Write, Publish, and Shine

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/

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“We’re not a writing class, we’re a magazine.”

“We’re not a writing class, we’re a magazine.”

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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

“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.

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In this episode, SAND Fiction Editor, Jennifer Neal, says as writers, we have to insist upon ourselves in order to take our craft seriously and she talks about the upside of family estrangement, something that is common with writers who tell deep truths and spill family secrets. In the interview, Neal also speculates about what Zadi Smith might be saying in the mirror these days and answers the question, How many introverts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

This is a journal "more interested in the world than the self"—it's a little bit more on the political and social justice side.

Managing Editor, Emily Wojcik, shares the best analogy for writing that takes a while to get started. (You might have the theme music to a beloved cartoon from the 80s running through your head after this.)

She shares her wisdom on trusting your own writing and trusting that the reader is okay with endings that don't necessarily "satisfy." But she also empathizes with writers who try on different things (what they hear in workshops, from outside advisers) because they get nervous and really want to be published.

One thoughtful question she has for writers is: Where are you getting in your own way? This comes from her experience of seeing a lot of writing that is almost there in the MR slush pile. And she advises writers to learn to distinguish between what is sharp and almost there and what is not quite there.