Past Intern Updates: Eric Hawkins

Eric HawkinsEric Hawkins from Issues 2 and 3 is in the process of applying to graduate programs. He shares with us these words:

When I graduated three years ago, I was unsure of what the future would hold for me professionally and academically. A degree in English carries with it few obvious career paths, especially for someone like me whose focus was in poetry. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to be involved with literature as much as possible. I sought advice from one of my professors, who recommended I take at least a year before enrolling in graduate school to explore possible career paths and see if anything spoke to me.

My overwhelmingly-positive experience with Superstition Review led me to the world of publishing. I moved to New York City and set about applying at publishing houses, magazines, and advertising agencies. I eventually landed an internship with a literary agency, where my job was reading and evaluating manuscripts from writers seeking representation. It was enjoyable and interesting work, but it was temporary (not to mention unpaid) so before long I had to move on.

It is no secret that the job market is tough across the board, but print media has been hit especially hard. I had no illusions that finding a great job in the hyper-competitive environment of New York would be easy, but I was still stunned at just how grueling the process was.

Ultimately I came to the realization that I was going to have to fight very hard to build any kind of career that would satisfy my passions, and I decided that a job in publishing was not something I wanted badly enough to justify the struggle. With that in mind, I left New York to further develop my poetry and determine my priorities. Since then I have been writing extensively, and have even had a few poems published.

When I think back to my favorite parts of studying English at Arizona State, the thing that stands out the most are the poetry workshops. I love discussing the thematic and technical complexities of poems, and those sessions really helped me overcome my shyness with regards to my own work. These fond memories led me to realize that I wanted to be a teacher, and toward that end I have decided to go for my Master’s degree.

Even though I find myself now in the same position as if I had gone straight from ASU to grad school, I will always be grateful to that professor who advised me to wait. Would I give the same advice to someone else in my former situation? That would depend on how clear of an idea they had about their future. Coming out of college I had only vague notions and scattered ambitions, and these past three years outside of an academic environment have taught me a lot about myself as a person and a writer. Most importantly I now have complete confidence that teaching is what I am meant to do, and it is worth the struggle.

Past Intern Updates: Sarah Snyder

Sarah Snyder, from Issues 1 and 2, has traveled to the Far East and back–and discovered a true passion for teaching English as a foreign language. She shares with us her experience:

Grandma always said, “Everything in moderation—even moderation.” As a junior at ASU, taking 18 credits a semester, being the Reading Series Coordinator for Superstition Review, working at the Polytechnic campus Writing Center, serving as the President of ASU’s Devil Dancesport ballroom dancing team, and volunteering as a Peer Advisor for the School of Applied Arts and Sciences, I was no stranger to overextending myself, to going deeper than I could swim back up in time for air.  When I graduated in 2009, I made a strategic career move and took a job in Japan teaching English in two high schools. It was only strategic because I couldn’t even get anything close to a job in the United States. Luckily for me, this job helped me realize what I really wanted to do with my life: create positive cultural exchange and communication. This lesson came to me through all of the artists that I coordinated through SR, the students that I worked with in the Writing Center, as the President of a student organization, as a Peer Advisor and in Japan.

After a year in the Land of the Rising Sun, I moved back home to the Valley of the Sun. My parents were happy to have me home in the flesh instead of pixelated and robotic on Skype. They were perfectly content to keep me there, but I was soon restless. I needed something to keep me happy, healthy and productive, but I experienced the same depression that my father remembered as an adolescent. He told me his story from the 1970s when he was expressing the same feeling of helplessness to his grandfather. To that, Great-Grandpa Krebbs said, “There is always work for those who want it.” To this day, my father doesn’t know whether or not that was a challenge or a jab, but I took it as a challenge. I pulsed all of my networks for careers in academia for months. I applied to everything. I also kept myself busy taking Spanish and Japanese at the local community colleges to keep my morale up. Around month six, I was called for my first interview. It was my chance to vie for my dream job of being an academic advisor! At the age of 24 (my lucky Japanese year of the Rabbit) I was hired as the youngest member of an academic advising team with my mentors from undergrad as my supervisors.

After some serious soul-searching, I had to sacrifice my dream job in favor of the English and TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) programs at Northern Arizona University, where I am happily immersed in concurrent graduate programs and teaching freshman composition for native and non-native speakers of English. I hope to pursue a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Composition and Linguistics in the near future. This, I believe, will help me bring positive cultural exchange and communication to more people than I could have ever hoped while being one teacher working with just 30 students at a time in a sea of millions. It will be more work that I have probably ever had in my life—but I also have itty-bitty daydreams of being the President of the United States as well, so bring it on.

