and you do feel ready. I’ll be here.
Rachel Thompson: That’s just lovely. So can you tell me what’s next for you, Lilly, in your writing and your editorial life?
Lilly Dancyger: Well, Burn it Down, this anthology is on the horizon. Drafts have started coming in, and reading them has been amazing and editing them was really a cathartic joy. You know, when I was first asked to edit an anthology about anger, I was like, Yes, of course. How did you know? It’s a topic I have a lot to say about. But, I didn’t realize how much of a balm it would be to read these essays and read all these brilliant women, you know people, writing about what makes them angry and putting their anger on the page after repressing it for so long.
Rachel Thompson: I want to clarify that that’s balm, B-A-L-M. At first, I thought it was B-O-M-B.
Lilly Dancyger: Yes. A soothing balm. And I’ve kind of started to think of it that way. Like this book is going to be a place for that anger to live. That anger that has not been allowed out in public and that has been pushed down and rationalized away and smoothed over and covered with a smile. And now it’s going to have a home in this book and I want it to really sizzle and just be alive with that anger and be a place for other angry people who haven’t been able to express that to connect with it. So I’m working on that now. And it’s a pleasure, and I’m starting to think ahead already to Spring 2019, and all the fun amazing events we can have to promote it because it’s an anthology so there are so many different voices in it. So we can have readings and just get a bunch of creative cool people together to talk about what we’re pissed off about. It’s going to be really fun.
Rachel Thompson: Sounds amazing. How can people follow or connect with you? What’s the best way for that?
Lilly Dancyger: I spend way too much time on Twitter, so if anybody wants to know what I’m up to or what I’m thinking or what I’m reading or looking for or want to connect with me that’s a good place to do it. My Twitter handle is just @LillyDancyger, my full name. Yeah, that’s the best place. And also on my website lillydancyger.com, I set up a sign-up form more people can sign up to get an email when Burn it Down is available for preorder. Because as I’m talking about it to people, I’m getting a lot of really enthusiastic and excited response. If anybody is excited about it and wants to be kept up to date, I have a form there. I promise not to spam you. I’m gonna send one email out when preorders are available and one with there’s an event schedule.
Rachel Thompson: Well thank you for talking with me today and sharing all your Lit Mag Love with us.
Lilly Dancyger: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Credits
Host: Rachel Thompson
Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski
Transcript Editing: Rachel Thompson
Presented by Room magazine and the Lit Mag Love Course
The post 18 // Know You’re in a Conversation with Lilly Dancyger of Narratively appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
In this episode, Rachel talks with Maya Marshall, a self-described demanding and productive writer and editor with [PANK] magazine—yes, the magazine founded by Roxane Gay.
Among much glorious and affirming advice she shares for writers, she is clearly someone who delights in language and craft, and cheers this enchantment—a word that comes up often in our interview—when she sees it in her submission inbox.
They talk about mentoring and modelling, and about the risque words she does not want you to send into [PANK]—at least, not until you have a more mature revision practice.
From the transcript:
Maya Marshall: [00:10:39] That's that's the advice: read a lot, write a lot. Nikky Finni has been really helpful in saying "be specific." So she taught me to write revision narratives and to go down the sort of checklist, like have I paid attention to the sequence here? Why is it this line-length? How is imagery working? Am I using associative language? If I mention it at the beginning of the poem or the essay or story, has it come back by the end? And if no, why not? There is a language of talking about writing that I think writers should learn.
“I’ve just become better at noticing those little mechanical things,” says the guest for this episode, Donna Talarico, the founder and publisher of Hippocampus Magazine. Hippocampus makes memorable creative nonfiction. It is an online journal, a conference, and most recently a publishing house.
Hippocampus Magazine is an exclusively online publication set out to entertain, educate and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction. Each issue features memoir excerpts, personal essays, reviews, interviews and craft articles.
advice for writers of creative nonfiction (CNF) and for writers who are trying to decide if a piece is suitable to enter contests.
More About Sierra Skye Gemma Sierra Skye Gemma On Publishing in Lit Mags (Rowan McCandless, Room) “The Wrong Way” (PDF of Sierra's National Magazine Award-winning story from The New Quarterly) Finding a Voice in Creative Non-fiction, with Sierra Skye Gemma (Plenitude)
Background on Sexual-Harassment in CanLit CanLit Has a Sexual-Harassment Problem (Zoe Whittall, The Walrus) Under a cloud: How UBC's Steven Galloway affair has haunted a campus and changed lives (Globe & Mail) CanLit is a Raging Dumpster Fire (Alicia Elliott, Open Book)
Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
“Write rhymes with fight for a reason. We’re not all meant to be at the frontline…I’m way more comfortable sitting down and trying to figure out how to write back against something that I really dislike.”
Eufemia Fantetti
Let’s let these words from Eufemia Fantetti, bridge the connection between what has been a theme in the past few LML episodes around the abuse of mentors and #MeToo in Canadian Literary circles, and learning how to write difficult stories in a writing community with mentors who support you.
As Eufemia put it, “You can’t always know who is really gunning for you to succeed, and who is just sitting there, rubber-stamping and like, I don’t care if it doesn’t look like me and it doesn’t sound like me, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
(Though, as she also points out, we know more now thanks to social media!)
Humber Literary Review is the creation of Humber College’s Department of English, and its collective includes writers, academics, critics, visual artists, and linguists. Their goal is to share their enthusiasm for work that provokes, excites, and entertains—writing that makes you want to read more.
Full Interview Transcript Transcript Eufemia Fantetti: [00:00:03] “Write rhymes with fight for a reason. We’re not all meant to be at the front line. I’m way more comfortable sitting down and trying to figure out how to write back against something that I really dislike.”
Rachel Thompson: [00:00:14] I’m going to let these words from Eufemia Fantetti bridge the connection between what has been a theme in the last few Lit Mag Love episodes around abuse of mentors and the #MeToo in Canadian literary circles, and learning how to write difficult stories in a writing community with mentors who support you. As Eufemia put it, you can’t always know who is really gunning for you to succeed and who is just sitting there rubber stamping and, like, I don’t care if it doesn’t look like me and it doesn’t sound like me, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Though, as she points out, we know more now thanks to social media.
Rachel Thompson: [00:00:46] This is Lit Mag Love. My name is Rachel Thompson and I’m a writer and editorial member at Room. Lit Mag Love is co-presented by Room Magazine, literature, art and feminism since 1975 and We Write, We Light, online courses and more to help you polish and publish your writing.
Rachel Thompson: [00:01:08] Each episode of Lit Mag Love takes you behind the scenes of literary journals to give you insights on what’s going on there. I talk to writers and editors about their practice delving into what they like in submissions, how journals work, and current trends and topics in the literary scene. For this episode, I have to confess that I actually looked up Eufemia to see if she was editing anywhere because I really wanted to have her on the show. Generous and wise, her advice to all writers has always hit home for me. She has particular resonance when talking about writing about trauma which has also become a bit of a mini-arc in the last couple episodes of Lit Mag Love. So let me introduce Eufemia Fantetti. She is a graduate of The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University, also known as TWS and I mention this because we mentioned some of the mentors from that program in this episode. And she also graduated from University of Guelph’s MFA in Creative Writing. In her first book, A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love, was runner-up for the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and a winner of the 2014 F.G. Bressani Prize. Euphemia is an essay editor at the Humber Literary Review.
