Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 42
August 24, 2018
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Gail Tyson
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Gail Tyson’s story is set in Wales.
Gail Tyson’s writing appears in such journals as The Antigonish Review, Appalachian Heritage, The Lampeter Review, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. An alumna of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program, she has attended juried workshops at Collegeville Institute, Looking Glass Mountain Writers Conference, and Rivendell Writers Colony.
[image error]Comment on “Sleep is my Tunnel”: A writing prompt at Big Pit, a working coal mine from 1880 to 1980 in Blaenavon, South Wales, inspired this story. Big Pit is now a national coal museum, and our writing group at the Dylan Thomas Summer School donned hard hats and toured the mine in June 2017 to learn more about this once-thriving Welsh industry. Sally Shivnan—a Press 53 author—asked us to imagine ourselves as a miner or a miner’s wife. This story is the result.
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Lana Spendl
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Lana Spendl’s story is set in Croatia.
Lana Spendl’s chapbook, We Cradled Each Other in the Air, is available from Blue Lyra Press. Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Hobart, The Greensboro Review, Notre Dame Review, Lunch Ticket, Cider Press Review, Front Porch, Hawaii Pacific Review, Watershed Review, Bayou Magazine, Zone 3, and other magazines.
[image error]Comment on “On the Dalmatian Coast”: I am from the Balkans and am working on a collection of stories that take place in the area. This story will be a part of that collection. Having been a refugee of the Bosnian war and having moved around a great deal through my childhood, I am particularly interested in the way people adapt themselves to others and to new spaces. The protagonist of “On the Dalmatian Coast” is someone who is eager to please and who distrusts herself, and this is a theme I enjoy playing with, since much of my adolescence was occupied by this state. I often had to adapt myself to other cultures, languages, and groups, and I seldom saw myself as an authority.
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Deonna Kelli Sayed
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order from the publisher. Like the earlier volumes, this one includes 20 stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Deonna Keli Sayed’s story takes place in Azerbaijan.
Deonna Kelli Sayed is a writer, storyteller, ghost hunter, and interfaith instigator. Her work is included in Love, Insh’allah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women and Faithfully Feminists: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay. Deonna is currently writing a memoir about love, faith, and ghosts.
[image error]Comment on “The Treasury of Mysteries”: I spent a year in Azerbaijan during the early 2000s.So many histories and narratives collided in this little country bordering Iran. I once took a trip north to the Caucasus Mountains where the air vibrated with an energy I’d never felt before. I wanted to capture some of that magic in the story, as well as the complexities of a Central Asian country coming out of Soviet rule. Incidentally, the story title is from a poem by the 12th Century Azeri poet, Nizami.
August 22, 2018
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Anne Sanow
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Anne Sanow’s story is set in Saudi Arabia.
Anne Sanow is the author of the story collection Triple Time. She is currently completing a novel set partly in Berlin’s WWII film industry, and writing more short fiction set in various parts of the world.
[image error]Comment on “Pioneer”: A ten-year-old American boy in the oft-mystified country of Saudi Arabia offered me the chance to explore this world from his perspective—to see it through his eyes, learn what he would notice that the adults do not. What he finds there is new and exhilarating. When an accident reveals truths about cultural realities and expat attitudes, Chris finds himself coping with dangers he cannot easily define. Working with a child as the focal point permitted a freedom from the judgment and prejudice we see in the older characters, though its reflection is another kind of unsettling.
August 21, 2018
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Arthur Powers
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Arthur Powers’s story is set in Mozambique.
Arthur Powers went to Brazil in 1969 as a Peace Corps Volunteer and lived most his adult life there. From 1985 to 1992, he and his wife worked for the Catholic Church in the Amazon, organizing subsistence farmers in a region of violent land conflicts. Arthur received a Fellowship in Fiction from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the 2012 Tuscany Novella Prize, & numerous other writing honors. He was judge (2014-16) of Winning Writers’ Tom Howard short story contest). His collection of short stories set in Brazil, A Hero for the People (Press 53, 2013), received the 2014 Catholic Arts & Letters Award.
