Roxane Gay

http://www.roxanegay.com

Roxane Gay’s writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, The Rumpus, Salon, The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy culture blog, and many others. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. Her novel, An Untamed State, will be published by Grove Atlantic and her essay collection, Bad Feminist, will be published by Harper Perennial, both in 2014.

{LMC}: Considering The Collagist as Collage

I decided to take a look at The Collagist as a whole—or, rather, a whole created by the sum of its parts, the magazine as collage that lives so smartly up to its name.  It’s true that perhaps any literary magazine could be considered a sort of collage, as it layers story and poem and visual and sometimes sound to produce a bigger picture. And yet not many literary magazines choose their pieces with the consideration a collagist uses to cut out his shapes, to determine the colors of the paints she’ll layer. The Collagist is one of my favorite literary magazines because the choosing is intentional, is meticulous, is precise. The chosen few pieces generate an intentionally tight edit. The name of the magazine, I’d guess, was not chosen on a whim, but as a sort of statement of purpose. The Collagist’s contents are widely varied in style and substance but are not random; like the best collagists, I believe editor Matt Bell uses every story, every review, every poem and excerpt and reprint and even the bios as a layer to build, to create something greater than the pieces themselves. The magazine as the work of art.

Many of my favorite artists worked with collage at some point. Georges Braque, Robert Motherwell, Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Marcel Duchamp—they all created work that was layered, that intensified as it grew and spread and collected and fragmented and shifted meaning from piece to piece and space to space. With wood, with paint, with newspaper, with found objects, with paper, with photos—and in the case of The Collagist, with words. Like collage artworks, each issue of The Collagist seems to swell and grow, the consequence of addition. The thread running through is not a theme per se, but a meaning you build yourself. A customizable puzzle. Deliberate yet obscure, fuzzy as close-up pixels in its larger clarity.

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Literary Magazine Club / 7 Comments
December 21st, 2010 / 2:00 pm

I Am Intrigued by Chin Music Press

One of the things I love most about attending literary events is learning about presses and writers with which I am not familiar. At the Pop Up Bookstore in Chicago this past weekend, I found this gorgeous book, Oh, by Todd Shimoda with artwork by Linda Shimoda, published by  Chin Music Press. As an art object, this book is gorgeous–heavy, textured papers, a gorgeous hardcover, and though I just started the book, I haven’t been able to put it down. I decided to look them up online and they have a lot going on. I was especially interested in this blog post, by Bruce Rutledge, about books as art objects and what it costs to publish beautifully designed books. Check them out.

Presses / 8 Comments
December 16th, 2010 / 4:00 pm

Reviews

On Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting

I love a book with a good title. I love good titles in general. When I’m bored, I sit around writing titles, placing each one in its own Word file so when I feel like writing but want to work on something new, I just need to look at all those empty, waiting documents, pick the one with the title that intrigues me the most, and start writing. Ever since I first heard of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting (Starcherone Books), I have been charmed by the title and I finally had the chance to really sit down with the book. I ended up reading it one sitting because it was one of those books you literally cannot put down. The stories in this collection are smart and imaginative and strange and fearless in their execution. It is readily evident why this book won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. A great deal of care and handling went into these stories.

In Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd, Charles Harris writes, “The absurdist vision may be defined as the belief that we are trapped in a meaningless universe and that neither God nor man, theology nor philosophy, can make sense of the human condition.” As I’ve read about Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls over the past couple months, I’ve often seen references to the writing as absurdist fiction. I would disagree. While many of the stories have a surreal, almost absurd quality to them, the stories by no means imply that they are a response to a belief that we are trapped in a meaningless universe because so many of the characters in these stories are clinging to the hope that there is, indeed, some meaning in the universe. In each of these stories, Nutting is, above all making beautiful sense of the human condition.

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11 Comments
December 15th, 2010 / 5:03 pm

The Academic Life Is Not Candy Land

Anytime I hear the rhetoric about the shelter of academia, I cannot help but think, “What the hell are you talking about?” A job is a job is a job. I have been really interested in some of the responses to Lily’s post about the utility of her MFA, where people have expressed that an academic job involves shelter from the “real world,” and that the simple solution to her very real and valid concerns is to extract herself from the warm and safe cocoon of academia so she might experience “reality.” This is actually a rather common, albeit sort of delusional sentiment, the idea that to know the “real world” one must suffer, toil in poverty, travel, work as a waitress or any other prescription you might have for where the real world is actually taking place.

While nothing is guaranteed, nor should it be, when you pursue a terminal degree and you want  to teach, it is frustrating to learn that you may not be able to do what you trained to do, or you might get an academic job without security, working for what amounts to less than minimum wage even though you have excellent credentials. Yes, life is unfair, but the solution here is not for Lily to “walk it off,” or “just write,” because, as I interpeted her post, Lily is not so much lamenting she doesn’t have time to write because she’s in a PhD program. She is lamenting she doesn’t have time to write because she cannot do what she trained to do by getting her MFA even though she has an impressive list of credentials. Hers is the frustration of being the best and having your best not be good enough. That’s a really bitter pill to swallow.

