Meet the Review Crew I

Content Coordinator for Poetry and Nonfiction: Ashley Maul

Once, she was asked to list five books she’d bring with her on a deserted island and without fail her answer remains: Harry Potter and the Goblet of FireThe Scarlet Letter, a collection of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Billy Collin’s The Trouble with Poetry. Her favorite reading reflects her own writing style – a combination of youthful fancy and shenanigans mixed with sarcasm and adult confession.

Like many students so close to graduation, she is unsure of where the future will take her, but she is very interested in the publishing industry and imagines a career that allows her to telecommute as an editor for a posh literary magazine or book publishing company. With a history in bookstore management and an avid thirst for reading and writing, there is little she can imagine that can combine her interests so perfectly.

Art Editor Arjun Chopra

Arjun started working with Superstition Review over the past summer as a guest contributor with his blog series, “Dispatches From Delhi.” Despite being relatively new to the world of editing/publishing, Arjun finds his position intellectually stimulating and instrumental in giving him his first glimpse into the actual working side of writing. He finds his work to be a comprehensive learning experience in meshing creativity with professionalism, an invaluable skill of those who strive to make a living through their writing, a skill he is glad to have the chance to practice.

When not in class, doing homework, or compiling graduate application materials, Arjun enjoys spending his free time reading novels and poetry collections, writing, watching movies, skateboarding, and listening to a wide variety of different music.

Advertising Editor Brooke Passey

Along with her reading load for class, Brooke tries to read one recreational book a week. To stay motivated she posts weekly book reviews on her blog brookepassey.wordpress.com. She also loves horseback riding and spends her spare time training and teaching riding lessons. In the 15 years that she has been riding she has only fallen off a horse once—when she was reading a book while sitting on her horse bareback. Although she loves both hobbies she has since decided to keep them separate. After graduation she plans on pursuing a career where she can use her writing skills during the day and her riding skills in the evening.

Fiction Editor Abbey Maddix

Superstition Review is Abbey’s first experience working with a literary magazine and hopefully the first stepping stone to a career in the editing and publishing world. She finds the position demanding but educational, particularly informative when it comes to thinking about her own future career as a writer. Her work centers on fiction of all forms, exploring genres and forms and her own limitations. She enjoys pushing the boundaries of her comfort zone and enjoys exploring the question “What does it mean to be human?” from both a literary angle and a scientific one.

On Abbey’s “favorites” bookshelf there are the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Neil Gaiman, Italo Calvino, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, although she’d like to expand her experience with contemporary literature. Although she has a difficult time understanding poetry, the works of Pablo Neruda and Tomas Tranströmer have managed to win her over.

Meet the Interns: Kat Corliss, Blogger

With the semester picking up speed and things really starting to get done on the journal, we’ve come to realize that it’s also about that time that we ought to start introducing the interns working on Superstition Review this semester. We strive to be in touch with our reading audience and that includes letting you get to know our entire student staff. We feel it gives you perspective as the reader, especially when getting to know the personalities of our editors as they change each term with new faces every semester.

I suppose I should go first, though, since I’ll be the one writing the updates here for the next three-and-change months, and then introduce our team members as I interview them.

My name is Kat Corliss, and I’m serving on the Web Design team. I’m the Blogger. I’m a student of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, majoring in English: Creative Writing: Fiction, with a focus on Young Adult Literature. I am a Senior this semester and will be graduating December 2009.

Superstition Review: What do you do for SR?

Kat Corliss: I’m the Blogger for SR, which means I write tri-weekly posts about what’s going on with the production magazine in our blog. I’ve also kind of become the Social Networker, in a sense. I maintain our Facebook fan page and update our Twitter account. I make sure the public knows what’s going on internally with the journal, I announce calls for submission and deadlines, and I communicate local events pertaining to the literary and art world.

SR: How did you hear about or get involved with Superstition Review?

KC: I was introduced to our Editor-in-Chief, Trish, by a classmate of mine at the 2009 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference at ASU Main. Trish had just talked on a panel about SR and it sounded really exciting and something fun to pursue so I submitted my application later that week.

SR: What is your favorite section of SR?

KC: Probably the art section because I’m a really visual person. I like being exposed to new artists all the time. Plus, the online delivery of our journal really allows for higher quality images to be published than a print magazine would.

SR: Who is your dream contributor to the journal?

KC: In writing, it’d be Manuel Munoz, a (now) local writer. He is absolutely amazing. I just read his Faith Healer of Olive Avenue this summer and it was breathtakingly well written, smart, and painful. For artists, I’d have to say Chris McVeigh. He’s just plain fun. His photography often involves LEGOs or Star Wars action figures and it’s just that little connection between passion for creating art and embracing childhood whimsy that I adore.

SR: What job, other than your own, would you like to try out in the journal?

KC: Definitely fiction editor. It’s what I’ve been doing in school for the last few years, it’s what I want to do with my life–edit young adult fiction–so that’d be fun to work on. I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to see the publicity side of journal editing, though, and I’m excited to work on the social networking aspect because it’s new and flexible, a lot of it experimental. I’m never bored with what I get to do for the journal.

SR: What are you most excited for in the upcoming issue?

KC: The changes we’re looking at in formatting. We’re updating our look a bit. We’re hoping it will be ready in time for launch so the Web Design Team has already been in a couple meetings discussing what we’d like to change and what’s working great for us.

SR: What are you currently reading?

KC: Loads of YA lit for a class and an independent study project I’m working on. I just finished a Goosebumps graphic novel–did you know they’ve started republishing the classic scary stories into visual format? How cool is that? I’m also in the middle of The Time Traveler’s Wife, something I picked up over a year ago and haven’t managed to sit down and finish. A stack of graphic novels and comic books. I’m about to start Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys.

SR: Do you write? Tell us about a project you’re working on.

KC: Yes, I do. One of my current projects is writing a full young adult novel under the supervision of Dr. Blasingame at ASU Main in an independent study. It’s a story that follows a 17-year-old girl on a trip halfway across the US in her search to find out more about her mother who committed suicide when the girl was a toddler. She ends up reconnecting with a family she didn’t really ever get to know since her father moved her away when her parents had gotten divorced and, in the process, learns a lot about what her mother was like and why she killed herself, and how she’s actually more like her mother than she thinks.

SR: What are some of your favorite websites to waste time on or distract you from homework?

KC: Oh, definitely Facebook. I love Twitter, too, especially since my favorite part of Facebook are the status updates my friends make, and that’s all it really is in my opinion. I also spend a lot of time on LiveJournal, especially in the Literary Tattoos, Trashy Eats, and Thrift Horror communities.

SR: What are some of your favorite literary links?

KC: I definitely follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, read his blog, and sometimes even listen to his library on LastFM because it’s just plain interesting; he’s one of the authors who has jumped into every aspect of online life and is always just keystrokes away from connecting with fans, and that’s just cool in general, beside the fact that he’s a brilliant writer. I also read Fiction Circus blog posts, one of my favorite literary bloggers/literary magazines. I also enjoy the Australian site, Inside A Dog, created to promote reading to youth by the Centre for Youth Literature.

 

More intern interviews coming soon!