Rachel Thompson: [00:02:24] Welcome to the Lit Mag Love podcast, Eufemia Fantetti.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:02:28] Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be talking to you.
Rachel Thompson: [00:02:31] I want to start by asking you about, sort of your origins as a writer. So, what do you think made you the writer of the family, and did you know other writers growing up?
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:02:43] Such a great question, Rachel, I didn’t know other writers growing up, so I had no concept that this was something people could do. I had no idea that anybody could make a living at it, and certainly, there are a lot of people that said you couldn’t. I was the only book person in the family. I was the only person who really read books and was into books, and, um, my father had like a grade school primer that he used to pull out every so often and he would sort of read me, um, Aesop’s fables from it and tell me, like, these are really important stories because you actually learn about people and you learn about life. And I think those were really tender moments and, uh, we were both living in this kind of fearful environment and afraid of my mom a lot. So those tender moments, like, I really glommed onto them, and I needed to escape the violence of my home. So books were there and I remember, I still remember the first word I learned in English and how it got pieced together for me, and I was like, that’s three words in one, the word, “to get her.” You know, it’s like, “to get her” makes one word, and, so, there was such a pleasure and joy around reading, and then writing was just something that–.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:03:50] I was an anxious kid at school. I didn’t particularly enjoy school. And the only time you could really get me to focus and not notice that the time was passing was if you gave me a piece of paper, the foolscap stuff and the pencil and you said, “Write.” And that’s what I would do. And I’d started noticing that, like, I didn’t make the same grammar mistakes that other kids made only because I read a little bit more. It wasn’t like I was great at those kinds of things it was just that I read so I didn’t make that “there, their, they’re” or the “it’s, its,” or the “you’re, your” mistake because I’d asked teachers if I could take the textbooks home. And then, when Scholastic started doing that thing where they sold the books through schools, I kept asking my dad to get me some. So I think that was part of the journey of being a writer. And that love of books and that feeling that, if when you’re growing up you’re incredibly isolated or lonely because of wherever you’re growing up, because maybe you’re different than everyone else you’re growing up around or because you’re the different one in your family, then your friends are those other writers out there in the world that are, like, giving you a window into another world and letting you use your imagination as a form of survival.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:05:01] Years and years ago, I saw J.K. Rowling talk about how she had, this was when she was starting to get big. She was, like, just on the cusp of becoming, like, the phenomenon that she became. And people wrote to her, children wrote to her all the time asking for admission into Hogwarts. And she had already hired a staff of people to answer a lot of the fan mail, like, and the children she responded to herself. And I thought, of course. If you’re trying to survive, like, an impossible family or a violent home or, um, a family that rejects you because they don’t all accept you as you come into the world, you would say, like, please let me come to Hogwarts, like I’m sure I’m probably not a muggle. I’ve got to be like a person who has magic in them. So I always felt like that was a really important thing to hear because I thought, like, that’s what saved me was the reading. That’s what still saved me on, when I’m having a rough week or when I’m falling into despair, I just think, like, let me go find my favourite, uh, writer on the shelf or somebody whose work I’d like to read now. And that’s my community. That’s my safe place.
Rachel Thompson: [00:06:12] Oh, I’m verklempt even just hearing you say that, not to minimize by using a kind of silly word for, but that’s very touching to hear because I think I really resonate so much with that. You mentioned your father. And of course I want to ask about him, and I’m going to do about right off the bat here because–
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:06:30] Fabulous.
Rachel Thompson: [00:06:32] I guess I’m thinking because we’re connected on Facebook, and I know you put out little vignettes about what things he said, and then I was also re-reading the essay that you wrote in The Globe and Mail called Food Fight Italian style.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:06:46] Right.
Rachel Thompson: [00:06:47] Where you talk about how he was trying to raise a mopey kid and cope with a mentally ill wife at the same time.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:06:53] Right.
Rachel Thompson: [00:06:54] And, uh, I’m going to pack a few things into here. So, at one point we also spoke about the writing advice that he’d told you early on when you had decided you wanted to be a writer.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:07:01] Yes.
Rachel Thompson: [00:07:01] Like, oh, you can write when you’re married, right, and looking after the kids. What does he think of your writing now, and how has that worked out?
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:07:11] So, yeah, I was 17 when he said that to me, and I had actually had this experience where I’d written a play and the play had done well, and I was, like, it’s happening! This life I could of only imagine and dream of, just that feeling inside of me and I was like, “Is it really possible for me? Like, you know, I don’t come from book people. My parents didn’t have access to a bookstore or a library. Could I possibly be what I imagine this person who can actually say things in an articulate fashion and have people, like, want to know what I think about something? So he turned to me, and it was one of the biggest fights we ever had when I was 17 was, he said, you know, what’s the big deal, like when you’re at home with the kids and your husband goes to work you can just write, you know, like it’s not like it’s an all-day job looking after kids, was his thinking. And, uh, I said that’s the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard anybody say, and my dad’s not an ignorant man. So the word “ignorant” exploded, and we came home. We were in the car and we came home, and we were fighting, we were shouting at each other, and it was so rare that my mom actually was in shock, and she went into, like, nice overdrive, which never happened. Because we were fighting, she actually brought out a different side of herself. It took me, like, hours to forgive him and say, like, you don’t understand what I want. You don’t understand what I need. You have no concept of, like, I have dreams, that kind of thing that you can say it when you’re arrogant and you’re young and you don’t understand any of the sacrifices that your parents made.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:08:42] And, uh, he said to me, “Do you think I dreamt of being a butcher?” And I was, like, oh no? So, said, uh, I had dreams, too. I didn’t have those opportunities. We didn’t have the money for me to go to school. There was no opportunity for the education that I wanted. I went to work. I paid off my parents’ debts, all things that, like, you just don’t have a sense of it. And he, he just let me know that and I was, like, oh my god. Like, I can’t believe I’m not, you know, I knew something of their life, but, really not a lot. And, uh, it was the beginning of kind of going, like, if I really want what I want and he never said to me, like, get a practical education or do this or do that. He just said, like, whatever you want, you know, whatever you want to do, I support you. I just think this is going to be really hard. I don’t know how you make a living with this. Like, we have been told when I was in grade 8, a teacher who’d said Eufemia’s a good writer, like, maybe she should go to journalism school. And I didn’t even know what that meant. That’s how far reality was from, like–. I just sort of had this idea, like, a journalist is a person who understands political science and they understand this and they understand — and I thought that’s beyond my capabilities. And so I was like, clearly, that’s not who I’m going to be.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:09:57] And my dad had said to me, you know, you’ve had some encouragement in this field, so you should pursue that. But how will you pay your rent and how will you make a living? And, he, I think, hoped that I would have a more traditional life. He’s always been incredibly supportive of anything I did but, initially, I think he was just really, really worried, and he was really stressed. He was developing mental illnesses that we didn’t know about. So the times that he hasn’t been able to be, like, 100 percent there, it’s mostly been because of fear and that the fear is sort of aggravated by mental health issues, but otherwise I consider myself incredibly lucky that he never told me, “You can’t do that. That’s ridiculous. Don’t dream. Don’t think about these things.” He’s always just sort of said to me, like, that’s your gift. He really believes that gifts come from God. His gift is mathematics. Yeah. We couldn’t be more different and look so similar. Like, he looks like me. But 30 years in the future and as a man. You know, we’re clearly deeply connected to each other. We have completely different skills and abilities, kind of thing.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:11:00] But going back to your question about if I knew any writers. I didn’t know any writers, but I knew storytellers because I come from people who didn’t have a lot of access to education or books, but they were incredible storytellers so that oral storytelling tradition that we all come from I think has real value. And I think sometimes it gets neglected in this world where the emphasis is on the publishing and the book, and the hardcover is better than the softcover. Like, all of these different layers of judgment instead of just realizing that, like, the storytelling, that’s the gift. It’s the gift, and it’s also the huge responsibility, like I think because I write so much about my family, sometimes I wish, for them, I wish that I didn’t. For me, I have no choice. Like, I write to excavate what’s happened and find my way through the chaos of what’s happened because, otherwise, some of those experiences felt like there’s a lot of suffering and chaos without self-awareness and I don’t want to continue my life that way. I want to be like a pinball at the mercy of life. I’d rather figure out, like, oh I’m having this reaction because this is happening and I remember this from this. And I know this because I’ve written it down and I’ve accessed that awareness that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t write it down. That kind of thing.