As I look back now, all I can say is that Grandma was right. “Everything in moderation–even moderation.” If I could go back in time with all of this 20/20 retrospect, I wouldn’t change one thing. Now, I am making sure that I give just as much as I have received, and these last sentences are little karmic presents for anyone who wants them: In order to survive in the world that we live in today, concentration and positive thinking are the keys to getting what the universe thinks you deserve. Nobody gets anywhere anymore by stepping on people. We’re in the age of Google, people! Also, it really DOES matter who you know and how you treat the people around you…No one ever knows who they will be interacting with in the future. Network, network, NETWORK! Oh, and always brush your teeth (another Grandma quote).

Poetry Northwest’s Science Issue Explores Poetry & Science

The Science Issue
cover art by Amanda Knowles

Poetry Northwest announced publication of its Spring & Summer 2012 magazine. The Science Issue presents an intriguing exploration of the intersections of poetry and science through works by poet scientists from fields encompassing “astrophysics and quantum mechanics to geology, botany, ornithology, and marine biology” and other related works.

“I’ve always taken a deep interest in the sciences—biology, astronomy, and physics in particular,” says editor Kevin Craft. “And I’m fascinated by the representational overlap between poetry and science: how each serves as an image or model of realities difficult to perceive in any other terms. Also their common capacity to be profoundly misunderstood in the public arena, where nuance and complexity never fare well. With our spring issue, we have a chance to clarify the conversation on both accounts.”

Featured writers include Alison Hawthorne Deming, who read for Superstition Review in the Spring of 2011, Bob Hicok, whose poems were published in SR‘s Issue 2 in Fall of 2008, Linda Bierds, Timothy Donnelly, Amy Greacen, Richard Kenney, Katherine Larson, Sarah Lindsay, and others.

One of these featured writers is Katherine Larson, a molecular biologist, field ecologist and poet who earned a BS in ecology and evolutionary biology and a BA in creative writing from the University of Arizona and an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. Larson is the author of Radial Symmetry, a book of poems melding science and poetry. In “Science and Stanzas,” an article she authored for The Scientist magazine, Larson describes how this intersection of science and poetry works. “Whether dosing lung cancer cells or dissecting the branchial heart of a squid, working at the edge of knowledge requires equal measures of perception and imagination, science and art; a balance I hope can be found in the hybrid explorations of Radial Symmetry.”

For more information, see: http://www.poetrynw.org/

#ArchiveDive: A Glimpse Into the Past

Each week we feature one of our interns at Superstition Review. This week’s piece comes from Advertising Coordinator Daniel Redding

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just begins
to live that day.
– Emily Dickinson


A piece of writing can be judged as truly great when the reader can go back to it again and again, while still having a unique reaction to it. A work will not fade if it can stay alive long after its initial presentation. As a writer, I often judge my pieces by how I respond to them months and years down the road. As a young adult, my favorite novels would become worn at the seams, ultimately falling apart, highlighting the impact they had on my development. It was then, early on, that I began to realize the long-term effect of literature, and in turn the power of the writer, and for me there was no looking back.

As a part of our Twitter presence, Superstition Review has been conducting an #ArchiveDive campaign, going back through our past eight issues to find pieces that strike us today as much as they did then. Every piece published in SR is powerful in its own way. However, these recent selections for #ArchiveDive highlight the breadth of SR’s publishing history.

Among the recent highlights have been Christy Puetz’s three-dimensional beaded art from Issue 7, as well as John J. Clayton’s “Darkness Visible,” a short story from the same issue. Also rediscovered were Hilary Masters’ essay, “Working the Vineyard,” from Issue 2, and Nathaniel Miles Millard’s poetry of Issue 1.

We hope you will join us in diving back into our archives to enjoy the wide range of work we have been privileged to publish over the last four years.

Superstition Review and The Story Prize

The Story Prize, an annual award for books of short fiction, has recently released its 2011 award winners. Three outstanding short story collections were chosen from among a field of 92 books that 60 different publishers or imprints submitted in 2011. With so many worthy entries this year, The Story Prize included an additional list of seven outstanding contenders and 25 noteworthy mentions.

We would like to congratulate all of our SR contributors who made the list:

Issue 3 contributor Edith Pearlman‘s book Binocular Vision was one of the three award winners.

Of the seven finalists, SR has featured Steve Almond and Daniel Orozco in Issue 2.

Issue 2 contributor, Michael Martone from Issue 4.

Caitlin Horrocks, mentioned for her book, This Is Not Your City, will be featured in our upcoming release of Superstition Review Issue 9.

Announcing: Kat Meads

Kat Meads headshot_300+In 2008, in Issue 2, Superstition Review published Kat Meads’ essay Relativism: The Size of the Tsar in Vegas.We were honored for her contribution, and we are now very happy to share the news of her recently released novel.