[image error]Comment on “Mozambique”: The seeds of “Mozambique” were two encounters my wife and I had in 2009, when we were carrying out a work assignment in Maputo. Mozambique is a wonderful country, and I admire the efforts the people there have made to heal peacefully the vicious scars of a long civil war.
August 20, 2018
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Debora C. Martin
Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Debora C. Martin’s story is set in Cape Verde.
Debora C. Martin retired to Maine after a career in public policy in Washington D.C. Traveling and exploring other cultures has been a regular part of her life since voyaging around the world, via Asia and Africa, as a student on World Campus Afloat. She writes short fiction and creative nonfiction. Her stories have been published by Parentheses Journal and Storgy.
[image error]Comment on “Tranquilidade”: For me, most traveling involves an exploration of new norms, as well as an examination of my own values, assumptions, and relationships. “Tranquilidade” is inspired by a road trip I made in Cape Verde.
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Frank Light
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Frank Light’s story takes place in Myanmar.
In recent years a number of Frank Light’s poems have been published, and his nonfiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, most of it adapted from an unpublished memoir titled Adjust to Dust: On The Backroads of Southern Afghanistan.
[image error]Comment on “Convergence of the Strand”: I jotted down the initial draft soon after the event, the summer of 1971. I saw it as a poem, more nonfiction than creative. It remained in a file cabinet for decades until I recently rediscovered, resurrected, and reconceived it under the liberating principle that if I designated it fiction, I didn’t have to adhere to facts no longer recalled with any certainty. The redo has been fun, especially since I believe the product remains faithful to the still-memorable energy and vectors of that long-ago convergence in the Strand.
August 19, 2018
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Barbara Krasner
Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Barbara Krasner’s story is set in the Czech Republic.
[image error]Barbara Krasner is a PhD candidate in Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Gratz College and holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her fiction has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Jewishfiction.net, Lilith, Jewish Literary Journal, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and other publications. Her short story, “The Guardian,” based in Poland, appeared in Everywhere Stories, Volume II. She teaches the Holocaust, professional and creative writing, and composition in New Jersey.
Comment on “The Last Survivor”: “The Last Survivor” was prompted by interviewing a survivor in a Jewish Studies class during my 2011 Prague Summer Program.
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Robert Kostuck
Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Robert Kostuck’s story is set in Uruguay.
Robert Kostuck is an M.Ed. graduate from Northern Arizona University. Recently published fiction, essays, and reviews appear in many print journals and anthologies. He is currently working on two novels, short stories, and essays; his short story and essay collections seek a publisher.
[image error]Comment on “Leda and the Swan”: Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini was born on 24 October 1886 and killed by her ex-husband Enrique Job Reyes in a murder/suicide on 6 July 1914. She was 27 years old. This story, in a series of vignettes, imagines Delmira’s life from July 1913 to July 1914.
August 18, 2018
Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Mark Jacobs
[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Mark Jacobs’s story is set in Côte d’Ivoire.
A former U.S. foreign service officer, Mark Jacobs has published 129 stories in magazines including The Atlantic, Playboy, The Baffler, The Kenyon Review, and The Southern Review. His story “How Birds Communicate” won The Iowa Review fiction prize. He has stories forthcoming in several magazines including The Hudson Review. His story “Dream State” won the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Kafka Prize. His five books include A Handful of Kings, published by Simon and Shuster, and Stone Cowboy, by Soho Press, which won the Maria Thomas Award. His website can be found at http://www.markjacobsauthor.com.
[image error]Comment on “Getting Out”: During several visits to Africa, I ran into Lebanese who were living and working in countries that were and were not their own. In some cases, they were born in Africa, like the principal characters in “Getting Out,” who were born in Côte d’Ivoire. But they retained their Arabic, their French, even if they learned indigenous languages. And they retained their cultural identity as Lebanese. It struck me as a condition of permanent exile. Their experience was quite different from that of my father’s family, who emigrated to the United States in the early years of the twentieth century. In the course of a generation, the Jacobs family lost most of their Arabic at a rate roughly commensurate with their adoption of a new identity as Americans. But the line that reverberates in the memory of Anton Khoury— “The Lebanese are Phoenicians, the Lebanese are traders”—reverberates in mine, too. In Anton’s case, it belonged to his grandfather. In my case, it was something my father, Tom Jacobs, used to say.
