Interview with Quinn White

The following is an interview with Quinn White.  Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from journals such as Bayou Magazine, Word Riot, Weave Magazine, and Sixth Finch. Her chapbook, My Moustache, is due from Dancing Girl Press in March 2013. Sometimes she wants to dig holes.

1. Who’s the first person who encouraged you to be a writer?

My grandmother caught me singing while I was playing in the bathroom sink with mermaid ponies. She told me that my songs were quite good and suggested I write them down.  

2. What is your biggest pet peeve?

Pet peeves. For example, people say they hate “mouth-breathers.” Ridiculous. I have asthma. My nose doesn’t provide me with enough oxygen to remain conscious at all times.

3. What’s your most effective tactic for falling asleep?

Cold to warm bed. Warm to cold lights.

4. What book has given you nightmares, or otherwise appeared to you in dreams?

   The Shining. I was taking a Kubrick and Cronenberg class and King’s book was required reading. I couldn’t finish it. In fact, if I’m about to cry, one of my strategies for keeping a straight face is to imagine that woman in the bathtub. 

5. What book(s) are you reading right now?

   Essays by Emerson. Robert Hass’ What Light Can Do. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR by Michael Robbins. Woolf’s The Waves (in spurts). Williams’ play, Night of the Iguana.    

6. What is the worst film adaptation of a great book that you have ever seen?

I heard the 70′s adaptation of The Great Gatsby was awful so I didn’t watch it. A friend wears a t-shirt that reads: “Movies: Ruining Books since 1910.” I think I have that date wrong. I love lots of movies adapted from films, by the way.

7. Have you ever been to a town hall meeting?

No. When I was little, however, I formed a teddy bear government. They attempted democracy.

 8. Have you ever been to a freak show?

No. Freaks, directed by Todd Browning, is a great film, though.

9. Who’s your favorite author (or book) that no one’s ever heard of?

James Herriot.

10. Who’s your favorite author that everyone’s heard of?

Charles Schulz.

11. Do you avoid high school and college reunions or do you embrace them?

I avoid gatherings of more than three people.

12. What’s your favorite single syllable word?

I love this question because it caused me to realize I am unable to separate the word from the thing it describes. I came up with “paw” and “kiss” but I don’t know if they count because what I love about them are their physical counterparts.

13. If you could make up a word, what would it be? Definitions permitted.

Mank. verb. from the French Manqué. 1.) to long for your significant other.

14. What existing word would you prefer had a different definition? State word and redefine.

Pronoun: the quality of favoring nouns over verbs.

15. What question would you like to ask of me?

 Why are people who need people the luckiest people in the world? 

Glossolalia: March 29-31

This special Wednesday post is to remind you that it’s time for the Glossolalia Lit Fest @ Virginia Tech!  Glossolalia kicks off Thurs, Mar. 29, with an open mic @ She-Sha’s Café, 9 p.m. Then, Joseph Salvatore reads Friday March 30, and Andrea Cohen reads Saturday March 31, along with 16 selected graduate and undergraduate writers @ Torgerson 3100, 7 – 9:30 p.m. both nights.  If you’re in or near Blacksburg, Virginia, please join us!

For more information (including a detailed schedule of events), click on the Lit Fest tab at the top of our blog.

A Rejectionist’s Guide to Literary Failure: Mid-American Review

While most rejection experts protect their secrets with lasers that you can only see with blown baby powder and others charge astronomical fees for underwhelming advice for how to compile a set of rejection letters, I’m willing to share my wisdom for free right here. The formula is simple: only submit to journals that are too good for you. I’ve seen aspiring rejectionists accidentally write something good and get published. That’s just Busch League. Others get arrogant and submit to Jimmy’s Poetrie and Chiken Magizine, thinking they’ve got the kind of game that it takes to pick up a high level rejection letter. Idiotic Icaruses, all of them. Don’t get ahead of yourself.  Keep the prose paltry, the plots contrived, and the characters stock. And for goodness sakes, send that stuff to top shelf mags.

