The Midwest in Photos

Photo copyright Perry Roach

“‘We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I’ll make one. I’ll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I’ll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I’ll make a sound that’s so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I’ll make me a sound and an apparatus and they’ll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.’”

-Ray Bradbury, The Fog Horn

Lee L. Krecklow, who has work in Issue 6 (Summer 2012), will be reading an excerpt from his story “Chickenbone” on Thursday, January 17th, at 7:00PM at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Good luck, Lee!

Ooligan Press, a fantastic publisher based out of the Pacific Northwest and kindred spirit in promoting literary voices from each of our respective regions, recently chatted with Scott about the trend of small press publishing, working alongside them, as well as about his forthcoming collection, where they had this to say about This Jealous Earth:

“You don’t always find a short story collection where the characters, the setting—or, almost, the spirit of the land, and the plots are all equally memorable. But Carpenter…has accomplished this.”

Read the illuminating interview here.

Michelle Webster-Hein’s story “Pictures of Pictures” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 8, out now.

How long have you been writing?
I’ve been writing since I was seven or so, but I didn’t take it up as a daily discipline until my late twenties. Before that, I was studying classical piano, the demands of which eclipsed everything else. Thankfully, the musician’s habit of sitting down every day and working—whether you want to or not—has been crucial in my writing. At this point I’ve been a committed writer for about five years.

What’s your connection to the Midwest?
Aside from a volunteer stint in Eastern Europe and various trips, I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life. I grew up in rural Michigan, just outside Horton and Hanover—a couple tiny towns that formed a joint school. I attended college in Ohio and Michigan and graduate school in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is where I now teach and write and raise my daughter.

How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
In a way, it influences everything I write because I am a Midwesterner through and through, and who you are always bleeds through what you create. But Hanover, Michigan in particular has strongly influenced my writing, especially the fundamentalist Baptist church there, which I attended with my mother until I turned eighteen. I’m working on a collection of short stories linked around a fictionalized version of that town. Some of the places in my stories—the church, the antique organ museum, the empty art gallery—actually exist. Others I’ve created to fit the feel of the place, which always struck me as solemn and a little eerie. It’s a feeling I can’t shake, which means I keep coming back to Hanover again and again in my work, trying to evoke that same haunting sense of place.

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?
A writing mentor of mine, also a Michigander, lived in San Francisco for a few years. Early one December a colleague asked her if she was going back to Missouri. She told him she grew up in Michigan. “Does it matter?” he asked. People seem to turn up their noses at the Midwest. While reading some of Anne Fadiman’s essays, I stumbled across these sentiments. She referred to Midwesterners as people who wear crew cuts, eat tuna noodle casseroles and limit their reading to monthly issues of Reader’s Digest. I may be totally off here, but one of the most definitive elements of the Midwest for me is the lack of pretense, and I think that too often the unpretentious are automatically lumped in with the uncultured, the unappreciating. I personally find the Midwest definitive and rich with stories, though I admit it’s taken me some time to realize it. When I was younger, I thought I came from nowhere.

How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
I use Facebook, though I doubt it is the best online vehicle. I’ve contemplated setting up a Twitter account, but with mothering and teaching, I have very little time to spend maintaining a web presence. The most fundamental thing is the work. I know that if I want to succeed as a writer, I must work (and work and work and work). Social media is a tool, but it is not writing, and right now the writing is usually all I have time for.

Favorite book?
I don’t think I can narrow it down to one. Books that have most profoundly affected me are The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

Favorite food?
Freshly baked bread with butter.

If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
I think I’d choose George Eliot. I lived an entire life reading Middlemarch, and I understood her characters so deeply, especially Dorothea Brooke. Also, she wrote at a time when women weren’t supposed to write, so she doubly deserves resurrection.

Where can we find more information about you?
You can find my work online in Perigee, the Lowestoft Chronicle and the Center for Mennonite Writing Journal, among other places. I also have an essay forthcoming in Ruminate Magazine. If you’d like to know more, friend me on Facebook.

The launch of This Jealous Earth is right around the corner, and boy, are we excited!