Rachel Thompson: [00:12:17] Yeah, and I definitely want to ask you more about how you do that and how you’ve used that gift and take the responsibility. And I find that’s something that I struggle with often is thinking about, like, what you’re saying about, that you have no choice.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:12:31] Right.
Rachel Thompson: [00:12:32] So, that it’s a little unfortunate for your family somehow, too, that you’re writing about it, but that you need to, you must.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:12:37] Yeah. I have prayers that I say before I write. I have intentions that I speak out loud before I write. I remind myself that the goal is to get to the truth. And to uncover it. I tell myself that I would have really benefited if someone had come forward and said, “This is what it’s like when you come from a family that’s an immigrant family dealing with a person with a severe mental illness, intensely violent, steeped in misogyny, steeped in Old World Paganism married to thousand years of Catholicism and the burden that that is. I think that if someone had said to me, like, it looks like this, or if I’d even read about a character that was like that, and I said, look there’s me on the page. I think about what an incredibly life-affirming and earth-shattering and thunderclap that would have been for me. And so I think when I go to write these stories—years ago I was doing this play about my family. So it was like a one-woman show. And the big shock for me was the number of women that came out to me and said, “My mother tried to kill me, too. My mother was really dangerous. My mother was violent.” And I was, like, I thought it was me. I thought it was something so particular to me, like, my experience of, um. It’s really easy to think it’s you if you’re the person on the receiving end of a lot of aggression and violence, and especially from birth, from the moment you have memory.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:14:08] So, to find out that there’s a whole tribe of women who’ve gone through this and not just women, but there’s a whole tribe of people that have had this experience, and they are just looking for the validation that it’s happened. And they’re just looking to have someone put into words what it feels like. Because maybe they’ve gone and tried to get help, or maybe they’ve done a whole bunch of other things looking for help and then you get that kind of, like, the pushback that I think sometimes happens in therapy, where they’ll be like “What can you do about this? What can you do now?” And I feel like that puts the onus on the person who has suffered to end the suffering. When, sometimes, it’s better to just say, “This really awful thing happened. I’m sorry that it happened. I’m going to sit here and give you a cup of tea or something like that, while we just wait out this terrible feeling.” Because so many atrocious things happen. And, uh, I think that there’s this pervasive kind of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you got to fix this, what are you doing to make this better? Do you have a self-care list? Do you have a fist? Do you have a– Are you doing this? Are you going for a run? Are you going for a walk? Are you going for a jog?”
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:15:14] All of that kind of stuff that I think we all know that, like, there are things we could do that would be a little healthier than maybe running across the street and buying, like, a gallon of Haagen-Dazs and eating that at the same time as you’re eating chips and then just kind of being, like, that’s my dinner for tonight. Everybody knows what it takes to eat a healthy diet. When you’re in pain, or when you’re suffering because something’s happened, and it’s like a tripwire that really ignites that trauma in the central nervous system, I think it’s appalling to kind of ask people to be, like, “Could you have handled this better? Could you have done that?” I think it’s incredibly insensitive. When I think about writing about my family, I think that there will always be the person that says, “That’s not how happened.” Like, my mother’s never going to agree with me. My mother’s never going to admit that she was abusive. She’s never going to think that she was excessive in her violence. She really grew up in that world, in a time, in a place where you could do anything to people, short of murdering them, and they had to tolerate you. They had to take care of you. They didn’t walk away from you. You don’t– she didn’t come from a world of divorce. And so she just brought her worst self to the game every day and we put up with it for a very, very, very long time. My dad was married to her for 36 years, and I didn’t stop speaking to her until about four years ago.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:16:41] So. When I write those stories, I tell myself no one was at their best. We all failed each other. And I want to be honest in telling that story. I don’t want to gloss over the parts in the times where I was vicious, or angry, and I didn’t walk away. I didn’t take the silent protest or the peaceful route. Like, I fought back. I’d landed blows whether I was cornered or just because I was having that kind of day where I was, like, I’ve had enough of this and now I, I respond this way, too. So I think when I get to the writing part, I think how can I do this and honour the stories that we’re all carrying inside of us, me, my mother, her mother, my father, his father, all the way back. And I just think, I’m sure that the ancestral memory of the violence that my parents and their parents, and going back, endured in poverty, in lack, in not having enough, like, just that kind of really not ever feeling safe or secure in the world. Then I think, I’m here to honour that. I’m here to acknowledge that. I’m here to say, this is what happened. And also ensure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Rachel Thompson: [00:18:01] Really appreciate what you said about being honest about you landing blows and, like, understanding the story from a bunch of different angles. In some ways, you’ve answered some of my questions too, around… Like, I write from my life as well, and I struggle sometimes with how to write about, with difficult times, in part because I fear repercussions in my personal life. But at the same time, I think that therein sort of is the answer of, like, how you do this, too, is with that kind of ethics in mind. I love what you do with that prayer ritual. Because for me, when you’re writing something that happened, you finally understand it from different angles because you’re forced to get some of that perspective.