Interview With Gregory Wolfe

1) The vision for Image journal is different from most other journals that have received acclaim, especially from a Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillon. What inspired you and your staff to create a journal with the specific focus of integrating imagination and religion?

The goal was to fill a gap in our culture -- for most of the last 100 years, both religious believers and secularists have agreed that great art could no longer be created by people grappling with religious faith. Many believers dismiss "modern art" as somehow incapable of conveying a spiritual vision. And many secularists think that faith is an escape from reality and thus cannot generate great art. We wanted to prove both sides wrong. After 20 years and over 60 issues, we think we've done that.

2) Can you talk a little bit about the history of your journal and some of the growing pains it went through to get to where it is today? What were some of the biggest challenges your journal faced or still faces today?

Well, the obvious answer is that money has always been the biggest challenge. But in a way we also struggled for credibility -- when we started IMAGE the editors had no money, no reputation, no institutional backing. We had only a single issue of a quality journal to show off, and we used that to try to convince people that it was needed. The biggest challenge we face today is the difficulty of convincing people that reading a literary journal is worth the effort. In an era of short attention spans a publication that contains long stories and essays, and challenging poems, is not an easy sell. And yet the rewards for this kind of deep reading are tremendous.

3) As you are a teacher, publisher, and editor, is it difficult to find time to write yourself? How do you make time to write?

All I have time to write these days are short pieces: four editorial statements for IMAGE each year, a few book reviews and blog posts. That's because my work for IMAGE and the Seattle Pacific University MFA in Creative Writing take up so much of my time. I hope one day soon to be able to hire more workers to help shoulder some of the workload. On that happy day, I will be able to begin writing books again.

4) What type of genre do you normally write? Do you have any works in progress?

I write nonfiction of many types: literary criticism, cultural reflections, biography, etc. I have begun research for a book I hope to write: a group biography of several Renaissance Christian Humanists, including Erasmus, Thomas More, and Hans Holbein the Younger. Also, a book of my essays will be published in about a year and I am editing a volume of selected poems by the twentieth century American poet Dunstan Thompson.

5) In ways does the novel you're currently working on "The Company of Good Letters: How Erasmus and His Circle of Renaissance Christian Humanists Shaped the Modern World" fit in to the vision statement of your journal? Or are you planning on going in a different direction?

It's not going to be a novel (work of fiction); it will be a nonfiction book -- narrative history. And yes, it is completely in line with the vision of IMAGE because I see in Erasmus and Co. a vision that is almost identical to that of IMAGE. These Christian humanists thought that literature and the imagination were extremely important as a way of bringing a balanced vision to a highly politicized era.

6) Who were some of the other writers who were important to the early part of your career?

The poet T.S. Eliot. Fiction writers like Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Georges Bernarnos, Francois Mauriac, and Shusaku Endo.

7) Finally, do you have any advice to anyone who would be interested in submitting their work to your journal?

Be patient with us -- we are a small staff with a huge workload. It can take us a while to read your submission. Don't be discouraged if you work is not accepted. Keep submitting to IMAGE and other journals. Above all, keep writing!

Interview with Kate Bernheimer

Kate Bernheimer is the author of The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold. She is also the founder and editor of the Fairy Tale Review.

The latest issue of Fairy Tale Review, The Aquamarine Issue and previous issues can be found on Amazon.

1) Why do you gravitate towards fairy tales? Why do you think readers gravitate towards fairy tales?

I gravitate toward fairy tales in much the same way that I gravitate toward air. Sensibly, but senselessly, I find them because I need them, never knowing quite why. It is a mystery to me. That is the first part of why. The second part of why is that fairy tales---and here I mean the older versions collected in translated collections---come in a form of book that I love. The reproduction and replication of versions fascinate me; the range of style from awkward to elegant, from sparse to floral, never cease to amaze. I love the most common techniques in fairy tales too: abstraction, everyday magic, depthlessness, intuitive logic. Of course thematically I am drawn to the motif of the underling, the weak, the humble among humans, rising, along with he hedgehogs and mice. Everything small shining. Each piece of dirt speaking. This is not fanciful; it simply is. I love the flatness of fairy tales---to me reading a fairy tale constitutes bliss. In my research, I've found that many readers are drawn to fairy tales because reading fairy tales provoke in them some feeling of consolation and bliss. Senselessly, they make sense. Some adult readers are embarrassed to admit they love fairy tales, or perhaps they've forgotten what fairy tales are---but I noticed that changing around 1995, and believe it is changing still, and readers are now finally acknowledging the beautiful impact that wonder stories have had on their lives as readers and authors.

