The Semi Colon

Love Among the Junkyard: An Interview With Airin Miller by Keith Hendershot.

2011-06-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

Airin Miller is a Rolling Stones girl and her fiction shows it.

I first met Airin when we were both students at Bennington College, and my initial impression of her was that she’d make a hell of an image on the back of a book jacket, spritely pretty and with the good blue-collar pedigree attractive in authors. Raised in the gritty suburbs of Baltimore and the daughter of a police officer, her fiction evokes the naivete, longing, and hard living of what her fellow Baltimore native John Waters lovingly deemed “extreme white people.”

Bennington College, for those not familiar with it, is one of those New England liberal arts experiments that straddles the line between institution of higher learning and, for lack of a better word, “art farm.” Intimate, isolated, and populated with “indigo” children, the environment was a playful microcosm for a circus of mad egos to manicure their bohemian identities with the imaginative seriousness of children playing house. There were rock stars, abstract expressionists, filmmakers, and physicists and we all were legends in our own minds, but perhaps none styled themselves with so much self-consciousness and romanticism as the writers--a clique that divided its education equally between workshops and the campus pub.

Airin and I knew each other inasmuch as we belonged in this little sub-society, and, perhaps, both of us hailing from markedly less tony backgrounds than many of the sophisticated, cosmopolitan beau monde from which elite New England colleges draw their enrollment, we shared a similar insecurity of being impostors in the ivory tower--hillbillies in hipster attire. We both responded by writing tough, visceral fiction celebrating the respected lands of our rearing, some of which you can read in Ep;phany. My own story about meth addicts in rural Tennessee can be found in Winter/Spring 2009 issue. Airin’s latest offering, “A High, Hard One,” appears in our most recent issue. It explores the crush of a teenage girl with an auto mechanic amidst a fiercely hot summer of beer-fueled softball and Corvette T-Tops burning down Back River Neck Road.

I recently chatted with Airin via email, me in New York and her in her new digs out in Portland, Oregon

Keith:I have a sense that the world can essentially be broken into two camps. People who prefer The Rolling Stones and people who prefer The Beatles. Which one are you?

Airin: I prefer The Stones. My rationale has long been that The Beatles are too buoyant for my taste. I considered reconsidering my position when my friend Richard said, “Norwegian Wood. Listen again. It’s dark.”

Keith: Nothing with "Norwegian" in the title has been anything but dark. I kind of pegged you as a Stones girl given the blue collar elan of "A High, Hard One," The story's so queasy, nostalgic, and apt in its milieu. The jelly sandals, frozen lima beans, ladybugs, ice cream wrappers, and the numerous other details evoke a sort of sticky, sweet, scabby-legged summer of lower middle class adolescence. Where does this story come from? Is it autobiographical?

Airin: While the story isn’t autobiographical, it is set in the landscape of my childhood. The summers were humid, gluey and close. Most everywhere was without central air conditioning. It was cooler outdoors. People spent the day in their yards. As the temperature rose, there came an increased feeling of hazard - all the indoor yearning or seething let loose.

Keith: Now, when I first met you, it was in an undergraduate writing workshop, and you were working on a memoir project. When did you start writing fiction?

Airin: Fiction has long been my medium of choice. When I was quite young, I used to dictate stories to my Grandmother.
Keith: What's the earliest story you remember creating?

Airin:A story about my grandmother's house, talking animals, and pilgrims. My grandmother's basement had a small crawlspace tiled with yellow linoleum squares. She kept chipped dishes in there, teacups, her childhood books and toys. I was convinced it was the passageway to my own Narnia. I wanted to be transported to an anthropomorphic/olden world.

At the time I thought my Ma was terribly cruel for not letting me churn the household butter.

Keith: This is the point in the interview where I'm usually expected to ask you which authors inspire you. I'm going to go against the grain and ask you if there are any authors or types of literature you detest?

