It’s that time again, when we offer up past issues of Midwestern Gothic for less than you can get them at any other time during the year. Need a last second gift for that book worm you know? Struggling to fill the stockings with more than just socks? An eBook makes a great gift, after all. Even if you’re busy prepping for the holidays, don’t worry, the sale lasts until January 1st!
PDF - $1.50 (Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3)
Kindle - $1.50 (Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3)
Hardcopy - $9 (Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3)
Note: If buying a digital copy (either PDF or Kindle), prices are reduced automatically. If buying a hardcopy, use dicount code T84N5KGX to get the sale price.
Times are tight, but that doesn’t mean you can’t give someone that perfect gift for not a lot of dough. Or find an excuse to treat yourself to a copy of fantastic fiction and poetry from some of the most talented folks the Midwest has to offer.
Remember, this is for a limited time only, so jump on it while you can!
December 22nd, 2011 |
Cyn Kitchen’s story “A Man on One Knee is Considered Down” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 3, out now.
How long have you been writing?
The long answer is that I came to writing later than many. I think it was always there as I spot evidence looking back at my childhood, but my mother was fearful of literature and the words and images that lurked there, so she disallowed all but a few books in the house. Her actions seriously limited my exposure to the world of literature and effectively delayed any awareness that I was a writer, collateral carnage of sorts. My senior year of high school I had a novel on my nightstand that I’d borrowed from a friend. It was Margaret Walker’s JUBILEE. My mother discovered it while inspecting my room during the school day and went through several pages with a black marker, crossing through any word she found offensive. I never finished the book.
By the time I finally discovered I was a writer, I was in my 30s and raising a family. One might think that such a realization should be obvious, even with the issues I faced, but for me it wasn’t that simple. Multiple barriers fell into place that kept me from writing for a good long while. The flipside of that is that by the time I did start writing I had plenty to say and lots of material to say it with.
The short answer? About fifteen years.
What’s your connection to the Midwest?
Bred, born and raised in the same Illinois town as the poet Carl Sandburg. I’ve never managed to escape, and it’s not for lack of trying. I was born in the same hospital as my mother and all four of my children.
How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
The fingerprints of Midwestern characters smear everything I write. They surround me, the people I grew up with, the ones I have loved, grown to resent, and learned to love again for different reasons. Their sensibilities, syntax, willing acceptance of limitations, and periodic efforts to move beyond what life throws at them are qualities and characteristics and situations that echo my own. I didn’t know that the Midwest was a place different from others until I could get outside of it and look back in. Then I was delighted to recognize that this land-locked band of rolling landscape, chock full of grain fields, and brimming with character, was like nothing else I would ever know, and I know it like I will never know another place. I cannot separate the Midwest from me. It is my skin and my heart, and I love that I’m a part of all its flawed beauty.
Why do you believe there has never really been a regionalist push for Midwestern writing in the past like there has with the South or even the West Coast?
I wish I knew the answer to that because it’s something I lament. I have often wished to be from some other place that reveres writers and writing differently than the Midwest seems to. But the truth is that it’s the only place I know. Whatever stories come out of me are so undeniably Midwestern that I can’t fake being from some other place. I have a mini-obsession with Flannery O’Connor. Her regional influence, and her connection to the South are qualities I envy. But I know it cut both ways with O’Connor as she often railed against being categorized as a Southern writer when she just wanted to be respected as a writer. That’s why I love it that the editors of MW Gothic chose to start a magazine that honors the Midwest and carves out a new place for us. It makes me think of Toni Morrison’s quote, “I wrote my first book because I wanted to read it.” The only way to change the Midwest’s reputation as a regional member of the literary community is to change it.
How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
I’m almost ambivalent. I use it, but I’m not sure how effective it is. I like it that I have a list of friends who are aware of my work and who obstensibly support it, but it seems to me that the people who could really affect my writing in terms of getting eyes to read it are the people who put my stories into books and magazines. I understand it’s all connected in various ways, but I’m not convinced that my involvement in Facebook, for instance, has any real bearing on the visibility of my work.