In the meantime, I just finished my first semester as a faculty member at a mid-sized Midwestern public university. I think a lot of these misperceptions about academia and its relationship to reality arise because people simply don’t know what faculty do when they’re not in the classroom or frolicking all summer, or what it takes to become a faculty member. Creative writing is only part of what I do, but I have colleagues who strictly teach creative writing and have the exact same workloads and tenure expectations.

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Random / 89 Comments
December 13th, 2010 / 3:45 pm

A Bit of This, A Bit of That

Metazen is putting together a Christmas anthology for charity and they’re seeking submissions.

Hart House Review, a literary magazine from the University of Toronto, is also looking for submissions.

Are you interested in some rad poetry? Consider making a donation to NOO Journal and they will make you a rad poem.

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Random / 7 Comments
December 9th, 2010 / 12:00 pm

{LMC}: Presentation by Stark and Clear

1 : Introduction

The Collagist comes in with a beautiful image of what looks very much like paint blooming in what was until now pristine water or paint thinner. This is the page’s header, and it’s about as visually rich as the journal gets. The header-bloom becomes the journal’s emblem, and this emblem is usefully repeated at the bottom of the page. (It would be nice if that bloom could double as the journal’s identity icon, replacing that generic isometrically-projected black box — I haven’t tested whether or not the size restriction will allow it.) If you click on the tiny little bloom at the bottom of the page then you’ll be returned to the top. The rest of the site is just as simple and understated, lending itself primarily to the stark and clear presentation of the works themselves, nothing distracting.

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Literary Magazine Club / 1 Comment
December 7th, 2010 / 4:00 pm

A Bit of a Follow Up

It is difficult to talk about race and stressful and awkward and exhausting. To my mind, one of the reasons these conversations are so difficult, particularly between white people and people of color, is because, so often, white people question concerns raised as if the question is not “how do we solve this problem,” but rather, “does this problem exist.”  This is not a debate about whether there are racial and class (and gender and sexuality) disparities in publishing. These disparities exist whether you (choose to) see them or not. Instead these kinds of discussions are intended to function like a magnifying glass on a problem so big it should not require a magnifying glass.

And yet, the magnifying glass is clearly needed.

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Random / 148 Comments
December 6th, 2010 / 10:03 pm

The Empire Strikes Back: The Editors of Flatmancrooked Speak

Last week, I posted about how Flatmancrooked is now offering expedited submissions, where they will read and respond to submissions within 14 business days, for a fee of $5. A pretty interesting discussion followed with a wide range of responses. Flatmancrooked Executive Editor Elijah Jenkins and Senior Editor Deena Drewis took some time to answer some of the questions about the program, the discussion here, and independent publishing.

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Random / 60 Comments
December 6th, 2010 / 4:00 pm

A Profound Sense of Absence

I recently read Best American Short Stories 2010, edited this year by Richard Russo who is one of my favorite writers. Straight Man? Amazing. Empire Falls? Amazing. My expectations were high. I generally enjoy reading BASS because it gives me a sense of what the literary establishment considers “the best” from year to year. I may not enjoy all the stories in a given year’s anthology but I am always impressed by the overall competence in each chosen story. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story in BASS and thought, “How did that get in there?” At the same time, I often find the BASS offerings to be shamefully predictable. The stories are often sedate and well-mannered even when they are supposedly not. I don’t see a lot of risk taking and more than anything else, I don’t see a lot of diversity in the stories being told. This year, though, BASS really outdid itself. Almost every story in the anthology was about rich or nearly rich white people to the point where, by the end of reading the book, I was downright offended. I know people will disagree with my thoughts here and that’s fine, but I really think shit is fucked up in literary publishing. That’s coarse but I cannot think of a better way to convey my frustration. Anytime I talk about this issue, that’s the best way I can encapsulate my feelings. This issue has been on my mind for a couple weeks (and years) and two things triggered my… current pre-occupation with whose stories are or are not being told.

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Random / 258 Comments
December 3rd, 2010 / 5:11 pm

Flatmancrooked has decided to offer Expedited Submissions where a senior editor will respond to such submissions in 14 days or fewer. The fee? $5. I understand the inclination, have definitely considered some sort of tiered submission structure, but remain uncomfortable with the idea of charging for submissions (and conversely, paying to submit). As a person who enjoys instant gratification, I like the idea of knowing the time frame within which my work will be considered. That privilege just might be worth $5 to me. Then again, I am increasingly less preoccupied with things like response times. And yet. And back and forth I go. Thoughts? Will you pay to play?

Random / 119 Comments
December 1st, 2010 / 5:30 pm