This archive contains The Collagist blog that existed prior to July 1, 2010. Some links/files may not work correctly, as these entried have been imported from our prior system. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Blog entries posted after July 1, 2010 can be found at this link.

Friday
Sep182009

Podcast Episode 05: Christopher Kennedy

Christopher Kennedy's poem "Are You Looking for the Self-Help Section?" appears in the second issue of The Collagist, published September 15, 2009. You can listen here to Kennedy reading his poem as part of our podcast:

Episode 05: "Are You Looking for the Self-Help Section?" by Christopher Kennedy (Enhanced Version)

Episode 05: "Are You Looking for the Self-Help Section?" by Christopher Kennedy (MP3 Version)

You may also subscribe to the podcast through iTunes by clicking here, or you may add it manually in iTunes or other software by using the direct feed address: /wordpress/?feed=podcast
Thursday
Sep172009

Interview: Matthew Salesses

Matthew Salesses' story “Mongolia, New York, Prague, Krakow” appears in the first issue of The Collagist, published August 15, 2009. He is the author of the chapbook We Will Take What We Can Get, from Publishing Genius Press, and his stories appear or will soon appear in Glimmer Train, Witness, American Short Fiction, Pleiades, Mid-American Review, The Lifted Brow, and others. He is also the editor of Redivider.

Here, he speaks to The Collagist about the inspiration for his story, as well as why Prague is such a compelling location for fiction, what "up-to-the-minute nonfiction" means, and what it takes to write "stories that are invested in sentences."

1. Can you talk about the inspiration for "Mongolia, New York, Prague, Krakow"? What was on your mind while you were writing this story?

“Mongolia, New York, Prague, Krakow” started for me with Krakow. Then came Prague. Then Mongolia. And lastly New York. In the title, though, they are in the order in which these cities mean something to the narrator.

To turn that answer into an answer that actually addresses your question, I started with the Gestapo cells in Krakow. Those cells stuck in my mind. The quote in the story is a real quote. I knew the moment I saw those words that they were a story. What I didn't know was how. Writing this was very hard for me, and I'm glad you thought it worked in the end. I wish I were more confident that it worked, even now. What I saw on those walls was an instant of existence, in words, that was also an infinite existence. Full of hate and love. I had traveled to Krakow from Prague, and I think there was something in that movement, from a place that had outlasted basically every war thrown at it, to a place where someone had had to write himself down to exist, that I wanted to get at in the story. At first, I included a number of imaginary existences, very nice sentences, I thought, but sentences that didn't add up to anything.

Later, when I was in Korea, my wife and I watched a television show about an eight-year-old eagle hunter in Mongolia, this old way of life that is disappearing. Cathreen translated this—I don't speak Korean—so I'm not sure how much was lost, or perhaps gained, in translation, but the idea of this boy eagle hunter fascinated me. I soon thought of it as a love story, the boy and the eagle in the middle of a vast desert. And my character seemed to speak up and say, “This is my past.” That kind of estrangement seemed right for him, who he was in Prague: imagining lives and living an imagined life.

Those were my first two years with the story. And for two more years, I just couldn't get it to work. Something was missing. I desperately wanted it to be a story, but my character was having none of it. Then the New York part came to me, the child. I was thinking of writing a story about an unborn child, and it just clicked into place. An unborn child, really, is the ultimate imagined life. In the end, I structured the story around the child, the advice, the loneliness and possible loneliness, as a way to focus the imaginings and sense of loss.

2. In every story I write, there comes some point where I write just the right thing, where I know that despite not knowing what I'm doing, despite all the doubt and struggle inherent in writing, I know that this particular piece is somehow going to turn out, that it has to turn out, all because this one image or sentence or passage is in it. I feel similar sorts of things as an editor, when I'm reading submissions—Something happens in a story that makes it stand out in some way, that makes me absolutely sure that this is the work of a talented writer in complete control of his craft. Your story had one of those moments for me, when the narrator confronts the mother of his child, trying to convince her to stay:
When I left your mom, I told her I would give her three chances to keep me in her life, in yours. The first was this meeting to tell her I was going. The second was our kiss goodbye. The third I said I would keep until she could not resist me. She said this would never happen, and when I said what about when her husband saw the baby's brown skin, she said she had already told him what was coming. The truth, her trump card, like in the game, hearts.

The last sentence of this paragraph told me this was a story I wanted, and then the rest of the story confirmed what I already knew was true. Was that moment as surprising for you, writing the story, as it was for me, reading it? Or was there some other killer moment that the rest of the story organized itself around?

I'm glad you liked that. I'm invested in sentences. I like stories that are invested in sentences. I like stories where the sentences do the work of the plot and move the story along, rather than stories where the destination does the work of the plot—where the point of the sentences is only to get the story to the next predetermined place, no matter how unpredictable.