Here’s a personal example. I recently submitted yet another mediocre story to yet another excellent journal. This time the story was about a guy shopping at Walmart and the journal was Mid-American Review. Let’s break down why that was so smart.

MAR is housed at Bowling Green State University and offers their MFA students editorial experience. BGSU’s creative writing program, as you know, has a strong tradition, one that’s played a role in the carriers of Marc Sumerak, Jean Thompson, Scott Cairns, and Tony Ardizzone.

Since 2000, MAR has been edited by Michael Czyzniejewski, an estimable rejectionist in his own right: he first published a story (on accident, let’s hope) after having been heismaned no fewer than 192 times. Respect. MAR and Czyzniejewski, now retired from professional rejectioning, offer writers a few annual contests, which are always great opportunities to log those coveted literal literary losses. I knew MAR was right for me when I saw that they’ve published two of my favorite writers, Michael Martone and David Foster Wallace (in the same issue, no less: Volume XVIII, No. 2). Odds are it’s published a lot of people you like, too, especially if you’re into people like Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, and Virginia Tech’s own Bob Hicok. These are luminaries, folks. These are the kinds of names, and this is the kind of work, that you have to surround yourself with if you’re truly committed to rejection.

So consider subscribing and submitting to Mid-American Review. It’s a great rejection to add to any writer’s portfolio of fail.

I wish you way more than suck.

A Short History of The Minnesota Review

Written by Jerry Liles, Minnesota Review Fiction Editor

What some people may not know about The Minnesota Review is that it isn’t located in Minnesota.  In fact, it hasn’t been there for about forty years.  TMR was founded in 1960 and was located in Minnesota for about 10 years before moving to New York City.  It was here that it developed its Marxist identity.  It didn’t stay long in New York before leaving for Indiana University (for almost ten years), then Oregon State University, then SUNY-Stony Brook (back in New York), then to East Carolina University, then the University of Missouri (we’re almost there now), then to Carnegie Mellon University, and finally now in its new home, nestled in the New River Valley within little town of Blacksburg, and located within Virginia Tech.

What a long strange trip it’s been for The Minnesota Review.  It’s come from the Midwest, to the east coast, back to the Midwest, then to the west coast and back to the east coast again.  What’s intriguing to me is that it has never attempted return back to its birthplace, its old stomping grounds.  Maybe it hates its parents.  Or maybe it doesn’t have any parents—maybe The Minnesota Review is an orphan.

It seems that The Minnesota Review just needed time to find itself.  It began with a focus on avant-garde and experimental fiction, which was good enough in Minnesota, but then it got into the whole Marxist thing.    It’s probably no coincidence that it developed this particular political affiliation as it moved from Minnesota to the Big Apple.  But like many tastes we develop in our adolescent years, TMR seemed to outgrow it.

Maybe TMR just can’t stand Minnesota sports.  Sure, the Twin Cities have four pro sports teams and Virginia has none, but I think we can agree that the overall sports scene in Minnesota is pretty bleak.  The Vikings can never win the big one, the Twins always lose to the Yankees, and the Timberwolves are barely an NBA franchise.  Then there’s the Wild, but that’s hockey.  And hockey doesn’t count.

Sports are great, but of course many literary sophisticates like the ones that submit to TMR probably don’t follow sports, and of course, how are we to know how the magazine itself feels about the Vikings or the Twins.  Sports only reach so far, but something like the weather affects everyone, including The Minnesota Review.  Sure, it gets plenty cold (and windy) in Blacksburg, but I’m sure it’s nothing like a Minnesota winter.  That kind of weather just isn’t conducive to a good atmosphere.  How are you supposed to focus on stories and poems when you have to worry about digging your car out of the snow and scraping ice off of your windows?

No matter how it got here, we’re glad to welcome The Minnesota Review from the state of Minnesota (and New York, and Oregon, and so on) and into the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Hopefully the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains and the New River can tame your wanderlust, and you’ll be with us for years to come.