2) What constitutes a fairy tale in your opinion? Must it always have fantastical elements?

I've gone out on a limb recently, and will continue to do so: I believe that all pieces of writing owe something to fairy tales. From there, one can identify, by careful and intuitive inspection, elements of fairy tales that give stories (or art works in any media) more or less of a fairy-tale feel. Those works that have a fairy-tale feel, an essence, a charge: those are fairy tales. There are more than you'd think; fairy tales sometimes come in very subtle, transparent forms seemingly absent of what you might mean by 'fantastical elements.' I would argue that The Great Gatsby is as much a fairy tale as Coraline. Sometimes the fantastical resides in the syntax. Sometimes it resides in a closet.

3) Can you describe the initial stages of the Fairy Tale Review? How many people were involved? Was it your first literary publication? (whatever you feel necessary to share).

When I founded Fairy Tale Review in 2004, there was precisely one person involved! I had the idea to begin a journal devoted entirely to fairy tales as a literary art form for many, many, many years, around the time I was writing my first novel, The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, and was editing my first anthology (Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales). At that time I had begun to notice the overpowering influence of fairy tales on contemporary writers, and a surge in the appearance of fairy-tale motifs in poetry, short stories, visual art, film, and prose--the use of enchantment, if you will. I also noticed, both in the media and by word of mouth, that stories or novels based on fairy tales were being disparaged or overlooked critically (or editorially). So I noticed a great influence of tales on a great many wildly talented writers whose books I had read, but also noted a weird, simultaneous rejection of the tradition of fairy tales as a viable, intellectual, artistic form--in the United States. So I felt that there must be some terrific, special works out there seeking a home. I established Fairy Tale Review to give those works a home and to try to help preserve and celebrate fairy tales in a way that might bring their amazing influence more broadly to light; to make it undeniable that fairy tales cannot be ignored or reduced or celebrated in only broad strokes. Though I founded Fairy Tale Review alone, I must acknowledge the early support of my outstanding, founding advisory board: Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, and Marina Warner. Now the board also includes Lydia Millet and Don Haase. And I have a wonderful contributing (and next issue's guest) editor, Timothy Schaffert, at this time. Fairy tales are that special: a giving tradition, a tradition that invites humility and consolation and luck. (This is not to deny the bruises, the darkness, the very hard knocks---but that's another interview.) I honestly would not have had the courage to begin the journal without the sweetness of the fairy-tale scholars I so admired (had admired for many years) saying yes, yes, we embrace this vision as well; it was truly communal of them to offer their advisement and time. Though starting a literary journal was a massive undertaking---one I am still reeling from daily---the editorship of fairy tales is so intrinsic to their history and to my life as a novelist, I could not imagine my world without the journal at all. I could not imagine not editing fairy tales, just as I try to write them. To edit a fairy tale is to write a fairy tale. To live one. And it's such a generous and communal tradition.

4) What contemporary fairytale comes to mind that has been a favorite of yours? Why is it good in your opinion?

That is a very difficult question to answer. While I could single stories out, I'd rather not, because I am too horizontal in my thinking to do that. I would have to defer to the Table of Contents of each issue of Fairy Tale Review published so far, and say that those fairy tales are clearly among my favorites of the new kinds of fairy tales I have been privileged to receive in the mail for consideration for the journal. (Among many I have not been able to publish there are also many favorites---in fact, in some ways, every submission I receive becomes in its own way a cherished friend, whether it suits my needs for the journal or not, because every submission I receive seems to me to reflect a very intimate and honorable love of the long tradition of fairy tales.) All of these works make undeniably new creatures from old sensations, old skeletons. It is not originality that is sublime; it is the sensation of sublimity itself which comes from becoming (whether out of something old, now, or futuristic---they are collapsed and the same in fairy tales).