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:18:39] Exactly. I think you have to ask for help, whether it’s for writing it on a piece of paper or saying out loud, ask for the help. You need the support. And you need the help in telling those stories that are the really hard stories to tell. Because usually I might sit down to try to write something else, but it always comes back to the thing that I’m most afraid of. The thing that I’m uncomfortable about, the thing that that’s where the writing starts to go because it wants out. It doesn’t want to sit in a dark corner and intimidate me for the rest of my life. It wants me to pull it out, and look at it, and examine it, and throw it into the sunlight, and say, like, I see what you are. You’re this experience and the reason you happened is because of all of these threads of history, and expectation, and grief, and loss, and violence interconnecting. And then I came along. And that was that day in 1979, August. That kind of thing where you, like, and that’s how it all came together. Because otherwise there’s just more and more, unpacking of, like, pain and pain. And I think, like, if you can start to look at it from all those different angles with honesty and with compassion, too, because in the moment when I’m working on things, I’m not feeling this way. I’m just feeling dreadful, and I’m feeling like I don’t think I want people to know this. Why would I want people to know this about me? Why would I want them to know this about my mother? Or if it’s a terrible draft, like if you’re working on a shitty draft and you’re like, oh god this sounds like I want people to pity me or something. So every step of the way, it feels uncomfortable for a different reason. Maybe because you’re thinking, like, well it’s not great writing. Or you’re thinking, oh I don’t really want to reveal this. So all of those different factors can add up to making you feel, like, incredibly uncomfortable. And, I don’t know how else to get through that other than to keep writing. Other than to just kind of keep nudging that story forward and figuring out what the best way to tell it is and how you’re going to reveal the things that you want to reveal and recognize that not everything is necessary for the story. Like, some of the stuff that you write, it might not fit that particular essay or that particular story, so you’re going to have to, like, compost it and throw it into something else. Nothing’s ever wasted, just the process of trying to figure out how to tell the difficult stories. It’s not wasted.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:21:02] I was thinking about, in the last couple weeks, Nicole Breit had her course, the CNF Outliers were starting up again. And a year ago, I took her course because I knew I was going to be writing an essay. I was asked to write an essay on the topic of love and I thought, God, this is going to be really hard. I feel a lot of shame and humiliation around this topic. Those two words, uh, shame and humiliation, when you say love, that’s not your first reaction. But for me it was, and I thought, I want to take this class. And I figured out the story and how I was going to tell it before the end of the class. I figured out it needed to be in a hermit crab. And she was starting up her class again and I sort of did a signal boost to former students saying, like, this is a great class. You might want to think about it if you’re feeling like you want to really develop the lyric essay and/or develop unusual forms of creative nonfiction. And it was right on the heels of, like, stuff in politics that I was, like, waking up listening to Trump and learning stuff about Doug Ford, and all these things where I just felt like, oh, the bullies and the brutes, they just always win. And I sent out the e-mail saying, like, write rhymes with fight for a reason. Like, we’re not all meant to be at the front line and capable of wielding something that’s like an instrument of fighting. But you can sit down and write if that’s your way of fighting back. If that’s your way of trying to overthrow things, like that’s what you do. That’s where you come from. I’m way more comfortable sitting down and trying to figure out how to write back against something that I really dislike and putting in, in the most concise and clear, direct way of saying, no. This is what racism looks like. This is what misogyny looks like. This is what this looks like. This is what, you know–. I hadn’t even heard the term microaggression ’till two weeks ago when, uh, Leonarda Carranza told me and I was like, What! I had no idea what that was and I’ve been experiencing it my whole life. You know? I used to call them back-handed compliments, you know, and where I was just, like, I walk away feeling like, that doesn’t feel good. So I was, like, now I’m on the microaggressions.
Rachel Thompson: [00:23:09] There are so many threads I want to pick up. I mean, I definitely want to give a shout out to Nicole Breit, who is an amazing teacher.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:23:16] Yes.
Rachel Thompson: [00:23:16] She and I did a webinar on writing about trauma.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:23:20] I loved it.
Rachel Thompson: [00:23:21] For me, it was an experience of going into it going, I don’t know how to do this. And learning, like, I have to do this as a writer and that sometimes– and, actually, I’ll tie this in a bit with what Alicia Elliot was telling me in my most recent interview, where she’s saying you don’t have to write about the trauma. You can write about what you learned or around the trauma, too, but if you feel compelled to write about it, there are other ways to do it. And I love the idea, too, of the hermit crab essay. That’s a brilliant form where you can sort of hide within this shell but still be able to tell the story in a way that–.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:23:52] Definitely. When I think about, let’s say trauma or the thing that you’re writing about, I think of mine as, like, mine always comes to me in the form of the house that I grew up in. Like, I still have nightmares about that house, and I think of it like this: I don’t walk up to that house and knock on a door and say, “Let me in.” I go in the side door. And I look around and then I get out before the ghosts, notice I’m there. And it’s because there’s so much in there. And sometimes when I’m writing an essay, I’m building a new room onto that house. Because that house is always frozen in time and place for me. And so it’s kind of like a place to go visit, and I can look at the trauma from a different angle. I can look at the experience from another place and time. And definitely, I think, like, you don’t have to write about the trauma, that you want to write about, like, what you’ve understood. And what’s formed you and what you understand about the mini-traumas that people visit on each other every day out there in the world. Like, just the acts of aggression and the acts, like, unkindness that you see that are just going to be tripwires for the difficulties that you’ve experienced in your past. That kind of thing.
Rachel Thompson: [00:25:03] Sure. I want to say something about the work that you do with other writers and the light that you bring because when you’re talking about referring students to Nicole’s course, you’re talking about your own students, too. And I know one thing I just want to discuss is in setting up this time with you, I had some mental health-related challenges, like I had this anxiety and insomnia the first night and so I had to reschedule and I felt totally safe telling you this straight out, in spite of, you know, not knowing each other that well. Like, we haven’t– we’ve only met a couple of times in real life, I think.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:25:34] Right. Right.
