SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Author Brianna Bjarnson

Brianna BjarnsonThis Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Brianna Bjarnson reading her nonfiction piece “Gone” on the SR podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel, #202.

You can follow along with Brianna’s work in Superstition Review, Issue 16.

Also check out Brianna Bjarnson’s Authors Talk podcast (#203), announced March 25th.

 

More About the Author:
Brianna Bjarnson is a multi-genre writer whose childhood daydreaming once caused a frustrated, second-grade teacher to bite her. Since then, she has better learned how to positively channel her overactive imagination. Brianna teaches and tutors writing in the alluring San Francisco North Bay, where she enjoys getting lost in the woods with her dog.

 

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Poet Laurie Filipelli

laurie-filipelli-bw-600This Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Laurie Filipelli reading her poem “Warrior” on our podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel, #200.

You can follow along with Laurie’s work in Superstition Review, Issue 16.

Her Authors Talk podcast with Laurie Saurborn was released March 15, #201.

More About the Author:
Laurie Filipelli is the author of a collection of poems, Elseplace, released by Brooklyn Arts Press in 2013. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming at apt, BOAAT, Coldfront, The Pinch, Redheaded Stepchild, The Rumpus, Salamander, So and So, and Xavier Review. She is the recipient of a Yaddo fellowship, and lives in Austin where she works as a writer, editor, and writing coach.

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Poet Trina Young

Trina Young2Today we’re proud to re-feature SR contributor Trina Young reading her poem “The Body” on our podcast, with her related Authors Talk forthcoming.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel, number 155.

You can read Trina’s work in Superstition Review, Issue 15.

Her Authors Talk podcast was released on March 4th, #199.

 

More About the Author:
Trina Young is a graduate from DePaul University with a passion for many kinds of writing. She was one of the winners of the Pegasus Young Playwrights competition in 2010, and has had one poem published by Afterimage Online’s Inklight gallery. She recently received the honor of placing third as a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award Winner in the Illinois Emerging Writers Competition. She continues to submit to journals in order to build her credits and be included among many other talented people. She currently writes for Blavity, a site for black millennials to fight the stereotypes against them, and is pursuing a career in television writing as well. She lives in Chicago, IL.

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Author Luke Muyskens

Luke MuyskensThis Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Luke Muyskens reading his story “Knock-Out Drum” on our podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Luke’s work in Superstition Review, Issue 16.

Also check out Luke Muysken’s Authors Talk podcast, posted Friday February 26th.

More About the Author:
Luke Muyskens’ fiction, poetry, and humor has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Digital Americana, and One Throne Magazine. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, though he now resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is pursuing an MFA through Queens University of Charlotte, and earned a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University.

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Author Jon Pearson

Jon PearsonThis Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Jon Pearson reading his story “Saturday” on our podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can follow along with “Saturday” in Superstition Review Issue 16.

Also check out Jon Pearson’s Authors Talk podcast, posted Friday February 16th.

More About the Author:
Jon Pearson is a writer, speaker, artist, and creative thinking consultant. He was nominated for a 2014 Pushcart Prize and a 2014 Million Writers Award and his work has appeared in Barely South Review, Barnstorm, Carve, The Citron Review, Crack the Spine, Critical Pass Review, Cultural Weekly, Existere, Faultline, Fiction Fix, Lake Effect, Penmen Review, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Reed Magazine, Shark Reef, Sou’wester, Tower Journal, West Wind Review, and Wild Violet. Jon writes now for the same reason he played with his food as a kid: to make the world a better place.

 

 

SR Pod/Vod Series – Recording: Author Adrianne Kalfopoulou

Adrianne  Kalfopoulou greyscaleThis Tuesday, we’re proud to feature SR contributor Adrianne Kalfopoulou reading her nonfiction essay “The Journey Where” on our podcast.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can follow along with “The Journey Where” in Superstition Review Issue 16, and read more of Adrianne’s work in Issue 9.

Also check out Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s Authors Talk podcast, posted Friday February 12th.

 

More About the Author:
Adrianne Kalfopoulou lives and teaches in Athens, Greece. Her most recent publication is Ruin, Essays in Exilic Living (Red Hen Press 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in online and print journals including Hotel Amerika, The Harvard Review, WORDPEACE, and Superstition Review. She occasionally blogs on Greece, and is the Writing Program Director at Deree College in Athens.  adrianne kalfopoulou’s website

Guest Blog Post, Michael Davis: On the Art of Talking to Oneself

M. Davis stock photo for postI went through a phase where I was writing from my dreams. I’d wake up and try to get story ideas from the things I’d written on a little notepad during the night. It went like: susurrous–Cambodia–Remember this!–not harm but the other–bullshit–cantaloupe–too true? Sometimes, it looked more like an unfortunate cardiograph, like I was doing a contour drawing with my eyes shut. I’d turn the page upside-down. I’d wonder what certain squiggles meant.

