Issue 10

Meet the Review Crew: Mai-Quyen Nguyen

Superstition Review

Mai-Quyen Nguyen is a junior at Arizona State University, majoring in English with a concentration in Fiction and pursuing a certificate in Technical Communication. She is a Fiction Editor for Superstition Review, which is her first role at the online literary magazine. Not only is she seeking to gain experience with the editing and publishing industry, but she is also hoping to develop relationships and build networks.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area in California, she moved to Arizona to study nursing. However, her career plan changed when she fully realized her passion to write and edit. Language and words are multifaceted; people communicate through both spoken and written words and she wishes to affect the lives of others through her own.

What Mai-Quyen finds fascinating about writing is the bond it creates between the writer and the reader. Regardless of how deeply literature is read, people take away different meanings. Writing searches for the truth, a concept that humans sometimes find difficult, and Mai-Quyen seeks to find who she is through literature.

One story that has changed her life is “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison. She enjoys not only the works of contemporary authors such as Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Stuart Dybek, Jim Shephard, and John Irving, but also those of John Green and Ernest Hemingway. Inspired by Hemingway, Mai-Quyen is interested in exploring his theory of omission, or the Iceberg Theory, in her works.

Aside from writing fiction, Mai-Quyen likes to compose lyrics and on occasion, poetry. She grew up as a performer: she sang in her elementary school and high school choir, swing danced in elementary and middle school, acted during middle school, and took piano lessons for seven years. Although she is no longer committed to those activities, she continues to play the piano in her spare time.

After graduating from ASU, Mai-Quyen plans to apply to Columbia University to earn an MFA in Fiction. She aspires to become a book editor and a literary fiction author. She dreams to have her work published and read across the world, evoking a positive response on her audience who will gain valuable lessons from her stories.

Meet the Review Crew: Corinne Randall

Superstition Review

My name is Corinne Randall and I am a Creative Writing (poetry concentration) major and Communication minor. This is my third semester working as an editor at Superstition Review. In the past, I worked as a poetry editor and I not only enjoyed the experience immensely, I grew from it as well. I learned about what it means to be an editor for a literary magazine and that is knowledge I will take with my throughout the rest of my career. I am now a nonfiction editor and am enjoying the different type of content I get to read every week.

Some of my favorite pieces of literature are William Shakespeare’s plays. I have always found them very interesting and I have taken a few classes on the subject. In addition, I enjoy reading books of poetry not only for my own personal enjoyment, but to further increase my writing skills within the genre. I have a goal to one day publish a book of poetry and I believe the best way to do so is to learn from those who have already done so.

Since this is my final semester here at ASU, I am thinking about what to do with my future after I graduate in December. As of now, pursuing an MA in Literature seems to be my main focus, with hopes to eventually teach writing or literature classes.

I look forward to Issue 10 of SR and I am honored to be a part of the process.

Meet the Review Crew: Jamie Acevedo

Superstition Review

Jamie Acevedo is an Interview Editor at Superstition Review, and a senior in his final semester working towards a bachelors degree in English focused on Literature with a minor in Religious Studies. After graduation he aspires to attend an MFA program in a new part of the country, maybe the southeast or west coast, and work on his goal becoming an accomplished writer of fiction.

Jamie moved to Tempe from New York to attend Arizona State University to pursue his goal of studying literature and has found life in the southwest to be an enlightening experience. Originally focused on critical theory and literary criticism he discovered a passion for writing short stories in his freshman year and has recently started working on creative nonfiction and biographies. He loves reading literary magazines, which he was introduced to after taking a course on pursuing publication taught by Superstition Review‘s founding editor Patricia Colleen Murphy. This internship has provided him with an opportunity as an Interview Editor to work with authors he has been reading and studying in creative writing classes and really admires.

His personal definition of art is that it is a tool that allows human beings to communicate abstract concepts and complicated emotions with each other. The writers who have had the biggest influence on him are those who seem to have made unique insights into the human condition. These include the short stories of Jhumpa Lahiri, Flannery O’ Connor, Stephen Crane and James Joyce and the novels of Robert Stone and Thomas Pynchon. He also enjoys novels that tackle religious and ideological themes like those of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and George Orwell. In addition to works of fiction he also enjoys reading essays on literary criticism, especially those on postcolonialism and reader response criticism.