Rachel Thompson: [00:25:34] And me, you know, wanting to put on the professional podcaster hat and–professional podcaster, that. But I mean you have such a spirit of care for other writers and I see that in the interactions that other writers have with you on social media mostly, but that comes through every interaction you have with writers. And, so, I’m just wondering what motivates you to help other writers. Like how do you get from that fear and trauma, and OK I’m going to tell my story because I didn’t see my story growing up, too, and then getting into that literary citizenship where you’re working and helping develop other writers and help them tell their stories, too.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:26:11] Just to say you’re a very professional podcaster and I’m loving Lit Mag Love, so thank you for this. It’s just such a great, um, service for the writers that you’re providing. And, so, I think the thing that inspires me the most is, like, to make sure that community and other writers feel safe. And I think it comes out of the times that I haven’t felt safe and the times that I’ve had terrible experiences. And I don’t mean in writing specifically but just in life. Like, it was very fundamental to my formation and my core to experience a person very very close to me, like the person that should be my protector, and should have been a person who shepherded me carefully through childhood and into adulthood, was actually, uh, the person who antagonized me the most and was incredibly cruel and difficult and didn’t offer that support. And so, it was like a constant struggle. And a constant fight.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:27:05] And I found, by the time I was a teenager, I was exhausted. And it took years to find out. And I had to do it on my own. I had years to find out I was really dealing with PTSD. And it was like a complex version of it from childhood. And I was being told that I had depression and I was, like, I don’t think that’s it. It doesn’t suit. It doesn’t fit. And so what I noticed happening was that my inner critic, just like anybody’s inner critic, is incredibly vicious and incredibly effective. And I don’t even think I can call my inner critic that, inner critic. It’s really like a choir. Like an intense choir, like the one that starts up with that deep, scary organ music. And I’m like, here we go, it’s coming, like. So, I’ve noticed everybody has that. And, in the classroom experiences that I had where I was really privileged, and it was an incredible honor to suddenly be a teacher, I drew on the teachers that I’d had. Really some of the vital ones that I had in childhood who’d been kind to me and recognized that I really loved writing. And I drew on some of the teachers that we both know from The Writers Studio, Betsy Warland and Wayde Compton, and just really lovely people. And I would get into the classroom and at least one, if not three or four students, would come with their work for workshopping and they would say, like, rip it to shreds. You know, I’m fine if you just take this apart. And I just was like, that’s not what’s going to happen. And there was a constant need to remind people, especially because I was teaching creative nonfiction, that you never get to judge the person’s decisions. You never say, like, I don’t understand why this narrator went back to her husband when he was being abusive, or I don’t understand why this person would even put up with this relationship. Or, I don’t understand why this person got pregnant. Like, you can’t say that, and it’s not safe for the person who’s written the story. Even if you’re saying “the narrator,” it’s absolutely uncalled for. You have to create this protective space in a room where people are being creative. And so that automatically means to me that no one is ripping anybody apart. And where they got that idea from–. I understand where they got the idea from because we all live in this world, and we all think, like OK, you know, I’m going to be a better writer. I want to be better now. I want to be better yesterday, and I want– just rip it to shreds. Tell me how to make it better. And I thought, has that really worked for us? Look at where we are as a society, as a global, like, as a planet. It’s not working. And if people really think that the incredible amount of writers that have been successful–really, really successful and held up as, like, geniuses–if those writers didn’t have their egos massaged, really? Like, I don’t think so. Like, that happened all the time.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:29:55] And I feel like, it’s very clear to me when I’m in a classroom and when I’m seeing other writers that they’ve experienced what I’ve experienced. Maybe they didn’t see themselves in books, so they never saw themselves reflected in literature, and so they didn’t know that they were of value. Because they valued books that the books didn’t value them. They were told that to get better, they had to put up with having their work critiqued. That’s not the same as being abused, and we know that that happens. Like, the people take people’s work apart and they say cruel things, and that’s more of an attack than giving feedback. And we have to kind of establish those parameters and make sure everybody recognizes them and–. There’s no moving forward without compassion. I think, for ourselves and for each other, I don’t want to be part of a community that doesn’t have that kind of baseline of respect and compassion, and care for each other. I’ve walked away from people who don’t engage in respectful behavior. I’ve walked away from friendships where there wasn’t, like, care for each other. If there’s, like, this kind of weird envy that comes in, like, there’s no place for that in building a safe community. I’ve been told that I’m hyper-vigilant about this kind of stuff. And I think, like, well, I’ve had a lifetime of watching and experiencing cruel ignorance. And so I’m on guard. I am hyper aware of it, and I am, like, no, that’s not acceptable. No, that’s not, you know, like, I–. I’ve sometimes walked up to people and said things like, I really don’t like the tone that person was taking with you. And then they’ll be, like, oh. And then I think, like, am I really. Because it’s easy to gaslight yourself if you’ve been gaslighted by so many people in your life, you know, and I’ve had enough of it. I’ve been through it, and I’m not going to accept it anymore. So, I think all I can really do, like I was saying before, is champion other people and get them to see we’re all on this path. It’s an individual path. Yet every so often our paths are going to meet up. And when we get to the meadow clearing where we can all get together and have a party and say, like, great, this person got published over here. Or this person just got nominated for this award. Or this person just got recognized. Then we all get to celebrate, and then we have to basically go back on that trail that’s kind of lonely and isolated. But for any chance, you get to say to someone else, “I see where you are. What can I do to help?” There will be bad days, and there will be days where the writing is bad or the days where you feel terrible and you have to keep writing because you have a deadline. There will be all kinds of things. But there will also be days where we can get together and celebrate our collective achievements and our community moving forward.
Rachel Thompson: [00:32:44] There’s the quote, I’m trying to remember, that you told me about–the opposite of envy or jealousy?
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:32:49] Oh, uh, yeah, that’s actually a quote from these Buddhist teachers on this retreat that Danny Shapiro goes to. And it’s, she mentions it in her book, Devotion. And what these teachers say is the far enemy of sympathetic joy is envy. The near enemy is comparing. It is painful and unskillful to compare. No matter what conclusion we draw, comparison creates agitation in the mind. So, I mean. It spoke to me, and I copied it out because we live in a deeply competitive world. And there’s constantly comparisons being made. I think comparison is one of the ways that misogyny thrives in the world. And I think that anything we can do to unseat that and up-end it and throw it over and, um, throw it over. Is that the right–? No, overthrow. Yeah, sometimes I say things backwards in my head. But they’ll come out OK.
Rachel Thompson: [00:33:47] I love “throw it over.” That’s great.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:33:48] Yeah, throw it over. So, I think, anything we can do to do that. It’s our responsibility to do that.
Rachel Thompson: [00:33:55] Lit Mag Love is co-presented by Room Magazine, literature, art, and feminism since 1975. Opening soon is Room’s poetry and fiction contest. The poetry contest is judged by Vivek Shraya this year. And the fiction contest is judged by Zoe Whittall. It’ll open on April 15th, and you can find all the details for how to enter your writing at roommagazine.com And the co-presenter for Lit Mag Love is my course, Lit Mag Love. Whether you want to publish your writing, polish your work in progress, or just get set up with a writing routine you’ll stick to, I help you and your words shine. You can sign up for my free five-day challenge that invites you to take daily concrete actions to help you create a writing routine you will keep. Find out more at wewritewelight.com.
Rachel Thompson: [00:34:42] I’m back with my guest for this episode, Eufemia Fantetti. One of the essays editors at the Humber Literary Review. The Humber Literary Review is a new journal. It’s the creation of Humber College’s Department of English, and it’s collective includes writers, academics, critics, visual artists, and linguists. And their goal is to share their enthusiasm for work that provokes, excites, and entertains. Writing that makes you want to read more.