Favorite book?
This might be the most difficult question I’ve ever had to answer. It’s akin to asking me which of my children is my favorite. So I put the question into the context of which book I would take along if I was locked up and only allowed one. I think I would have to say the Bible. It’s the one book I was allowed to have as a child so there’s a lot of history and memory attached to it. Plus, I come from a long oral history of Bible stories which no doubt informs who I am and how I think. Besides that, the Bible has it all: sex, violence, revenge, magic, absurdity, cruelty, parable, metaphor, miracles and redemption. It’s dark, which I like, but it’s also shot through with hope.
Favorite food?
Grandma May’s roast beef with mashed potatoes & gravy.
If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
Hands down, Flannery O’Connor.
Where can we find more information about you?
www.cynkitchen.com
http://www.knox.edu/academics/faculty/kitchen-cyn.html
http://departments.knox.edu/engdept/FacultyPages/Cyn_Kitchen.html
December 8th, 2011 |
Lania Knight, whose story “Postcard From The Freud Museum” can be found in Midwestern Gothic Issue 1 (Spring 2011), will have her debut novel Three Cubic Feet published by Main Street Rag in spring 2012.
Sarah Layden, whose story “Arrested Development” can be found in Midwestern Gothic Issue 3 (Fall 2011), has a short story included in the anthology Sudden Flash Youth .
Suzanne Scanlon, whose story “The Closest Thing” can be found in Midwestern Gothic Issue 2 (Fall 2011), will have her debut novel published fall 2012 from Dorothy, a new press edited by Danielle Dutton.
December 7th, 2011 |
How appropriate that we received our first (real) snowfall of the year this week in Michigan…the same week we’re unveiling the cover for Issue 4 (Winter 2012)!
Pretty fantastic, eh? Cover image copyright (c) Jane Carlson.
Next, we’re excited to unveil the contributor listing for this jam-packed issue:
Great, great lineup of uber-talented folks in this one. More info (including an official release date) to come soon!
December 1st, 2011 |
Heather Cox’s poem “This Town is a Photograph” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 3, out now.
How long have you been writing?
I’ve been writing since I was fairly young. I started out writing very short, very weird sci-fi stories—thanks Poe!—and then switched to shitty teenage poetry some years later. Actually, I used to make summer schedules, right about the time I started elementary school, detailing everything I wanted to do that day (watch Power Rangers, make mud pies, draw, “break time”, etc.). Have I ever not been writing? Probably not.
What’s your connection to the Midwest?
I was born in Texas, grew up in Arkansas, and then moved to Chicago for graduate school. Arkansas, for me, feels both Southern and Midwestern—just less Springsteen, more Hank Williams.
How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
I’ve been surrounded by rivers and lakes and open fields and overgrowth all my life, so I was naturally drawn to the Midwestern landscape. One in every five Heather Cox poems has a lake or a river in it (or your money back, guaranteed). Some of my favorite poets, too, are Midwest guys: my friend Alexander York and the incredible Zachary Schomburg. Schomburg’s “Scary, No Scary” is actually the poem I immediately go to when I imagine a Midwest poem. There’s this notion of childhood and memory and dream, paired with the dilapidated Midwest, that I love about Schomburg poems and those from other Midwest writers—it’s a skin that really fits for me, too.
Why do you believe there has never really been a regionalist push for Midwestern writing in the past like there has with the South or even the West Coast?
Is it the absence of a coast? Surely it can’t be that simple. As a southern transplant, my vote probably goes to the similarities of landscape between the Midwest and the South. When I drive through the rural areas of Illinois, I find myself wondering How is this so different from Arkansas? Maybe it’s all of the cornfields. Do readers not like corn? Whatever the reason, I’m grateful and excited for the recent push that I’ve seen (obviously from you MWG guys) in literary magazines and anthologies. Start the revolution!