Airin:Yowza! That's a fanged question. But no, I don't detest any particular style of writing or, heavens forbid, particular writers. I recently re-read a letter from Martha Gellhorn to Bill Buford in which she wrote, "You cannot, must never, fuck up writers: it is as wrong as fucking up miners or nurses or any people who work hard and honestly trying to do something seriously as well as they can." I read this quote aloud to someone in the middle of a debate; it was a way to say, in chorus, "Let me do my work." I also think it's the truth. I admire all writers for their endurance and their grit.

Of course, I have my own particulars. There are gremlins that sneak into my work and piss me off. I don't like fiction perfectly wrapped in birthday ribbons. I worry over endings that are too neat. I have a hard time with pop culture references. Perhaps it's unchecked Luddism, the aspirational butter churner still alive inside me, but I find technology unlovely. I wrestle with this in my fiction and in my reading habits. I welcome work that uses technology and pop culture well, with purpose. Before I moved, I remember you were working on a story that used Facebook in an exciting, unconventional way. I find that very daring!

Keith: I find it hard to write about contemporary life without acknowledging Google and Facebook. It's getting to the point where it's all science fiction anyway. So, anyways, complete this sentence, "Good fiction should ___________"

Airin:Good fiction should be unafraid. It should have balls. It should take risks.

Keith: Anyways, next question, lifted from the Proust questionaire. "Who are your favorite heroes in fiction?"

Airin:Rather than steady heroes, I tend to think about who has recently knocked my socks off. In the summer, I do get a bit Southern. I've been re-reading Flannery O'Connor, Barry Hannah, some of Faulkner's short stories, and Jayne Anne Phillips. I'm currently in love with Jayne Anne Phillips' collection "Counting". I've also been reading a lot of poetry. Perhaps late on this, but I think Richard Siken's book "Crush" is a brilliant, sharpened gem."

Keith: How does "place" inform your work? I mean, I almost look at a "High, Hard One" as a piece of "southern writing." It has those trappings and that pathos. Has living in New York and Portland informed your work?

Airin: Certain places inform my work. I'm a sucker for Americana, places that feel like the real McCoy: gas stations with cheer wine, the homes of hermits, car garages, small towns. I never realized how Southern my mannerisms and sensibilities were until I went to graduate school in Virginia. I thought a lot of my colloquialisms were Baltimore-born, but I heard them echoed in my (true) southern friends' voices. Yes, in my writing, I often revisit Virginia and Maryland. I'm also greatly affected by Montana and the other mountain states. I imagine New York has indirectly influenced my work. Perhaps in my dialogue; I loved overhearing half sentences on the streets of NYC. I am excited to see how Portland will affect the landscape of my pieces. Portland is a very moody, sexy city.

Keith: If I were to lock you in solitary confinement for one month with one book, one movie, and an endless supply of one food item what would they be?

Airin:Moby-Dick, Badlands, and cheese

Keith: Nice. Hey, you've just won the MacArthur Genius Grant. What are you going to do for the next two years?

Airin: Ride the Trans-Siberian railway to Mongolia. Write. Travel on. Spend weeks without once checking my email.

Keith: What are you working on right now?

Airin: I think it is bad luck to discuss current work. I'm working on a
fiction project; that's as much as I can admit out of fear of losing
steam. And working on adapting to a new city!

The Writers Process by Sidik Fofana

2011-05-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Sidik Fofana will have his story Dangerous Deliveries published in the upcoming issue of Epiphany. Here is Sidik's take on how and why he came to write this piece. It provides worthwhile insight into the writers process and what inspired him to write this story and his struggle to bridge two different worlds. It is his dream that people from both worlds read this work!

Anybody who knows me semi-well, knows that “Dangerous Deliveries” is a story I tell over and over again in some form. After spending the good part of my teenage years working as a cashier at a supermarket in Boston, I’ve emerged with an encyclopedic knowledge of produce codes and endless tales of grocery deliveries gone awry. Plus, the people I met while on the job—people who would end up amalgamating into the Fitroy and Kane of my story—were unforgettable to say the least. So, what to do this smorgasbord of memorable characters and funny vignettes? Write some fiction.