Rachel Thompson: [00:35:09] So, can you tell me about how you got involved in Humber Literary Review? And then, I guess, what does that look like in terms of creating access and trying to not just, you know, not do harm to people that you’re teaching or publishing, but also try to be that kind of gate opener for people who haven’t had a chance to have their voice heard. Let them have it heard faster.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:35:29] Right, um. So, I just joined last year, and I have to say I’m still kind of trying to wrap my head around the whole, like, wearing, and it’s probably reporters that do this but in the 1940s, but I’m thinking of myself as, like, wearing that visor that editors wear in those 1940s black and white movies that you see, where the editor’s, like, chomping on a cigar, an old white-haired guy. And I’m like, is that me? Like, that’s not me. The myths that existed for the longest time about who’s the editor and who’s the writer and–. Those are things that I’m kind of still confronting in my own life. And, so, what happened was I was working at Humber College as an instructor, and, um, Humber Lit Review did a mental health issue, and I submitted something that they published, and I was really grateful for that. And then after that, I just thought, well maybe I can ask if I could be an editor. I couldn’t imagine myself in that role, but I still was like, oh, you gotta start somewhere and maybe they’ll let you and–. And the magazine’s really new. It was the brainchild of their Vera Beletzan who was the Associate Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. And she basically just sort of asked around and said, “Do you think there’s room for another, um, magazine in Canada, and everybody went, ‘Yes!'”
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:36:43] And, so, they started pulling this together. And it’s a beautiful magazine that comes out twice a year. And the editor’s Meaghan Strimus who is herself a really brilliant poet and a really generous soul. So, I asked if I could be part of it, and Meaghan was, like, yes. And so I’m an essays editor with another woman, Elisabeth Oliver. And then there’s fiction editors and poetry editors. And, so, what it looks like for me is, I look for creative nonfiction. The word “essays” is still one of those words that scared me in high school, so I’m, like, really? I can’t believe that’s next to my name, essays editor. But I look at it as, like, taking the writing that comes through Humber Literary Review, the submissions that we get, and, unfortunately, because of the fact that we’re all, like, teachers, and so we have, like, a heavy course load of students that we are working with every semester. The work has to be close to polished for when we get it. There are some things that I think, like, OK I can see maybe this will need some work, and–.
Rachel Thompson: [00:37:42] Do you have a chance to give feedback to people, or do you make suggestions?
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:37:46] I do, but it has to be light feedback. Like, it’s only going to need, like, one or two edits. It’s not, like, really substantive edits that we’re talking about. So It’s that close to ready. But since we only do two issues a year there’s, like, a part, where I’m like, am I already in the future if I say to this person, like, do you think you could work on this and let me see it again? That kind of thing. Because it’s so new to me. Because I’m still figuring it out.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:38:09] I think, um, a year ago, the first issue, we got the pieces, worked on it, put it together. That was all good. And then I sort of realized, of course, rejection letters go out and that didn’t even occur to me. And because of the fact that I’m a writer, I know what it feels like to get them, and I know what it’s like as a human being to be rejected. So, I asked Meaghan and Michael Spencer, managing editor, if I could write a better rejection letter than the basic one that Submittable sends out. Because I think it’s really difficult to do this stuff. It’s difficult to create. Then it’s difficult to edit. Then it’s difficult to send it out. And it’s really painful to get the rejection. And, so, because I’m aware of that process, I said, I want to write, like, a nicer rejection letter because, unfortunately, we have a little bit of time to edit the work that we get. We don’t have enough time to send back personalized rejections. So I wanted to send a nicer rejection that said, look, we get that this is hard. Don’t cross us off your list. Keep sending to us and keep sending to other places.
Rachel Thompson: [00:39:16] Because, in truth, we also reject a lot of great work, right? So, that’s something that doesn’t come across–. I don’t know about you, but for me that was one of the big eye openers when I became an editor was, oh, okay, when it comes to the end, it–. These are very difficult choices between really great quality pieces.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:39:31] Yes.
Rachel Thompson: [00:39:31] And then it’s, like, more about the fit, not about–.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:39:34] Exactly.
Rachel Thompson: [00:39:35] –the quality.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:39:36] Like, that’s the astonishing part, where you’re, like, oh, this is a great companion piece to that one that we’ve already said yes to. And then you’re, like, so, can’t say yes to these ones. So, what are you going to do? And, so, it has been an eye-opener that way. And I think we’ll, we’re going to be signing the, like, when that rejection letter goes out, it’ll say “the editors of HLR.” Because they took care of it the first time around, and I also remember saying, like, I don’t really want to put my name on a rejection letter. Because people will hold onto that, and be like that person rejected me.
Rachel Thompson: [00:40:05] Yeah.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:40:06] You know what I mean? And it’s, like, no that’s not the person who rejected you. It’s actually, like, a decision that’s being made. The editors are in discussion, and I think because of what we were talking about, what’s happened in the CanLit communities, like, you can’t always know who’s really gunning for you to succeed. And who is just sitting there kind of rubber stamping, going like, “I don’t care. If it doesn’t look like me, and it doesn’t sound like me, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” You can’t really know, I mean–. You know more now, because you can see them on social media, right?
Rachel Thompson: [00:40:35] Yep.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:40:35] But, you have to be aware that there are, like, stages of people saying, like, well, we can’t accept this but we also don’t have–. Everybody’s got, like, busy-busy work, life. All those things, and they don’t always have time to get back to the person and say, like, oh, I really loved, like, your use of humour here. Like, I think this is really fantastic, or even to say, like, who we think you should send it on to. Like, there’s just not enough time. And I feel like that’s the part where I’m trying to make sure that, you know, it’s new but I’m going to get better at it, and I’ll be able to find a way to manage that and actually reach out to people and make sure that they’re not slipping through the cracks. So, for me, I think I’ve just always been interested in diverse stories because it was so long that there was a lack of them, or that they were being filtered through a white male voice. And I’m, I’m done. I don’t need to hear that anymore. I’ve heard it. I’m not saying that people don’t have something to say, I’m just saying, like, I’m tired of hearing their version of someone else’s story. Like, I’m not interested. Because I’m in essays and creative nonfiction, I’m reading true stories. So I’m, like, looking for the story that someone’s going to share with me about what it is to be human. What it is to survive, like, the many trials and tribulations of being a human being in this day and age and all the things that happen to us.
Rachel Thompson: [00:41:53] Can you tell me about a recent piece that you chose for publication and why you picked that one?
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:41:57] Sure. So, this piece that we published that I really, really loved was called the, um, Memory Piece: Macau. And it was written by Sheung-King. It’s embarrassing, maybe, but I’d never heard of Macau. So, I started reading this piece, and it’s just–. He does this beautiful job of like, uh, he mixes playwriting with prose. And I hadn’t seen anybody do that. And then he throws in this story–I don’t know if you could call it a fable–it’s, like, a story of a butcher and a Buddhist priest. And I was, like, this is so fascinating. All these different elements that he uses to basically weave a story about a place where it’s, like, an island, and it’s, like, a Portuguese settlement in the 1500s, and then the population is something like just over half a million people. But They get 30 million visitors every year because they’ve got this huge gambling kind of structure to their economy. And so here’s this guy whose father was born there, and he goes back there.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:42:57] The essay’s about him going back there. And this relationship is kind of falling apart. And he weaves in this story of this relationship falling apart with the story of this Buddhist priest who thinks he’s kind of a holier than the butcher, and the butcher who basically cuts out his own heart to kind of say, like, I want to be a better person and, like it–. There’s just so much in it that I’m in love with in terms of the way he tells the story. The way he mixes up genres. The way I learn about a place I’ve never even heard of before, and now I’m on the, you know, I’m Googling and going, like, Macau, where is it? What, the–. This is everything I love about writing, where people take this story about a place and their experience of it, and how it’s such a huge part of their identity. And now they’ve opened up a door and let me into their world, and I can come in and be part of that world with them. And I’m not there as a tourist. I’m there as a person, like, experiencing what they experienced, and I’m feeling it like they’re feeling it. And I just, I love work that does that. I love work that gives me that opportunity to expand my awareness of the world and the human heart.