What I mean is that ideally I would like every sentence to become a killer moment. Though of course this is impossible for people who are not Amy Hempel.

I actually wrote drafts and drafts of this story in which the narrator narrated in broken English. I loved this, but in the end, it had to go. I got some good advice about letting it go. Though I did keep much of the second-language-speaker sentence structure.

The music of a second language was always this character's voice, and some of the more startling sentences—at least for me to write them—were a result of this translated way of saying things.

3. You were one of the very first people to submit to The Collagist, and I can't thank you enough for that. I think I mentioned it when I first accepted this story, but out of the first hundred stories we had submitted to us, eleven were set at least partly in Prague. What is it about this particular city that makes it such a good setting for fiction?

I'm glad I got the story in before too many better stories obscured it.  There are so reasons why Prague is a wonderful city for a writer to live in and to write about. I've actually just finished a draft of a novel set in Prague, so it's clear I can't get away from it. The city is a mix of old and new, medieval juxtaposed with Art Nouveau, a place where time is revealed as indeterminate. It's a city that survived occupation in both world wars and countless invasions before that. The people there have this amazing attitude that the world just goes on and goes on unalterably; some have the attitude that suffering just goes on and on unalterably; and yet this does not depress them. Their spirit survives.

4.  Your chapbook We Will Take What We Can Get was recently put out as part of Publishing Genius' This PDF Chapbook series. The web page for the book says that you call the work "up-to-the-minute nonfiction." What do you mean by that?

When I sent the essay to Adam at PGP, I was writing a series of essays online at http://live-essays.blogspot.com. My wife, Cathreen, and I were going through this unbelievable series of disasters, or rather, Cathreen was going through an unbelievable series of disasters, for which I was partly to blame. And of course, I thought this would be perfect to write about.

This is going to sound bad, so if you want to like me, stop reading. Or, alternatively, graciously believe that none of this was my fault. It started like this: one day, I slammed her hand in the door, and the next day, I drew a bath for her and lit candles and the candles singed off most of her hair.

I was writing about what had happened and what was happening to us in real time (I was able to write more often, then). So I called it “up-to-the-minute nonfiction.” Something would happen, and a little while later, usually the same day, sometimes as it was actually happening, such as when she said she didn't like what I was writing, I wrote about it.

5. What other writing projects are you currently working on?

Well, there's the novel—which I mentioned is set in Prague. In the novel is illicit love, a flood that devastated part of the city in 2002, revenge, flesh-eating bacteria, and other good things.

Then I'm also working on a series of fifteen short shorts about an island of epidemics. The epidemics are epidemics such as the epidemic of unrequited love, or the epidemic of memory loss, or the epidemic of magic, or the epidemic of extra-sensitive hearing. The stories will be illustrated by the wonderful Marisol Abbott.

6. What great books have you read recently? Are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?

I'm reading Bel Canto now, which I've wanted to read for ages. I’m finding it beautifully emotional. Not at all embarrassed to be emotional in a way that many American novels seem to have become.

Two recent small press books I’ve loved are Shane Jones's Light Boxes and Paul Yoon's Once, the Shore.

As far as upcoming releases, I'm extremely excited for Laura van den Berg's What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, which I'm sure everyone at Dzanc is excited about as well. Also, Mattox Roesch's Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same, from Unbridled Books. These two books also happen to have perfect titles. And not to forget, I look forward to Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night. I talked to him at length about it in an interview forthcoming in the Spring Redivider.
Wednesday
Sep162009

2009 Flash Fiction Contest, Judged by Kim Chinquee

Contest



The Collagist is pleased to announce its 2009 Flash Fiction Contest, judged by Kim Chinquee.

The contest is open for entries beginning today, September 15th, 2009, and will take entries until midnight on November 15th, 2009. For complete contest rules or to submit an entry, please click here.

About the Judge
Kim Chinquee is the author of Oh Baby (Ravenna Press), the forthcoming Pretty (White Pine Press), and is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Online Writing: Best of the First Ten Years (Snowvigate Press). She lives in Buffalo, New York.

Prizes
The contest winner will receive a minimum of $100 and publication in the December issue of The Collagist. Any finalists passed on to the editors of The Collagist will also be announced alongside the winner and considered for publication in future issues.

Prize money will be paid only to the final winner, and will increase along with the number of submissions, up to maximum of $500, along the following scale:

Up to 100 entries     $100 and publication
101 to 200 entries   $200 and publication
201 to 300 entries   $300 and publication
301 to 500 entries   $400 and publication
401 or more entries $500 and publication

Fees
$5 for one entry under 1000 words, which will be submitted as an attachment contest@thecollagist.com after your PayPal payment has been processed.