To help introduce the book to the world, we’ve lined up several readings in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, where Scott will be reading passages from the book live and in person. He’ll also be around afterwords if you’d like to chat literature, converse in French, or even get a copy of the book signed.

If you find yourself around the Twin Cities, be sure and check out the following events.

January 15, 2013 – Carleton Bookstore
4:30 p.m. in the Athenaeum at the Gould Library on campus
Carleton College
1 North College St.
Northfield, MN 55057
Event Details
RSVP on Facebook

January 22, 2013 – Magers & Quinn
7:30 p.m.
3038 Hennepin Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
Events Page
RSVP on Facebook

January 30, 2013 – Subtext: A Bookstore
7:00 p.m.
165 Western Avenue North
St. Paul, MN 55102
Event Details
RSVP on Facebook

February 2, 2013 – The Bookcase
2:00 p.m.
607 Lake Street East
Wayzata, MN 55391
Event Details
RSVP on Facebook

We’re incredibly thrilled to announce that submissions for Issue 9 (Spring 2013) are now open!

Haven’t submitted before? Please take a few minutes and read through our Submissions Guidelines—they’ll fill you in on what Midwestern Gothic is all about and exactly what we’re looking for. Or you could check out one of our previous issues to get a sense of the sorts of things we enjoy publishing.

Please make sure you submit through Midwestern Gothic’s Submishmash page. (All the relevant details are there too.)

Good luck, and happy submitting!

Casey Francis’ story “Keep the Lights On” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 7, out now.

How long have you been writing?
As a kid I really didn’t like to read, much less write. I think the seeds of writing got planted with a more general interest in storytelling. My grandpa Gordy was a great coffee shop gossip in my hometown, and I remember always being captivated by the stories he told and was being told.

What’s your connection to the Midwest?
I was born and raised in the small of town Lyons, Nebraska. My mother’s family has deep Nebraska roots, and my father is a transplant from Illinois. Also, I attended undergrad at Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois, where I currently live. Except for a short stint in the Southwest, the Midwest has always served as my home base.

How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
For a while I attempted to rid my writing of the Midwest, but it seems to always creep onto my pages in two ways.

1) In general, I have found many Midwestern people to possess a politeness that sometimes so severe that comes off rude. There is a sort of aversion to confrontation, where people do or say or go along with things because it’s easier than conflict. This kind of dynamic lends itself well to art. I often end up with these types of characters and their barbed silences.

2) The other way the Midwest finds its way into my writing is the landscape, or rather the expanse of the landscape. Doing research for my thesis I found an observation by David Pichaske that basically said that while many regionalist writers play with landscape, Midwestern writers often open their work with space itself. I’ve found this to be true of my writing.

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 wrote a creative Master’s thesis concerning regionalist Midwestern literature, so I had the opportunity to think about this a fair bit. It seems to come down to the amorphous nature of the Midwest. Where does it begin and end? Originally, the term “Middle West” was used in the 1880s to refer to Kansas and Nebraska, after which around the early 1900s the term’s reference expanded to include northern plains states and the Old Northwest as well—at least that’s how this one scholar James R. Shortridge explained it. But the best description I found was from Pichaske (the guy I mentioned previously), who said that the Midwest emerges where “seed caps yield to Stetsons, work shoes to cowboy boots, and planted crops to cattle range.”

Additionally, there’s the issue that the Midwest lacks a defining historical moment or movement for it’s people to latch onto. The South has the Civil War. The West has manifest destiny. New England is the birthplace of the American Revolution. Sure, the Midwest has the development of industrial agriculture, but this lacks some serious sex appeal. Plus, I think the Midwest and those making it home have done a poor job of singing its praises.

How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
I think it’s important to at least create a presence online. Personally, give me the website and I’ll open an account. I use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, GoodReads, etc. (Visit my website too: www.franciscasey.com.) I love online social media (though I’m less on content creating and more on lurking), but I know many don’t love it. Those writers who don’t love it should not feel a need to jump into it all. It comes down to what you actually write.

Favorite book?

My favorite books tend to swing with my moods. I have a fear of commitment too, so I can’t pick just one. A few I come back to year after year are:

Anything written by Louise Erdrich, especially The Plague of Doves
Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
Here, Bullet by Brian Turner
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

Favorite food?
Turkey tacos with a romaine lettuce leaf acting as the taco shell.