How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
I think it’s an okay and at times necessary way to promote your writing, but it’s all about tone and frequency, in my opinion. I might post once about a forthcoming poem of mine and I always give a strong nod to the publication, too, encouraging friends and followers to read more than just my work. I’m more liberal when I’m promoting my lit mag (Ghost Ocean Magazine), but mostly when I’m posting as the literary entity and not myself. As long as you’re not a spambot, I think it’s understandable.
Favorite book?
Yikes. I don’t know about favorite but the books I return to most, even if just for a moment: Joshua Poteat’s Illustrating the Machine That Makes the World; Zach Schomburg’s Scary, No Scary and The Man Suit; Julia Cohen & Mathias Svalina’s Sugar Means Yes; Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas; Matthew Rohrer’s A Green Light; Patrick Somerville’s The Universe in Miniature in Miniature; Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind; anything Greying Ghost Press publishes—I’d keep going but I don’t want to overstay my welcome.
Favorite food?
It’s Honeycrisp apple season. I’d be lying if I said anything else tastes better this month. Well, maybe hard cider.
If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti and/or Allen Ginsberg. If it wasn’t for the Beats, I probably would have swallowed one too many sonnets and changed my major to computer science.
Where can we find more information about you?
I just started blogging (again) at www.looklookhere.tumblr.com
I tweet pretty frequently at www.twitter.com/heathercox903
I’m a fiend for Goodreads www.goodreads.com/heathercox903
And you can check out me & my mag at www.ghostoceanmagazine.com
November 29th, 2011 |
Find details for Session #3 here, including a reader list. In the meantime, enjoy the flier for the November session below.
November 19th, 2011 |
Jason Lee Brown’s poems “Chores With My Father” and “Intersection” appear in Midwestern Gothic Issue 3, out now.
How long have you been writing?
I was twenty-four before I believed writing was something I should seriously pursue, which was around the time I surrounded myself with other writers and artists who cared about the same things. For the folks I grew up with, creative writing was not considered a worthy profession to pursue. It wasn’t like folks were putting it down. It just wasn’t considered.
What’s your connection to the Midwest?
I am a lifetime Illinois resident. I earned a Master of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Eastern Illinois University, where I currently teach writing.
How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
In every way, even when I don’t want it to. I’m not sure I have a choice. So instead of running from it, I embrace it. I strive to be the writer producing the absolute best fiction and poetry set in or about Illinois and the Midwest. When others think Illinois—specifically central Illinois—I want them to think Jason Lee Brown.
Why do you believe there has never really been a regionalist push for Midwestern writing in the past like there has with the South or even the West Coast?
This is a question I have been asked several times and a question I have heard several others answer. I don’t think there is one answer, but I have heard some great and not so great ones. One thing I know for sure is that the quality of writing is here. So, for me, what it comes down to is who cares enough to take the time and effort—for low to no pay—to find projects that support Midwestern writing and writers. I think that’s where the push begins: action by talented Midwest writers and editors.
Though this region is often ignored in discussions about distinctive regional literature, I am trying to change that. My goal—through my writing and editing—is to demonstrate how the quality of fiction from and about the Midwest rivals that of any other region. And apparently you wonderful folks at Midwestern Gothic have the same goals. There are others too, just to name a few: Switchgrass Books, Holy Cow! Press, RockSaw Press, Bottom Dog Press, Midwest Chapbook Series by Green Tower Press, Southern Indiana Review, etc.
When I first tried to find a publisher for New Stories from the Midwest, everyone told me how great of an idea it was. When I got a publisher, everyone told me how great it was that this anthology existed, and that it was long overdue. Now, I tell everyone the same thing. If everyone who has said the anthology is a great idea or glad it now exist buys a copy, then Midwestern literature would instantly rise to the top of regional literature because sales would be through the roof. Also, Midwestern universities and colleges should offer more Midwestern literature courses or regional literature courses that include the Midwest. I think that’s where it ends: supporting Midwest writing. Sometimes sales speak louder than words. I could go on and on but I’ll stop there.