Rachel Thompson: [00:44:10] I think we should end there. That is lovely. We’re going to end on the human heart, actually.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:44:17] Good, because I didn’t want to be a downer. It was a bit rainy here today.
Rachel Thompson: [00:44:23] Well, I thank you so much for the time that you’ve generously given.
Eufemia Fantetti: [00:44:28] This was really wonderful. So, thank you.
Rachel Thompson: [00:44:32] And that concludes my interview with Eufemia Fantetti, unfortunately, because I could just talk to her forever about writing about trauma and loss, about the writing life in general, about so many things. But let’s go over what she talked about specifically about submitting to the Humber Literary Review. So, one thing that I think is really important to underscore for you is that the work has to be close to polished. They just do not have the time to do substantive edits on work. So it may not be a place to send work that you haven’t been able to do many, many edits on, that you haven’t been able to work with someone on editing, and possibly not the place to submit your work if it’s your first time. Never say never, but it definitely sounds like you’re not going to even be able to get a lot of personalized feedback about what worked and what didn’t work in the piece.
Rachel Thompson: [00:45:25] On the other hand, another thing that we learned from talking to Eufemia is that she’s really interested in publishing diverse stories, as she puts it, because it has been so long that there has been a lack of them and it’s been filtered through a white male voice, so she’s done. She doesn’t want to hear any more. She’s heard it, and she’s tired of hearing their version of someone else’s story. So, she is definitely looking for stories that are not often heard in journals or have been more on the margins of writing. So those are definitely stories to send to her. And she’s looking for a story that someone is going to share with her about what it is to be human, what it is to survive the many trials and tribulations being a human being in this day and age and all the things that happen to us, and that’s a direct quote from her. And if you’re looking for the piece that she mentions by Sheung-King called Memory Piece: Macau, it is in the print edition of the Humber Literary Review, and there are links to that website and to the table of contents for that issue on the Lit Mag Love podcast website. However, it’s not available online. So you’d have to pick up the print copy to see that one.
Rachel Thompson: [00:46:35] Lit Mag Love is co-presented by Room Magazine, literature, art, and feminism since 1975 and the Lit Mag Love course. Sound editing for this episode is done by Mica Lemiski. She’s the host of Fainting Couch Feminists, also presented by Room. You can find out more about the Lit Mag Love podcast online at litmaglovepodcast.com, or on Twitter or Instagram at Lit Mag Love. Thank you for listening.
Links Related to the Episode You can read Sheung-King’s Memory Piece: Macau in the print edition of the Humber Literary Review (Spring/Summer 2017)
A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love by Eufemia Fantetti
Credits
Host: Rachel Thompson
Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski
Transcript Editor: Yolande House
Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
The post 12 // Remember Write Rhymes with Fight with Eufemia Fantetti of Humber Literary Review appeared first on Rachel Thompson Writing Courses.
As always this episode truly takes you behind the scenes of a literary journal—in this case, it’s a University-based journal in the centre of controversy. (Below, we link to articles that will provide some background, though you don’t need to know all the minutiae of this story to listen to the episode.)
We also talk about Shazia’s really laudable efforts to make sure underrepresented writers are welcome with open arms into the pages of PRISM, and my sixth-grade self jumped in glee when she talked about how being a writer is a lot like being a spy-explorer. We also discuss emotional urgency in poetry, literary criticism, and you’ll come away with a better sense of what working with a dream editor is like and what kind of poems you should never submit to Shazia.
PRISM is the oldest literary magazine in western Canada. Published quarterly in Vancouver, British Columbia, its mandate is to publish the best in contemporary writing and translation from Canada and around the world. Writing from PRISM has been featured in Best American Stories, Best American Essays and The Journey Prize Stories, amongst other noted publications. It is edited by MFA students in the Creative Writing Program, UBC. Shazia Hafiz Ramji received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and was a finalist for the 2018 Alberta Magazine Awards and the 2016 National Magazine Awards. Her writing has been longlisted for The Fiddlehead’s Short Fiction contest and has recently appeared in Quill & Quire, Metatron’s ALPHA, and Hamilton Arts & Letters. Her first chapbook is Prosopopoeia (Anstruther Press, 2017) and her debut book of poetry, Port of Being, is forthcoming from Invisible Press in fall 2018.
Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
Rachel interviews Carleigh Baker, an editor with Joyland, who talks about the difference between her first and future books, “You can only gaze at your navel for so long. If that’s what you needed to heal, great, but I’m really looking forward to turning my gaze outward.” And about the positive changes and communities that have grown out of dark times in CanLit: “I’m hopeful because I see a lot of women and some men speak up about sexual assault.”
Carleigh Baker is a Cree-Métis/ Icelandic writer living on unceded Coast Salish territory. She is the Vancouver editor of Joyland and also editing an upcoming issue of Poetry is Dead. Carleigh’s work has appeared in subTerrain, PRISM International, Joyland, and Matrix. She won the Lush Triumphant award for short fiction in 2012 and is a two-time Journey Prize nominee. In submissions to her, she says she likes bees, spawning salmon, and apocalyptic romance, and tight economical prose with a ton of subtext, a sense of humour (the darker the better) and a deep appreciation of how flawed and confusing humans are.
Notes On Problems in the CanLit Community This episode is the first of a few coming up, where Rachel interviews writers and editors closely affected by what’s been happening in CanLit culture, specifically with the University of British Columbia firing of a prof and the fall out when literary heavyweights signed a letter calling for “due process” of the accused.
As Carleigh put it in our interview, “Last winter was a dark winter in CanLit.”
It’s basically CanLit’s #MeToo moment, but it hasn’t played out the way it has in Hollywood. In this movement, it has been the less powerful people in CanLit speaking up and demanding true accountability from our community.
In the show notes on litmaglovepodcast.com, are links to articles that will provide some background on this, though you don’t need to know all the minutiae of this story to listen to the episode. For one, there’s a really familiar pattern here, unfortunately, and for another, we talk about other things, like Carleigh’s enthusiastic interest in heavy metal music, the difference between her first and second book, where she can now look outward, and her activism on Twitter. And we also talk about what makes her hopeful for the future, including the foundation of the UBC Indigenous reading group.
And as always it’s full of behind the scenes insights from a literary journal, and tips for you on submitting to lit mags.