As I was creating “Dangerous Deliveries” I became fascinated how my nameless main character—perhaps a hapless, dorkier version of myself—navigated his two worlds. On one hand he’s this budding college undergrad with goals and ambitions and on the other hand, he’s a delivery clerk doing menial labor with two guys from the hood. Throw in a post-pubescent crush on Janita, a teenage girl who epitomizes inner-city Boston through and through, and you have a confused young man trying to fit in.

The story all in all took me of a week to write, and there weren’t too many plot hiccups since I was drawing on my own experiences. It was a fun story to write because I felt like the characters valued each other even though they were living in different realities. I feel like my work in general tries to portray the African-American working class from different perspectives. A dream come true would be if the real life Kanes and Fitroys read this.

To read the story subscribe to the upcoming issue at www.epiphanyzine.com.

More Hype Please

2010-10-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

PERSISTENT LABYRINTHS

... analogue anecdotes to the digital morass

More hype is what I tell myself. Hype, hype, hype seems the name of the game. That vapid dazzling jibber-jabber that hogs mind space and air waves. I have never been good at it, but if you run a literary magazine nowadays, hype is necessary. Tweet, tweet. Excellent writing is not enough. Emily Dickinson and Vincent Van Gogh are proof talent must be promoted. There are not a lot of litmag editors who can sell narrative and poetry like it's fabulous and urgent as a Bentley or a BMW, and must be had like hot sex. Alas, the same rules apply to selling literary magazines as they do to cars. Hype counts and so does craftsmanship, but put them both together and you have something worthwhile.

I am learning to tweet, blog, and post to facebook to celebrate and promote good writing because there is so much talent in this issue it makes my head spin. This issue as we see it explores "persistent labyrinths" that vex us as we wind our way through life. Lisa Dierbeck's chapter from The Autobiography of Jenny X is . . . well . . . the senator's son is preying upon a girl who has found refuge at one of his mother's charity causes -- The Second Chance Society. A girl named Jenny who has this to say to her new found lover, “Great. Lucky me,” Jenny said. “I fuck the Senator’s son on Fifth

Avenue and he asks me for financial aid.” Pathos flourishes throughout. Here is where you buy the novel a http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/jennyx. Dale Peck's dark comic tale Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore explores stuff that makes me squeamish -- a gay Lolita with a little Faulkner on the side. I had to read twice before I got it. We published two stories of Jerome Edwards. one of them, The Places you Find Yourself starts out: "You walked out of the shitter one morning and kicked an armoire. You didn’t know what an armoire was before you met her. Now you

know how she takes her coffee, that she hates the word moist, and that

she’ll read anything being made into a major motion picture." It delivers a ticklish labyrinth that is not so funny after all. And Sarah Carson's poems are just how I feel on those days when things don't add up. This is from her poem

When a Man Flies

Tonight there are nine houses burning in the city where

I was born. Last night there were eleven. The night

before—thirteen.

The firefighters left town weeks ago. . .

Lindsay Merbaum's The Summerhouse is an exceptional story that peels back the layers of our perception of relationships, love and self-discovery. I have already read it twice and I still want to read again.

Epiphany continues its earmark of giving writers lots of space: another two chapter installment from A.B. Meyer's Keep This Fortune where she locates her birth mother. Her prose is precise in unearthing the sentimentality of her pain about being adopted.

Truth be told I'd rather have a copy of Epiphany than a Bentley. No Lying.

A Reading with Cocktails, Chatter, Canapes

2010-07-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

The Epiphany reading at Victoria Lesser's wonderful North Branch Inn was a perfect evening save for the fact that I did not take any pictures. North Branch is a tiny hamlet in Western Sullivan County with two auto repair shops, a handful of residential houses, a firehouse, and the beautifully restored inn. It was Epiphany's first foray into Catskills and the evening was how I define success. It provided a tension between feeling socially comfortable, and yet, at the same time feeling the need to participate in the chatter. This social hour was genuine and buttressed by good wine and delicious canapes made by chef, Caties Schwalb, of pitchfork, knife & spoon.

