Write, Publish, and Shine

“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.”

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.

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

“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.”

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.

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

Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson

“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. (Links to her essays appear below, or check out her Twitter feed.)

She talks to Lit Mag Love Podcast 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!)

The Fiddlehead is published four times a year at the University of New Brunswick. (First published in 1945.)

Credits

Host: Rachel Thompson

Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski

Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson

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.CreditsHost: Rachel ThompsonSound Editor: Mica LemiskiProduced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 CommunityThis 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ENTROPY is a website featuring literary and related non-literary content. They seek to create a space where writers can engage with other writers, can participate in a literary community, and where thinkers can collaborate and share both literary and non-literary ideas. Their site covers topics from video games, graphic novels, interactive literature, science fiction, fantasy, music, film, art, and other topics in addition to literary reviews, interviews, conversations, and articles on experimental literature, translation, small press practices, and performance.

About Janice Lee, Co-Founder of Entropy

Janice is the author of KEROTAKIS, Daughter, Damnation, Reconsolidation, and The Sky Isn't Blue. She is Editor of the #RECURRENT Series at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Assistant Editor at Fanzine, and serves as Executive Editor at Entropy.

Writing Mentioned

The Night Cafe by Brandon Shimoda

Ghosts of Pearl Harbour by Brandon Shimoda

Episode Credits

Host: Rachel Thompson

Audio Editor: Mica Lemiski

Transcript Editor: Monica Calderon

Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/

Presented by Room magazine and the Lit Mag Love Course

ENTROPY is a website featuring literary and related non-literary content. They seek to create a space where writers can engage with other writers, can participate in a literary community, and where thinkers can collaborate and share both literary and non-literary ideas. Their site covers topics from video games, graphic novels, interactive literature, science fiction, fantasy, music, film, art, and other topics in addition to literary reviews, interviews, conversations, and articles on experimental literature, translation, small press practices, and performance.

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

About Derek Askey

Derek Askey is the Editorial Assistant with The Sun and has an MFA from Colorado State University. He lives in Durham, North Carolina. He writes about music.

The Hogs, The Sow, The Wind by

DAVID RUTSCHMAN: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/497/the-hogs-the-sow-the-wind

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