5) How do you process submissions to the Fairy Tale Review? What qualities do you look for in submissions?

I "process" submissions by receiving them in an email account and then egregiously slowly making my way through the submissions one by one. As a sole editor who receives around 2,300 submissions to each issue, I will be the first to admit that I "process' submissions too slowly. As a writer I understand the frustration of waiting and waiting only to hear "Thank you but no thank you." That's why I write really gushy rejections, and I mean every word that I say. I process submissions slowly but kindly, I think. I read every single submission, not looking for any particular quality apart from the inability to stop reading---the sense of becoming---the feeling you are going somewhere new, a little bit familiar but with that uncanny glow. This can come in any style, in any form. Then, when I love something, I have a number of other trusted readers consider the work too. Sometimes, when I have a strong aversion to a particular submission, I also ask other readers to step in; though I have strong intuition, and a strong vision for the journal, I am not very important, not in the end. I'm listening in for the future of fairy tales.

6) What was one of your favorite submissions to the Fairy Tale Review?

I received a submission from a very young person---I think she said she was eleven years old. This was a rhyming poem about a child who did not want to go to sleep at night, and who instead went out in her pink nightgown for some pie, out of which marched mice, crows, and the teeniest, tiniest dolls. At the end of the poem everyone died. However, when I wrote to the author to accept the story, I never heard back, and never could send her a contract, and so I never could publish the work. Are you out there? Are you old enough now to be reading online? Or are you laughing at me as you read this, because you were never eleven, or never existed at all? I loved your poem and I hope you're not dead.

7) Have you noticed any commonalities with submissions to the Fairy Tale Review? for example, do most submissions come from certain part of the country, from a certain age groups. Are there many about hot male vampires? *Just what kind things do you see common in submissions?

A great love of fairy tales---though that love takes, as all love takes, endlessly various form (sometimes weird, sometimes wonderful, always consoling to me, even when disturbing). That love of fairy tales--however twisted or however serene---is the commonality. FTR receives submissions from all over the country and all over the world. I have never made a regional spreadsheet. I have never received any submissions about hot male vampires (or, that I know of, from any hot male vampires).

8) Can you share some of your experiences when you first began submitting your work for publishing?

My image of what it is like to "submit work for publishing" was formed early on, when I read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Jo received a letter from a magazine with a check in the envelope, accepting a mystery story. The image of her elation stayed. When I first began submitting my work, I held it in mind, expecting very long waits and not at all counting on any acceptance. So I am still always astonished and grateful when my work is accepted; it suits a fantasy I have that was formed in childhood, about the editor-author relationship: a kind of abstract and ethereal but very intellectually intimate connection that comes rarely but magically. With Ralph Berry of FC2, who published my first two novels, I had this precise experience; my first novel was literally discovered in a dusty old pile in the corner of an office by Brenda Mills, and the two of them contacted me. I submit my work very cautiously and sparingly, usually without much expectation or ego. I'm not of the "more is better" mentality, and I don't send my work out willy-nilly; rejection is too painful for me. I wait a very long time after writing something before I show it to anyone at all.

9) Do you have any advice for writers submitting for the first time?

The only advice I can offer is to practice and remember what you love, which is to think and to read and to write. To hold that closely in mind. Then when the letters come telling you something unhappy---"This isn't a short story at all"---you have that to rely on, that memory of what you love. It will come back after the harm.

10) Can you share a little about how you came about your Pink Horse story for the Significant Objects Project? You must be please with receiving over $100 dollars at bid. Is that the most any author has gotten so far?

Josh Glenn, the kindly editor of the project, sent me a photograph of the Pink Horse to write about for Significant Objects. I fell in love with that strange horse instantly---its strength and its glow. "The Rosebud," the German tale that I based my story on, has always haunted me; I've brought it into two novels so far too, and it's featured prominently in an essay I wrote for The Writer's Notebook (Tin House Books), as a perfect example of a story containing fairy-tale techniques. I needed to revisit the tale again as soon as I saw that horse. I've donated the "winnings" from the story to Wide Horizons for Children (www.whfc.org), the adoption agency and humanitarian organization through which we adopted our daughter. I love their work.