Announcing:

when the dust finally settles
by Kat Meads
A novel about land, loyalty and racial politics in the 1968 South
Ravenna Press, September 2011
http://www.katmeads.com

Advance Praise for when the dust finally settles:

When anyone asks if Southern Literature has a future in our internet, iPhone, jet-lagged, speed-of-light world, I point them to Kat Meads. Her fiction is Southern through and through even as it embraces the dilemmas and contradictions of 21st century life. Simply put, you must read Kat Meads.
—Jason Sanford, Founding Editor, storySouth

Kat Meads’ writing is keen and precise; her stories, populous and lively. In when the dust finally settles, she employs a staccato, rhythmic prose in the service of a narrative both beautifully imagined and wildly exotic. when the dust finally settles will keep you up nights reading its propulsive story, but will also reward the reader who loves finely crafted sentences and pitch-perfect dialogue.
—Corey Mesler, author of Following Richard Brautigan

In The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan, Kat Meads created a 1950’s-era Scarlett O’Hara in eastern North Carolina. Now, in when the dust finally settles, she speaks through Faulknerian voices as white and black members of her small eastern North Carolina community desegregate the schools in the 1960’s. Meads’ Clarence Carter, speaking from the dead, provides a surprisingly upbeat (and humorous) perspective on the events unfolding in the community he has not yet quite left. The other voices, young and old, share Clarence’s openness to change—a refreshingly different Southern story.
—Dr. Margaret D. Bauer, Rives Chair of Southern Literature, East Carolina University;
Editor, North Carolina Literary Review

_______________________

The Reading Period at Superstition Review has opened. Please send us your submissions of art, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction  between now and October 31st.

Claire McQuerry discusses Lacemakers and other projects

author shotSuperstition Review featured Claire McQuerry’s poetry in Issue 2. I recently had the good fortune to discuss her soon to be published collection of poetry entitled Lacemakers. Claire earned her MFA in writing poetry and taught for several years at Arizona State University. Her work has been published in Double Change, Comstock Review and elsewhere. Her poetry collection Lacemakers will be published in December 2011 as the winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award.

Superstition Review: How has your life changed since your time teaching at Arizona State University?

Claire McQuerry: I took a year off from teaching and worked as a freelance writer, which was enough time for me to realize that I’m much more at home in the academic environment than most other workplaces. I love teaching, and I love being surrounded by colleagues who care about literature and learning. So I’m back in school now, working on a PhD at the University of Missouri, where I’m also teaching and working as the Contest Editor at the Missouri Review.

SR: What experiences have you taken away from your work at The Missouri Review?

CM: I’ve never been very good with technology and social medias, but part of my job as Contest Editor involves networking to publicize our annual Editor’s Prize competition—so I’ve been learning to use Twitter and to keep up with regular blog posts and follow other journals and literary news online. The move that many journals are making to digital formats, the growing digital book trend, the widespread use of Twitter, etc. are changes I’ve been resistant for a long time, but it seems that that’s the direction things are headed—even in the literary world, which is so slow to change—so I think it’s good that I’m getting to know the online publishing environment better.

SR: How is working with The Missouri Review different from other writing you’ve done?

CM: I guess I touched on that a bit in the previous question. There’s a level of self-consciousness I’ve had to overcome when I blog or “tweet” for TMR because I’m aware of the very public and immediate nature of that writing. When I write poetry or essays for publication, part of that process always involves honing each piece through numerous revisions until I’m satisfied that the rough edges have been smoothed away, that the work that remains is well-reflected-upon and carefully crafted. This usually requires me to put a draft away for a while and then revisit it after some time has elapsed. Clearly, this level of reflection isn’t possible with online communication, so I’m adapting to a new form.

SR: Besides your work at The Missouri Review, what are you currently working on?

CM: Teaching and finishing coursework for my degree. Writing more poems when I can.

SR: For those who are not familiar with your newly published book, how would you describe Lacemakers?

CM: I wrote most of the poems for Lacemakers while living in Phoenix, so a good portion of the book questions the effect a city has on the people who live in it: the poems explore questions of relationship, of loss and longing, and of environment—particularly the man-made environment and its impact on the people who inhabit it. Lacemakers also returns obsessively to separations, which is something I became keenly aware of while living in Phoenix—the way people can live side-by-side and yet remain incredibly isolated.

SR: When did you begin writing Lacemakers, and when was it completed?

CM: I wrote the oldest poem in the collection in 2002, and the most recent poem was written about a year ago, so I guess that covers a span of seven years. The early poems have undergone so many revisions that they don’t look much like their first versions.