All fees will be used to support and promote Dzanc Books' non-profit ventures. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books publishes excellent books of literary fiction through both open submissions and the Dzanc Prize, as well its imprints, Black Lawrence Press, OV Books, and Monkeybicycle. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in the schools through its Writers In Residence programs.
Tuesday
Sep152009

THE FIRST RISK by Charles Jensen

The First RiskThe Collagist would like to congratulate Issue One contributor Charles Jensen, whose full-length debut collection of poetry has officially been released today. The First Risk is published by Lethe Press, and can be purchased immediately on Amazon.

Jeff Mann, author of Bones Washed with Wine and On the Tongue, has this to say about the book:
I've admired Charles Jensen's poetry in literary journals for years, so it's a real pleasure to have a collection of his work published at last. These poems are simply remarkable, ranging from Matthew Shepherd's death to Alfred Hitchcock and Pedro Almodóvar films. Jensen's language is vivid, elegant, adept, and unforgettable. He gives me hope for the future of poetry.

According to the publisher, "The First Risk confronts the murder of Matthew Shepard and the myth of Venus and Adonis through the eyes of Italian Renaissance painter Luca Cambiaso; the eccentric women of Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother and their search for authenticity; the nature of love and obsession in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and the pain and confusion of loss; and ''The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon,'' the compelling novella-in-verse of a physicist in search of his lost wife, haunted by a phantom voice that may or may not be hers."

While I was the book review editor for NewPages, I reviewed "The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon," which is included in The First Risk and which remains one of the best chapbooks I've ever read, if not the very best--I've certainly thought about it longer than any other chapbook, and returned to it more times. I would recommend The First Risk for that section alone, even if I didn't know how good the rest of the book was going to be.

If you need further convincing, here's a brief excerpt from that review, which can be read in full at Newpages:
Charles Jensen’s The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon is an ambitious book, highly entertaining yet formally daring. It incorporates a variety of prose and poetic forms to tell a love story that spans most of the twentieth-century and at least two dimensions, all within the space of a mere twenty-one pages. Comprised of diary entries, academic papers, and shredded documents full of supposed “automatic writing,” this slim volume weaves a mysterious love story with far greater gravity than its size on paper would suggest possible...

Like the best mysteries, there are no sure answers to be found in the pages of this book... Early on, Edward says that “to have love and to lose it is our only failure; to have love and destroy it, our only crime.” This conflict is at the crux of his love for Maribel, and his attempts at its resolution are the true heart of The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon. Charles Jensen has accomplished a major work here, one that can be read in a single sitting but which reaches far beyond. Like the voice of Maribel herself, his poetry resonates, haunting its reader with its tale of ghostly love, of beautifully destructive despair, of getting lost and of finally being found.

Once again, The First Risk is published by Lethe Press, and can be purchased immediately on Amazon. I can't recommend Jensen's work highly enough, and I hope you'll consider picking up a copy of this book. I just ordered my own copy, and can't wait to receive it.
Tuesday
Sep152009

Issue Two: September 2009



The second issue of The Collagist is now live!

In this issue, we have new fiction from Elizabeth Crane, Angi Becker Stevens, Sean Lovelace, and Jonathan Callahan, as well as a novel excerpt from Edward Falco's upcoming novel, Saint John of the Five Burroughs. Non-fiction includes an excerpt from Stephen Elliott's just-released memoir The Adderall Diaries, as well as an essay from Erik Anderson. In poetry, we have poems by Jason Bredle, Jamaal May, Rachel Contreni Flynn, Christopher Kennedy, Elisa Gabbert, and Kathleen Rooney.

Our book review section includes reviews of Welcome to Oakland by Eric Miles Williamson, Some Things That Meant the World to Me by Joshua Mohr, The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla, Changing by Lily Hoang, The Country Where No One Ever Dies by Ornela Vorpsi, The New Valley by Josh Weil, and Vengeful Hymns by Marc J. Sheehan, as well as a video review of Mati Unt's Brecht at Night.

Throughout the month, we'll be continuing to provide even more content here at the blog, where we'll again be featuring interviews with many of our contributors as well as podcasts of them performing their work. Our podcast has also been listed at iTunes, and can be subscribed to by clicking here.

I'd also like to announce our 2009 Flash Fiction Contest, open immediately for entries. The contest will be judged by Issue One contributor Kim Chinquee, the author of two collections of flash fiction and poetry, Oh Baby (Ravenna Press) and the forthcoming Pretty (White Pine Press). Prize money starts at $100 and then climbs upward based on the number of entries received, and the winner will also be published in our December issue.

As always, thank you in advance for reading, and for helping us spread the word about The Collagist. I hope you enjoy the issue!