11) what are some long term goals for the Fairy Tale Review?

The mission of Fairy Tale Review is to promote an appreciation of fairy tales, old and new, to preserve the tradition for future generations of readers. As such I've established a Fairy-Tale Book Repository, hoping to gather those old, dusty fairy-tale books that often are simply discarded; not the most well-known books, but those random and arcane editions that you sometimes see in boxes at thrift shops. It would be nice to reach more readers. As such, FTR would be meeting its goal of bringing fairy tales---old and new---and their scholars--the respect they deserve, for I believe that fairy tales are the single greatest influence on all forms of contemporary literature, but also the most disparaged influence in certain critical circles. So there is much work to be done.

12) Will you please ask yourself a question and answer it?

That scares me too much.

Out of Nothing

When I looked at the different online journals, I found them to be extremely non-user friendly at first. The websites were very creative and geared towards an artists mind. This was really interesting for me because the college student in me wanted to find the information I was looking for within the first two seconds of opening the page. But most of the websites challenged the viewer to slow down and accept the website and it’s product slowly. The one website I found to be extremely user friendly and simple was the “out of nothing” online journal. The home page was straight forward with its Issues and statement of purpose.
I appreciate the way in which this online journal has catered itself to the majority of the attention deficit internet users. The journal does an excellent job utilizing the artistic creativity and the freedom that comes with it while still making the website easy to surf through. It combines the inherent desire of artists to break rules and boundaries but still works within the medium of which it is presented. For example, a painter uses a canvass to paint. However the canvass is the medium in which the art is presented. If a painter uses a canvass, the artist must stay restrained to the limits of the canvass. In the same way this online journal has an outline that creates a user-friendly order within the chaotic disorder of art. This journal also appeals to the audio, visual, and imaginative senses of the human body through an mp3, paintings/pictures, and poetry/fiction.

Out of nothing is a fascinating website. I'm into the set up, the design of it, the sheer black backdrop, the gray gradients of speech boxes and text, or the sudden splashes of color on one of the many pages available for pouring over. It feels like their name- the space of the website seems to grow out of nothingness, this blackness and darkness.
The writing presented here is fabulous. I am getting into the out of nothing our souls burst forth like shelling peanuts. The second selection there, by Jared Woodland is a dizzying, dark and magical tale of a character somewhat out of sorts, laying down in a gutter, welcoming cockroaches to crawl all up on his hands. The piece contains no use of punctuation, is one continuous maniacal speeding train of consciousness, naming no characters, only speaking in the first and second person. I like how this selection of work is arranged, each individual piece classified within a block similar to those of the elements on the periodic table. Its as if when combined, all the elements of this selection form something, out of nothing, out of words which are really only still artifice.

I found Sidebrow's website far less appealing to my eye and attention than out of nothing. Their page looks old, outdated, simple white and html basic text with hardly any color. I did find it interestiong to place the main contents skewed over to the right hand side of the page rather than the usual left, an unexpected feature. However when I went to go read some of the work I was not intrigued, they open and appear as mere word documents, receiving no real special treatment to make the text feel and look more readable and manageable to the online blog reading literary audience. Upon more investigation, however, some of the projects are rather thrilling and weird like the Ghost Project, presented as images and texts approaching the issue of embodiment and other worldliness present in our physical realm of existence. I'm reeled into the story here, still wanting more from the website. Simplicity though is always welcome. I'd just say this site is slightly minimal for my taste.
love, Ben

Web as Medium

For Thursday: pick one of these sites and write a short review/reflection. Specifically consider how the project works within an online setting.

Ubuweb
Out of Nothing
Sidebrow
HOW2
Delirious Hem

The Concept of the Canon

First of all I'd like to apologize for how incredibly late this post is. I didn't realize this was due until I went in to talk with Professor Carmody. Anyways so here is my post on the Concept of the Canon.