SR: What advice would you offer to an aspiring writer?

CM: Well, it may sound obvious, but it’s the best advice I got from my mentors when I first started writing, and it’s still the best I can offer anyone else: read. Read widely and often—both authors who have a similar style to your own as well as those who challenge you or have a different aesthetic. A poem (or an essay or story) is always a response. You’ll find that your poems are richer and your mind is fuller of the poems you want to write if you feed yourself a steady diet of other writers’ work. I only wish that I hadn’t waited so long in life to listen to this advice myself!

Intern Highlights: Alex Linden

superstision 1Superstition Review is unique as an online literary and arts journal, being primarily produced by student interns from Arizona State University. There are two of each genre editor–one of which, Poetry Editor,

Alex Linden was kind and generous enough to provide us with a little time and insight into what she does for SR and what she likes to do. Look forward to more information about your editors in upcoming blogs, newsletters, and the website.

Superstition Review: What inspired you to start working with SR?

Alex Linden: I thought it would be a really great experience. I had Managing Editor Patricia Murphy for a couple of online classes and she mentioned that she was starting an online literary journal with student editors. It sounded innovative and fun.

SR: What do you enjoy most about SR?

AL: I just really love reading poetry. Comparing my opinions with fellow editors is interesting. People tend to point out things I might not notice about a particular piece.

SR: What kinds of things do you have to do as a Poetry Editor?

AL: First of all, solicit authors who we would like to see published. It was really exciting to be able to send emails to writers I respect deeply, and have some of them respond with submissions. Then, of course, read all of the submissions that come in and decide which to choose. We also did online interviews—which were great because due to the online format we had time to craft some really thoughtful and precise questions.

SR: What are your own personal tastes and preferences in poetry, and how do they affect what you select, both positively and negatively?

AL: Like most people, I like poetry that makes me feel something. Even a poem that annoys me or baffles me is better than one that is boring. I tend to like poetry that is more on the confessional side, and poetry that is a little shocking. Sharon Olds is my favorite poet.

I would try to not let this affect what poems I select because I think it is important to think outside of the box. At the same time, being completely objective isn’t possible. This is why it is important to have two poetry editors—we try to balance each other out. There were poems I would never select at first, but when encouraged to take a second look at, I definitely appreciated more.

SR: What are your plans for next semester?

AL: To graduate college! And hopefully get into graduate school.

SR: What do you do and enjoy most outside of SR?

AL: I love music, to go to concerts. I read a lot and write whenever possible.

SR: What do you feel you’ve learned from this internship?

AL: The whole process of how an online journal works. It takes a lot of patience and persistence. I am really impressed by everyone—especially those who started the magazine.

SR: What would you say about your own personality is your best working asset?

AL: I don’t procrastinate! Usually 🙂

Thanks so much to Alex Linden and all of our editors for your time and dedication to issue 2! You know I am looking forward to the release! I have faith that you have all done an amazing job. If you would like to be featured in a blog for Superstition Review, please comment and I’ll get in touch with you!

Other Opportunities for Writing and Awaiting the Issue Release.

This month, November, is known also as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  Starting from November 1st and concluding on November 31st, writers around the world write a novel–50,000 words, on anything they want. Some writers are doing this solo, and others are working in groups based on regional location. I have done NaNoWriMo two years in a row myself, mostly alone, and this year I have decided to take a break. Accomplishing this amount of writing involves shutting off one’s “inner editor,” focusing on pounding out and fleshing out writing, and devotion to keeping up with your word count.

NaNoWriMo has been running for 10 years, and authors have even gotten their NaNo (as it’s called) projects published!

Essentially, it’s like most other writing projects. If you want to step up to the challenge, read the guidelines and tips on NaNoWriMo and cut in as soon as you’re ready–though the longer you wait, the harder it may be to keep up! Good luck, writers!

Recently, as our submissions period has ended, we here at Superstition Review have begun upping the ante to focus on content pages and getting information and interviews from our contributing writers and authors. For me, as a web designer, this means I have begun to scramble frantically to meet our publishing deadline, and worry about content shortages as well as time shortages. We look forward to our release, nonetheless, and hope you’ll keep reading and be there to see our second issue!

Upcoming Events, Submissions Soon to Close!

Writers, Artists, and SR Editors all find themselves wound up this week, as our submissions period is ending. We have hit the home stretch, and will quickly race towards home base and our second issue release.

Remember, the fall-winter submissions period ends on October 31st.

Also coming up is Superstition Review‘s final reading event on November 17th. Our final reading will feature pieces by Arizona State University Creative Writing students.

Mark your calendars and get ready for the next step in issue 2 of Superstition Review!