Readings are a tricky business as there is nothing worse than a bad reading. Prententious poets carefully enunciating breathy words that no gives a damn about. Zzzzzzzzzzzz! Holding the audience is as much about a performance by the reader as the quality of the work itself. It can't simply be a well read sacchrin fairytale spooned out like timed lines in a sitcom. A good reading must have a quality of wonder. The listener must wonder about who the characters really are, and just what they are up to in their imaginary world. A good reading has magic in it -- it is the sound of words that casts the spell over the listener and opens the imagination to something very real. The first reader, Samantha Gillison, read about a philandering Brooklyn sophisticate and has-been novelist, Jim Bevelacqua, who is always popping unpronounceable drugs and envying the richer classes. Humor and pathos were abound. The second reader, Rick Fellinger, read a tale of an alcoholic Vietnam Vet, Cuppy Forester, and his wife who were evacuating a flooding Pennsylvania rust belt town. Both characters in both stories were as real as Hamlet or Holden Caulfield. While there was plenty of drama in both stories but I think both stories tipped toward the epiphany. The name of this literary journal comes from James Joyce’s notion that stories should reveal those moments of insight or epiphanies, rather than that kind of bristling drama --the formulaic rising action, climax and denouement--that was ever present in the Greeks and perhaps even more so in the modern Hollywood film. The epiphany in short fiction is something different. It is the subtle and the evanescent that is often found in a lonely and struggling character of no particular economic class, but nevertheless it is a character who can't seem to put the pieces of the puzzle together. For one reason or another he/she makes bad decisions, take wrong turns, and can’t seem to get things right no matter what they do. Some have moral failings, some do not. Generally they live on the fringes, they are outsiders struggling to fit in. Flannery O'Connor's misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find, Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis, Neddy Merrill in John Cheever's The Swimmer or even Stephen Dedalus in Joyce's Araby. They are vulnerable and a little melancholy, but all the same, determined to find meaning in their respective universes. Short stories capture this kind of human essence at a particular moment in time the way nothing else can – not a poem, novel or memoir.

In Gillison's story, The Fall of the Bevelacquas of Boerum Hill that moment is when Jim realizes the woman he envies, Suzanna Gryce, is "losing her tits" to cancer. It is a moment where Jim can no longer return to that self that envies her money and status. After that knowledge he sees the world a little differently.

In Fellinger's The Stuff Left Behind it is not Cuppy but his wife who has the epiphany when she takes the bottle of vodka and throws it on the pavement where it explodes. Cuppy's wife can no longer believe his pronoucements about his sobriety. Like Jim Bevelacqua her world is changed forever.

Tell Lies and Write Badly

2010-06-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

This past week I was perusing the book table at bookbook on Bleecker Street and came across an early edition of Ray Carver's Cathedral and couldn't resist buying it for $7.98. I first reread the short story A Small, Good Thing and then zipped through the whole book. How on earth did he do it? How did he write those stories? As a writer I sometimes have this desire to write a story just like A Small, Good Thing or if I couldn't do that, then maybe as an editor I could discover a writer like Carver. In my younger years I spent a lot of time falling in love with writers like J.D. Salinger, Alice Munro, Tim O' Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frank O'Connor, Anton Chekhov and lots of others. I wanted to know everything I could about their writing. I made a point never read any biographies because I didn't want to know too much about the writers personal lives. After going to a bunch of writers conferences I was let down by some of the writers I held in high esteem. They were self-satisfied jerks and not the insightful and caring writers that I wanted them to be. It was a necessary heartbreaking experience. One of my early stories I just about copied the entire beginning of Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut so much so that the story I was trying to write got lost. My infatuation with Salinger made me forget who I was as a writer. After writing some more stories I began to see how much this kind infatuation with writers was hampering me. I think this is one of the hardest things about being a beginning writer -- accepting and understanding your influences but not getting swallowed up by them. It really is about trusting yourself. I had a motto once that I gave to my writing students Tell Lies and Write Badly. The thinking was to to take the pressure off (Writers put a lot of pressure on themselves) by allowing oneself to write badly and that lowering expectations would ultimately help one in the creative process. I think the important thing is as Isak Dinesen said "To write a little everyday without hope or despair."