At first I resonated very deeply with this article and it's critique on the "Canon" of literature. There were a lot of times when I felt as if other writers had read, referred to, and even modeled their writing after a select group of authors and their novels and I knew these were the novels I should read. In my mind, the idea of a canon gives a power of valorization to writers as a whole. I felt less of a writer because I haven't read so many authors of the supposed Canon that existed. But towards the end of it I realized that there was a problem. Krupat had essentially debased the idea of a canon without necessarily proposing a solution, at least not within the intro. And for me I was at odds with this.

The very idea of a canon is problematic, as evidenced in the great care and difficulty Krupat went into defining it. But it also is one of those topics that no matter how much you argue for either side or perception, there will always be both pro's and con's. For instance if an established canon should exist, then it serves as a template or guide for developing writers to follow and model their writing after. However who's to say what should be in the canon at all? If an established canon should not exist, then the quality of writing and literature becomes piss-poor. Yet people would have the freedom to choose who and what to model their writing after.

So as I see this as a debate with valid arguments for both sides, I will highlight some points that I thought were very perceptive of Krupat and then give my own purpose of having a canon and its function.

Krupat talked about how the current Canon is based on the "race of the Euroamerican, Native American, and Afro-American." He argues that there very well may have been other ethnic writers to write pieces of literature that could contribute to the Canon. One author that immediately comes to mind would be Amy Tan.

He also predicted how Spanish novels will soon be included in the standardized Canon. I think this is a very perceptive prediction. I already see a movement within my Spanish Literature classes, to whom he refers to as the "members of the professiorate." It's one thing to have a class read a novel in Spanish written by an author of Spanish descent. It's another thing to specifically choose texts that attack American capitalism, challenging U.S. students to reconfigure their perception of the U.S. and its policies. Even in High School, Esquival's Like Water For Chocolate and Isabel Allende's House of Spirits were required texts of my I.B. English class in my Junior year.

Krupat also noticed that it was "only recently that anyone has attempted to divorce literature from social utility." This statement ties into my last segment of my post.

I believe that people should only write if it serves a social utility. This means the piece of work is relevant to the social context its intended for and the work reveals some truth about the human experience. In my opinion, writing simply to create beauty is incredibly vainglorious and useless. Often times the most beautiful pieces of work of art are grounded in its social utility. The sculpture of David, the Sistine Chapel, and Mozart's symphony's. All of these were created for the recipient to enhance their lives and to share with them something they have experienced themselves. This is how I have come to terms with my writing and why I write. However I have an incredibly liberal view. Other authors have their own reasons for writing and I will hold nothing against them. All I am concerned about is the relationship between the audience and myself. The audience can expect from me social utility in my writing.

How I view the canon from a writer's perspective is that it is a gateway book to a genre of literature that helps us better understand how those before us tackled their own passion for writing. If the writer seeks to write in the genre of modern day suspense and terror, they could read John Grisham. If they want to write in the genre of Fiction in the mid-1900's, they could read Tolkien. And the list can go on. The point being that we learn from those before us their mistakes and their resolution of the problems they faced in their writing as well as appreciate the text as we hope our readers appreciate ours.

In this class I've been told that if we want to be writers we have to be really good readers as well. I truly believe in this concept because simply put, the more we read the more we learn. As writing itself is free-flowing, the idea of reading books from different writing styles would help us pick and choose attributes that we can select to synthesize our own style of writing.

Guest: Jen Hofer

Jen Hofer will be visiting our class tomorrow. Her recent publications include One (Palm Press, 2009), Laws (Dusie Books, 2009), The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008), sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008), lip wolf, a translation of Laura Solórzano’s lobo de labio (Action Books, 2007), and Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her forthcoming books are from the valley of death (Ponzipo) and a translation of Guatemalan poet Alan Mills’ Síncope (Piedra Santa).

Here are some links and articles that Jen will be referencing tomorrow:

1. "Translation as Subversive Speech" by Jen Hofer in The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

2. PDF versions of all Dusie books (including Jen's) from the first year of the project

3. PDF version of Jen's second Dusie book

4. Link to Jen's collaborative chapbook with Sawako Nakayasu, Dusie year three

5. Also check out The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Dusie Press Kollektive, and HOW2.