If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
It’d be a beer for sure—most likely an IPA of some sort. The person would be living because why hope falsely and that person would be either Anthony Doerr or Louise Erdrich. It’d just have to come down to the writer who could text me back most quickly.

Where can we find more information about you?
Find me at www.twitter.com/caseyfrancis or visit www.FrancisCasey.com, where you can find links to all my social media wanderings.

The Midwest in Photos

Photo copyright Alison McGaughey

At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street Road. -Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

Jacob Brower, editor at noah, reviewed This Jealous Earth and had some wonderful things to say about it:

“Carpenter’s prose is clean and elegant, his stories tightly constructed. It’s a strong debut from both author and press. Bottom line? Fans of contemporary literary fiction will find much to love about This Jealous Earth.”

Check out the rest of the review.

And for more information on This Jealous Earth, including how you can save 20% off the cover price, click here.

Karrie Waarala’s piece “Migration (The Tattooed Lady Returns)” appears in Midwestern Gothic Issue 7, out now.

How long have you been writing?
I honestly can’t remember not writing. I was always making up stories when I was in elementary school, and started writing poems in junior high, these awful little rhymed couplet things that, fortunately, my sixth grade teacher saw fit to encourage. I discovered sonnets in high school and performance poetry in my twenties—but I’d say it took me until the last few years to really get serious enough about writing to make it the highest priority in my life. Finally getting my MFA after years of saying, “You know, someday I’d really like to go back to school…” was a game-changer. Now I can’t imagine a life built around anything else.

What’s your connection to the Midwest?
I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life, growing up in a quintessentially Midwestern small town. I regularly fall in love with other places when I travel and have considered relocating, but for a variety of reasons, I’m still in the Mitten.

How has the Midwest influenced your writing?
I think a bias toward the Midwest has definitely crept into my collection of circus poems. One of the best bits of fun for me is sprinkling the poems with place names, and I scour maps and the interwebs for the ones that sound just right. When my circus travels outside of the Midwest, it’s generally to recognizable places like Albuquerque or Sarasota or New Orleans. But within the Midwest, there’s these great, hidden little places like Caneyville, Kentucky, or Stampers Creek, Indiana, and I just can’t resist the music in those names.

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?
My guess is that people who aren’t from the Midwest have this impression of us as a bit of a cultural no-man’s land, one giant cornfield with some factories around the outskirts, with Lake Wobegon as the capital. And Midwesterners can be a self-effacing lot; we know that’s not the case, but we’re content enjoying the fantastic stuff that writers and artists are creating here and don’t necessarily feel the need to jump up and down and shout about it. I think people outside the Midwest are starting to catch on and take notice anyway—so maybe it’s a regionalist pull instead of a push.

How do you feel about social media to promote your writing, and do you use it?
I have a bit of an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” outlook about social media. I feel it takes up too much space and time in our lives, and I try to unplug for a few weeks at a time a few times a year. But if I’m not on a self-imposed virtual hiatus, I regularly make use of social media to promote my writing and various projects I’m involved with. I don’t think I’ll ever be entirely comfortable with self-promotion, but I acknowledge the necessity, and social media is a good tool for the job.

Favorite book?
Favorite book? Singular? You’re kidding, right? Okay, some favorites off the top of my head, by category. Poetry: Anything Sexton. I Was the Jukebox by Sandra Beasley. Anything Dickinson. Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess. Nonfiction: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch. Fiction: Grendel by John Gardner. Anything Bradbury. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. And a short story by Lydia Davis called “Break It Down” absolutely tore me apart when I heard it on NPR years ago. I’ve been making people listen to me read it to them ever since.

Favorite food?
Thai food. Also, chocolate and cheese count as two of my four basic food groups.

If you could have coffee (or tea or a beer) with any literary figure, alive or dead, who would it be?
Again, only one? I’d like to listen to Neil Gaiman tell stories over tea. Or go out carousing with Hemingway.

Where can we find more information about you?
I’m online at poetrysideshow.com.