The Magazine Arrives

2010-05-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

The magazine arrives on Friday. Part of the excitement of publishing a journal is the actual physical arrival of the cartons on our doorstep. We, the Epiphany editorial staff, spend months reading and rereading manuscripts and there comes a point when everything begins to blur -- scenes, characters, plot lines, poems -- and doubt creeps in about what should go in, and what should be left out. Deadlines loom, and choices are finally made. Then, there are many pesky details to look after before going to press--cover design, copy editing, and proofreading are all time consuming chores that become obsessional until it must be shipped (actually FTPed the equivalent of digital shipping) to the printer. And when the proofs arrive in bound form a week later another read is required. Mercifully, I don't copy edit or proof read. The proofs are then shipped back to the printer for printing. A week to ten days of waiting and at last UPS arrives with a carton of 68 magical books! It's done. And yet the minute the door closes life begins. I tear open the carton to see what the issue looks like, to hold it in my hand like a new born baby. Each issue has its own personality: the cover, the contents and that certain mystery of being new. I wonder what the content will bring back after it goes out into the world. The physical book is always something that I want to show and give to the world which betrays good business sense. I want to share my experience of a good read. I want to scream out to the world READ THIS! Please read this and have an epiphany. That ecstatic feeling is the reason why I edit and publish a literary journal. The Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Epiphany is rich: Sabine Heinlein's crisp exploration of helping an ex-con to buy a new coat; A.B. Meyer's story about being adopted into a clueless upper crust WASP family; Samantha Gillison's tale of a Brooklyn philanderer; and Toby Tucker Hecht's story that oozes temptation are all pure entertainment. Along with that, are two pieces from South Africa polar in their sentiments: one is a dark fiction by Anthony Schneider from suburban Johannesburg, and the other, a memoir about teaching a poetry workshop in Soweto. Nick Admussen's Movie Plots one might call a prose poem, but I would call it an entirely new form "upheaval narrative." There is more. Visit our website and see. www.epiphanzine. com It all stacks up to excellent reading that is worth that precious commodity -- time.

The Business of Rejection

2010-02-23T10:56:00.001-08:00

We are in the business of rejection. We reject more than 95 percent of the work that is submitted to the magazine. As an editor I can't say there is any one reason why I reject work as it ultimately comes down to personal taste, but I can say a few things about what I see when I read from the slush pile. I consistently see no cover letter, cover letters that overreach, weak story titles, slack first paragraphs, and work that is not proofread which makes me want to scream. I simply stop reading and work on accepting the fact that there are a high percentage of people who call themselves writers who don't care to look after these details.

So lets assume the writer is careful enough to consider these fundamentals and get them right. The next thing I find myself doing is going through the dictums that are stressed in writing workshops and graduate school: Is the narrative tone consistent? Show don't Tell. Balance scene and summary. Is there a narrative arc? If you put a gun in the first act make sure it goes off in the second. Be consistent in point-of-view. Make sure there is enough conflict or tension. Character is destiny. What is this story about? Does the story risk anything? Does the story feel natural or is it overworked?" All these questions help me to reject pieces. Remember I am in the business of rejection.

Let's assume you passed that test, you now have a one-in-ten chance of being accepted. Now part of your acceptance becomes mathematical like a profile that an admissions officer might have for a selective college. We can't accept all the same kind of stories. We need topical variety and originality. Always assume there are other stories like yours. For example, let's say there are three first person point-of-view betrayal stories about young white urban woman that take place in New York. The story that has a political or personal axe to grind will go straight to the rejection pile. Make sure it is the character's suffering that is on the page and not your own. The story comes first.