The Sun is an independent, ad-free magazine that for more than forty years has used words and photographs to evoke the splendour and heartache of being human. Each monthly issue features personal essays, short stories, interviews, poetry, and photographs that explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet them. Writing from The Sun has won the Pushcart Prize and been selected for numerous anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.
The New Quarterly—TNQ, for short—is a Canadian literary journal known for wit, warmth, and literary innovation. Our style is celebratory, and we’re well known for finding, as well as nurturing, distinctive voices, and for continuing to support writers throughout their career. We publish short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction that explores both the craft and the writing life. Watch for TNQ writers among those cited for National Magazine Awards, the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Journey Prize, and the Writers Trust Fiction Prize.
Each issue brings our readers work by both emerging and established writers, and, while TNQ has always been an inclusive publication, we have renewed our commitment to encouraging writers who may be experiencing barriers regarding race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, or age to consider TNQ when they’re ready to submit their finest work.
Pamela Mulloy has edited TNQ since 2011. She has a master of arts in studies in fiction from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom; has had short fiction published in the United Kingdom and Canada; and has been awarded the Waterloo Regional Arts Council award for fiction. Her novel, The Deserters, is due out in Spring of 2018 with Véhicule Press. She currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband and daughter
Quotes from the Episode “I confess to being a slow thinker, a ruminator. I’m the one who thinks about it and has the idea after everybody has left the table. Social media is a challenge.”
“I think that I understand that writing is a process and it sometimes requires a great deal of patience, and revisiting, and rethinking, things we’re not used to doing to be productive.“
“One of the things that we consider with the writers is that it’s a relationship with the writers. We’re actually investing in a writer when we choose to publish them. We hope that they will continue to submit to us and it becomes an ongoing relationship. That human element of the publishing process is really important. I’m always curious what the writer is doing in their wider writing life.“
“Quiet stories are the ones I’m often drawn to.”
“In order to become a successful writer, you have to submit your work. It kinda raises the bar for your writing. It pushes you to get the best you can get.“
Episode Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Audio Editor: Meghan Bell Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/ Production & Research Assistant: Gulnaz Saiyed Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
Room is Canada’s oldest feminist literary journal, and has published fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, art, interviews, and book reviews for forty years. Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases writing and art by women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit and nonbinary people.Room believes in publishing emerging writers alongside established authors, and because of this, approximately 90% of the work the magazine publishes comes from unsolicited submissions or contest entries. Work that originally appeared in Room has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Anthology, Best Canadian Poetry, Best Canadian Stories, and Best Canadian Essays, and has been nominated for a National Magazine Award.
About Chelene Knight Chelene Knight lives in Vancouver, BC and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio in multiple genres. Chelene is a Library Assistant at the Vancouver Public Library, and Managing Editor at Room. Chelene has worked as a Manuscript Consultant through SFU and has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her second book, Dear Current Occupant, a memoir, is forthcoming with BookThug in 2018. Chelene is now working on a novel set in the 1940's in Vancouver's Hogan's Alley. Her first book, Braided Skin, was published by Mother Tongue Publishing in Spring 2015. Find out more about Chelene at cheleneknight.com and @poetchelene.
Quotes from the Episode “I don't have a favourite genre. I have a favourite mindset: I have the power to change the world however I see fit.”
“Listen to the writing and follow it.”
“[At Room we are] #transparency. I don’t see many other magazines doing that right now.”
“You have a small window to do something amazing. You gotta drive it home really quick.”
Episode Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Audio Editor: Meghan Bell Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/ Production & Research Assistant: Gulnaz Saiyed Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
About Maisonneuve Maisonneuve literally means "new house" and suggests the spirit of collective enterprise the magazine gathers under one roof. The magazine takes its name from Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the man who founded Montreal in 1642. A teenage soldier who experienced something of a religious conversion in his twenties, de Maisonneuve came from Champagne, where his last remains can be found today.
About Andrea Bennett andrea bennett's writing has been published by the Atlantic, the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, Maisonneuve, Hazlitt, Vice, Geist, Reader's Digest and others. Her essay, "Water Upon the Earth," received gold in the essays category at the 2015 National Magazine Awards; in 2013, her piece "Unmasked: Searching for lessons in Toronto's 2010 G20 debacle" received an NMA honourable mention in the politics and public interest category. andrea's first book of poetry, Canoodlers, came out with Nightwood Editions in 2014. She is currently working on travel guides to Montreal and Quebec City for Moon Travel.
andrea is the Editor-in-Chief of Maisonneuve, a researcher for Reader's Digest, a columnist at This magazine and the designer for PRISM. Originally from Hamilton, she currently lives in Montreal. She holds a BA in English and French from the University of Guelph, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She is represented by Stephanie Sinclair at Transatlantic.
Quotes from the Episode “As an editor, it’s really important to cultivate a couple of things. One is an awareness of what’s been published elsewhere.” “So poetry and prose are a little bit like running and cycling, in that there are some things that cross over and other things that don’t.” “General interest magazines are looking for scenes, like action unfolding in time as opposed to anything too-too exposition heavy.” Story Discussed Andrea discussed Adam Elliott Segal's "Black Market Babies," non-fiction (longform magazine journalism). Read it here: https://maisonneuve.org/article/2017/07/18/black-market-babies.
Episode Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Audio Editor: Meghan Bell Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/ Production & Research Assistant: Gulnaz Saiyed Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
An online independent literary magazine dedicated to the publication of new and innovative writing, The Gravity of theThing has been named one of thirty best online magazines in 2016 (Bookfox) and one of fifteen best literary journals of 2015 (Authors Publish Magazine). We publish work that is aware of its literary form, writing that defamiliarizes in craft or content for an enhanced rendering of reality.
Since 2006, Thea Prieto has edited for Counterpoint Press, the Berkeley Fiction Review, the Portland Review, and The Chiron Journal: Anthology of Interdisciplinary Media. She teaches creative writing at Portland State University, including the courses Creative Writing Through Guided Meditation and Introduction to Horror Fiction.
Quotes from the Episode “The song functions as a prompt, and then I kind of leave it behind as the story starts to realize itself.” “I definitely… was interested in defamiliarizing not just characterization, but also the way readers engage with writing in general.” “Just because a piece is published doesn’t mean it becomes stationary or stagnant.” “It could be overwhelming sometimes how many ways a story can be correct and different at the same time.” “It’s really revealing what the form, how that constraint of just six words… how it sometimes forces writers into a similar spot.” “I would encourage writers to think about the ways that their story is constructed and how that might complement or clash with or in any way enlighten the contents of their piece.”
Episode Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Audio Editor: Meghan Bell Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/ Production & Research Assistant: Gulnaz Saiyed Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
The Forge Literary Magazine was founded by volunteers from the Fiction Forge, an international online writers’ forum, which counts amongst its members and alumni winners of numerous literary awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Bridport Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Pinch Literary Award in Fiction. Former members’ novels have been published by Bloomsbury, Chatto & Windus, Sceptre, Headline and Little, Brown. The Forge staff share editorial duties equally and pay their contributors. Their taste is wide-ranging and eclectic. The Forge Literary Magazine is a project of Forge Literary Press, a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of California.