How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
I think you have to do it in some form. Fighting technology in any field of work doesn’t work. So I use social media but not very well. My biggest problem is the time consumption. When I get off FB, I feel like I’ve wasted writing or reading time that I’ll never get back.
Favorite book?
Green Eggs and Ham. It began the chain of books that captured my attention and eventually led to Lolita. I often get asked what I look for in writing when editing the anthology. I have two criteria for everything I read. It must be emotionally engaging and entertaining in some way. So give me any writing that does that and I’m happy.
Favorite food?
Because I’m an avid amateur baker, I have to go with something I can’t get or reproduce in central Illinois: Japanese cake, chocolate or strawberry. Light moist cake. Fluffy cream icing. Blows away the more sugary American cake.
If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
My knee jerk reaction is Twain. But I’m happy talking with any writer, accomplished or beginner, especially if we discuss the process of writing, which I am obsessed with. How do other writers get from A to Z, and can I adapt that to make my writing process better, faster?
Where can we find more information about you?
I don’t have a website or blog but I do have FB. Friend me. Or just email if you have any questions. I enjoy communicating with other writers, especially those fond of Midwestern literature. You can also check out the call for New Stories from the Midwest Cover Art Contest and submissions for individual writers: http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Stories-from-the-Midwest/165574933489340
November 17th, 2011 |
Hey! If you haven’t yet been able to check out Wednesday Night Sessions, the monthly reading series we co-sponsor, Session #3 is not to be missed (coming up on November 30)! We have a solid line-up of readers, and we’re doubly excited to announce that The Collagist is coming on board to sponsor our monthly shindig as well-if you’re not familiar with the journal, you should be. It’s fantastic.
Details of Session #3 (Wednesday, November 30, 7-8 PM) can be found here. For the most up-to-date information, follow Wednesday Night Sessions on Twitter here.
Hope to see you there!
November 12th, 2011 |
J. A. Tyler’s piece “The Second Non-Death Dream // Re-Dreamt” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 3, out now.
How long have you been writing?
In the sixth grade I wrote a choose-your-own-adventure book without the choices. It was about a boy and a dog and a castle and a goblin. In 2005, roughly 15 years later, I started submitting my work for publication.
What’s your connection to the Midwest?
I live in Colorado, one of the most beautiful places on earth.
How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
There is an ease and depth to this area that filters through and into my work. My writing is full of pine trees and mountains, rivers and dirt, fields and bowing wheat and the occasional lake, and choked too with weather – sun, winter, rain, falling leaves.
Why do you believe there has never really been a regionalist push for Midwestern writing in the past like there has with the South or even the West Coast?
It may be an issue of population. Or it may be that it is coming, and we should gear up.
How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
Some days I love it, some days I don’t. But I do use Facebook and Twitter for my own work and that of Mud Luscious Press and its imprints. Tumblr escapes me right now like a tremendous woman who I lust for but who hates me.
Favorite book?
Shit. Perhaps: The Old Man and the Sea. We Make Mud. How the Days of Love & Diphtheria. Scary, No Scary. Catcher in the Rye.
Favorite food?
Coffee. Pesto. Are either of those ‘foods’?
If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
Again, shit. Perhaps: Ernest Hemingway (though he’d probably call me names). Peter Markus (I’m sure he thinks I’m a stalker). Kurt Vonnegut (I’d even take up smoking again).
Where can we find more information about you?
www.chokeonthesewords.com
November 9th, 2011 |
Just a friendly reminder that submissions for Issue 4 close this Friday, November 11, at midnight EST.
(Photos are accepted year-round.)
For details on what we’re looking for, click here. To submit directly to us, click here.
November 7th, 2011 |