I switched to a voice recorder. This was better but it scared me. The sound of my voice floating up through deep theta was unnerving, made me think of a seance. I’d be sitting at my desk, cup of coffee, yellow steno pad, obsessive-compulsive story writing pen (Uniball Vision Micro 0.5mm–there shall be no other) poised to take down anything promising, and I’d hear myself half in a dream, speaking from a world of ghosts–a man with a green hat who kept telling me about my mother; my old German Shepherd, Shadow, leading me through the rooms of the house I grew up in; ex-girlfriends; former students.

I’d get sentences, whole paragraphs. Some of it was nonsensical. Other things were deeply painful memories I normally tried not to think about. It surprised me that I was dwelling on those things fairly regularly while asleep–and that some part of me had remembered to wake up and drone into the voice recorder. The sleeping Michael was a different person, a stranger who took emotional risks, who went to difficult places while the protective drawbridge of consciousness was temporarily down. I filled notebook after notebook and learned some interesting things about myself. But none of it seemed to apply to my fiction in any meaningful way.

Around this time, I was in the last year of my PhD. I’d published my first book of stories (Gravity, Carnegie Mellon, 2009) the year before and thought it would be a good idea to go to the AWP conference being held in Denver. I brought the voice recorder, but I didn’t continue my subconscious spelunking while there. Instead, I did what everyone does at the AWP conference. I walked around and bought books, listened to panel discussions, talked to people I already knew, stared wistfully out my hotel room window, and burned through my grocery budget for the next three months. In retrospect, however, the trip was justified because I learned something important about writing: I was going to have to write more and do it more quickly.

In the middle of the Colorado Convention Center’s exhibit level where, in a trade show, there would be a local model posing on a combine harvester, there was instead a table full of literary agents. They were from a local agency and had made themselves available for questions. At that time, I had never spoken with an agent. So I took advantage of the opportunity and struck up a conversation about how one markets a novel to the “Big 6” (Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan–you get the idea). I wanted to know if there was a special kind of etiquette agents followed with the biggest publishing houses.

When I asked the question, the young agent in a navy suit that should have been beyond his earning capacity, pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at me carefully as if he might have to pick me out of a lineup someday. “No,” he said. “There’s no special procedure.” Then he reminded himself to smile. “But if you want to succeed with the trade houses long term, you need to be really productive. Can you write around 300 pages a year?” I said no, I didn’t think so, thanked him, and got out of there as quickly as possible. A book a year? It had taken me six years to produce the stories in my 200-page collection. I had 75 pages of a novel that had taken me most of the previous year.

Later, catching up on some window staring in my hotel room, I tried to envision that level of productivity. One page a day? Writing from canned outlines? Some kind of method book, How to Write a Blockbuster Novel in 2 Weeks and Avoid the ER? I didn’t know. I picked up my voice recorder and started complaining about it to myself. I bitched for around 90 minutes. Then, as I started to get tired, I thought I might turn my rant into a piece of creative nonfiction–something about running up against the cruel commodifying values of the publishing industry in Denver. When I typed up what I’d recorded, I had 35 pages and a brand new idea about how to write more without sacrificing quality.

Since then, I’ve experimented with narrating stories and novel chapters into a voice recorder the way I’d once narrated my dreams. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write 300 pages of polished fiction a year. But I’ve learned to be more productive this way, to carry some of that dream energy into my conscious drafting. And I’ve learned to hear my own voice the way I hear someone at a literary reading–listening for the caesuras, the paragraphs, the meanings that emerge from syntax.

I tell my students at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop to at least read what they’ve written out loud to themselves. I tell them that their ears will teach them new things about narrative. I say stories were originally meant to be heard and there are lessons about storytelling we can only learn that way. Some of them believe me.

Those of us who have become fascinated with producing spoken drafts have also learned that, while text-based revision is still necessary to produce a finished product, beginning with the spoken word can connect us to a primal source of creative expression. Now I begin every draft by speaking at least part of it into a voice recorder, deliberately tapping into that ghost world of my other self, shaping narrative with the energy of dreams and visions that return to me in my own voice. I listen and write down what I hear, paying close attention to the speaker.