Outside of literature and writing Jamie enjoys sports, hiking, cycling and travel. After this semester he plans to spend time in Puerto Rico to visit family.

Meet the Review Crew: Victoria Fouts

Superstition Review

Victoria Fouts is a Social Networker at Superstition Review. She is currently a senior at Arizona State University who is majoring in English Literature. Victoria joined the Superstition Review team for the fall semester of 2012 in order to learn more about the world of publishing and literary magazines. She is very excited to expand her knowledge and become more familiar with the in’s and out’s of editing, publishing, and literature in the modern world. Victoria looks forward to becoming more aware of different writers and art styles, becoming more cultured and growing in her networking abilities through her internship at Superstition Review.

Originally, Victoria was born in Pasadena, Texas and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona after being adopted when she was 3 ½ years old with her little sister. Both girls were taken in by a loving family which had already adopted two other children, a son and a baby girl. Victoria showed a talent for reading at an early age and quickly fell in love with books. Her parents encouraged her to read anything she could get her hands on and turned her into a voracious reader. Growing up, her parents had to ground her by taking her books away rather than television privileges. Over the years she has expanded her collection of favorite authors, books, and styles of literature. Ranging from the hilarious works of David Sedaris to the dark gothic horrors of Edgar Allen Poe and (of course) Clive Barker, she enjoys trying every genre of literature at least once. During her time at ASU, Victoria has focused her English studies on writings produced in the Victorian Era, one of her favorite time periods in history.

No matter where she lives, Victoria always brings books from her “favorite collection” to line her bookshelves (a required piece of furniture in any home). Unfortunately, the collection has grown so large that she has had to leave some of these treasured novels at her childhood home due to lack of shelving space in her apartment! Given her wide variety of books, friends often come to her to borrow books and ask for reading suggestions.

After graduation, Victoria and her boyfriend plan to get married and quickly move to Oregon to escape the Arizona heat. Once there she wants to find a job in the publishing market and to become deeply involved in the literary scene of the northwest coast. If she ever has the time or energy, Victoria dreams of writing and publishing a book of her own.

Fall Submissions Period September and October

Patricia Murphy

The editors and I met this week to discuss the reading process for fall and we’re all very excited to start viewing submissions. You can send Art, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry to our Submittable account at http://superstitionreview.submittable.com/submit

I’d also like to tell you about the exciting changes this year at Superstition Review.

First of all, my job at ASU has changed so that my focus is on the magazine. All of those semesters of teaching two creative writing classes on top of being managing editor? Gone. I now work full time managing the editorial process of the magazine and mentoring 40 students a semester.

Another change is that we’ve made the internship a 1-year commitment. Students will be required to take a 300 level 3 credit hour training class that will make them eligible to take the 400 level 3 credit hour internship. I’m most excited about this change since it will give me the opportunity to show students all of the details of the editorial process. They will be better prepared and will gain valuable skills in literary publishing.

And the changes continue. We have a new iTunes U Channel where each Tuesday we will be posting podcasts of SR contributors reading their work. You can subscribe to it here, and enjoy our first three podcasts of the series: http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273 Many thanks to John Martinson, who initiated the Channel as his summer project.

We also have expanded our presence on social networks. We’ll be blogging every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, and we will update content daily across our other networks. We have a cool new Tumblr page built by our nonfiction editor Harrison Gearns.

Blog: http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/blog/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/superstitionreview
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/111992497499045277021/about
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Superstition-Review-4195480/about
Tumblr: http://superstitionrev.tumblr.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperstitionRev

And finally, to celebrate our 5th Anniversary, we are doing a total redesign of the magazine for Issue 10. We’re giving the site a fresh, modern look and we’re migrating all of the content to Drupal. We’re happy to access all of the robust navigation tools that will make it easier for our readers to browse through our 500+ contributor pages.

So we hope you’ll: submit your Art, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry; subscribe to this blog where we’ll post editorial updates and literary news; and subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes U. We’re looking forward to an exciting fall and we sure hope you’ll join us.