Stories that risk something will get a second look. One that comes to mind is a story about a women who has a series of horrifying one night stands told in lurid humiliating detail. The character finally takes up with a dog (sex and all) and ultimately marries the dog. While the story failed, it is an example of how a writer tried something unique and that kind of story, if done right, would get acceptance because of it's unique character. ECORCHEVILLE, a fabulist translation we did accept increased its odds in the very first sentence. When Orne heard that several automated firing squads had been set up around town, he was unimpressed. Not only did that sentence make me want to read on, but I knew immediately it was a clear and unequivocal voice.

We are a tiny magazine with scant resources and work entirely with a staff of volunteer readers. We are like miners, I suppose, digging around and sifting through a lot of rock and dirt looking for the real gems. There aren't many.

Decisions on What Goes into the Magazine

2010-01-29T08:04:00.000-08:00

The new issue of Epiphany looms before the editors (four of us) along with expanding digital slush pile of about five submission a day, which is a lot for a small magazine. How does one decide what is worthy of publishing? As an editor the pieces I love the most are the ones that all editors agree upon that materialize from the slush pile and make the writer in me a wee bit jealous. A sense of editorial harmony is valuable at a small literary magazine because it reinforces one's sense that they are making the right decisions. Disagreement leads to doubt, but doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It is never easy holding out for a story others don't like. I was rereading Charles Baxter's Gryphon recently and that is a story that moved me deeply. I reread Salinger's Just Before the War with the Eskimos last night and that too moved me. Those stories are my standard as an editor because I can reread them with awe. In a perfect world one would read story after story until they came upon those stories the felt they had to -- just had to--tell the world about, but so many people are at me with suggestions that I sometimes scarcely trust my ability to read pure. It's like getting the preview of something by somebody else before you see it or read it. In truth, you either like it or you don't and to base your decisions on that first inclination is a risk and a prayer. Mistakes will always be made, but how to minimize them is the rub.

Reading at The Bowery Poetry Club

2009-04-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

Mark O'Donnell, Jeffrey Gustavson and Willard Cook
photo by Immy Humes

The reading at the end of March at The Bowery Poetry Club to celebrate our new issue Naked Psyches gave new life Epiphany -- over 100 people came, we sold out nearly two boxes of magazines, and had an ensemble of wonderful readers from the last three issues. In a packed house our poetry editor, Jeffrey Gustavson, gracefully introduced a variety of writers and poets who all seemed to shine reading in the Bowery venue. Each reader was full-throated, present and entertaining. There was nice interplay among the three genres and no one reader droned on.

Derek Walcott Reading

2008-01-24T10:22:00.001-08:00

In early November, Epiphany had a reading at the Greenwich Village Music School featuring Derek Walcott to celebrate its 2008 Winter/Spring issue. After reading a number of his poems, Walcott generously threw the evening open to all the other poets in attendance. Jeffrey Gustavson, the poetry editor, and a former student of Walcott's, held forth about Walcott's assiduous teachings and then invited many of the issue's featured poets to read. Edwin Frank, the editor of New York Review Books read. Michael Ruby read one of his poems, and both he and Edwin have reached true celebrity status for their appearance in Immy Humes' film "DOC," which premiered January 24th at Film Forum. New Yorker editor, Ann Goldstein read a few pages of her translation of Elena Ferrante's new novel, The Lost Daughter. Ferrante was recently on the New York Times Op Ed Page. Elizabeth Macklin read from her poems and, as recently received the good news that her poem "Despite the Temptation" is to be included in an anthology of Women's Poetry from Seren Press. Christopher Cahill and Dennis Nurkse also read, and Gus read the opening section of George Franklin's "Breakthrough," since George had forgotten his reading glasses.

Please come to our next reading and reception on February 1st at Elisabeth Irwin High at 7 pm 40 Charlton Street NYC.