Adventures on the Indie Bookstore Route, Pt. 3

by Madeline Dell'Aria

It's summertime and like any true book lover knows, it's time to kick up your feet, soak up the sun, and relax with a good book. Whether you're picking up the latest book of the season or a classic from the canon, we're here to show your the best places throughout the D.M.V. for scoring fresh reads—our fantastic indie book shops, of course!

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IDLE TIME BOOKS

Adam’s Morgan, Washington, DC

Along a street of hookah bars, dives, head shops, tattoo parlors, and boutique restaurants, Idle Time Books seems an incongruous addition, yet it resides harmoniously. Just three doors down from the prominent hot spot Madam’s Organ, Idle Time Books quenches the community’s literary thirst.

Outside the bookstore, the sidewalk is littered with carts full of one dollar books, discounted due to overstock or light wear. Visitors are first greeted by unique event cards (Hallmark doesn’t stock these) and stacks of vintage magazines spanning several decades. Beyond, the meticulously organized collection of used books rise not just one, but two and a half stories tall. Fiction occupies a large swath of the first floor, but there is so much more tucked away in this unassuming store. A glass case of first editions sits by the stairs: The Hobbit for the fantasy collector, The Fountainhead for the libertarian, an antique copy of the now out-of-print music magazine Creem with rock and roll supernova David Bowie emblazoned on the cover.

The well- kept landing carries biographies and other non-fiction. And upwards, on the second floor, section after section of non-fiction is featured; women’s studies, queer studies, racial studies, and the sciences, whittled down to subsections of biology, technology, chemistry and the like, military and foreign history divided by country. And then there is the fiction: sci-fi, fantasy, and vintage pulp books wrapped in cellophane like candy.

The most appealing aspect of Idle Time Books is that it invites its guests to linger. Folk music plays softly from the speakers. Hand-written signs like “YES WE CAN! Put Books Back Where We Found Them” and other vintage posters are cozily appropriate for a bookstore nestled amongst the politically savvy, witty populations of northwest DC. As the name suggests, visitors will want to have ample time to visit Idle Time Books and let their minds and attentions wander. 

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Madeline Dell’Aria, a Northern Virginia native, recently graduated from George Mason University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Growing up she wanted to become a tree, a witch, or an explorer; so she became a writer.

From Still to Shelf, Pt. 2: A Relational Approach to Editing

By Justin Lafreniere

What an editor should do is often the subject of debate and disagreement. It is a role that changes based on era, economics, the size of the press, or the individual personality of the author or the editor. Editing requires teamwork and cooperation, but what makes an editor talented, successful, or effective for an author? There isn’t a single right way to be an editor, but developing an editorial identity takes time and opportunity, both of which we strive to provide at Stillhouse Press.

Once the author has signed his or her contract, our Editor-in-Chief selects an editorial team for the book, choosing experienced staff who would best fit the project. Each team is made up of two or three Editorial Assistants and a Managing Editor.  Usually, Managing Editors are in their second or third year of the MFA program and have worked as Editorial Assistants on other books.  It is not uncommon for staff members to speak up for projects they are interested in developing when they encounter them as readers.  As a teaching press, we encourage staff members to work on projects that excite them and have found that the editor/author relationship progresses smoothest when both parties are passionate about the project.  

Managing Editors and Editorial Assistants meet to discuss future projects. 

The Editorial Assistants (usually MFA or BFA candidates) assist the Managing Editor in performing two or three editorial passes on each manuscript.  The first is for developmental improvements and to alleviate points of confusion, the second for organization and structure, and the third for line-level concerns.  This process varies from editor to editor as manuscripts come to us at various levels of publication readiness, and some require more work than others.  All of these comments are sent to the Managing Editor, who filters through them, adds remarks, and passes the suggestions along to the author.

At Stillhouse Press, we believe that a successful editorial relationship hinges on two things: editorial identity and respect for the author and his or her project. An editor must come to a book not as a writer, but as a collaborator with the author.  Every writer is an editor in some capacity, but becoming a Managing Editor means abandoning personal stylistic quips and writing biases and embracing the author’s voice and project.  MFA students, who are still smack-dab in the middle of their program and their most intensive workshop experience, have the added challenge of recognizing the influence of the pervasive workshop mentality. When editing in workshops, writers provide feedback and give authors suggestions for revision, but these suggestions are given in a theoretical mode.

Editing in a publishing house does not  have that nicety. Sometimes things must be done. But other times, things that an author composes must be left to stand on their own. People wearing that double-hat of MFA student and editor must be aware of which is dominant when they discuss their editorial projects. Workshops are prescriptive. It’s the subtext to the name: a manuscript is only brought to a workshop if it needs fixing. Editorial relationships are not like that. So much more must be going right for it to come into an editor’s hands. Even if it isn’t a book that an editor finds exciting, he or she must be able to look at it from the perspective of the imagined reader, not from the standpoint of a fellow writer or even as a craft-oriented MFA student. Editorial relationships that are the strongest are built on a positive notion: “This is already good.”

Respecting the author and the project may seem like a no-brainer, but this fundamental component of the editor/author relationship has the most far-reaching consequences of all.  One of the most difficult things as an editor is knowing when and how to suggest large changes to a manuscript: the presence of a character, the deletion or rearrangement of scenes, or large-scale structural or organizational changes.  This is where respecting the project comes into play.  Our memoir POP! was experimental, and in any experimental work, there are going to be conversations on structure. But that book knew what it wanted to be from the outset; it was just a matter of making sure each chapter or section lined up with that vision.  When we discussed our first round of comments with Mark Polanzak, we learned that acquisition editors from other houses had resisted the book’s hybrid identity, which is what we loved most about it.  At Stillhouse, we have many conversations with our authors to discover their vision for their work before we even begin the editorial process to get a sense of the project from the author’s perspective.  We strive to present the best versions of their stories, to help them become the best books they can be, and the only way to do that is with respect for authorial vision.

There is no right way to edit, but there are certainly wrong ways.  Stillhouse strives to build a constructive relationship with our authors and their projects, one where the author is always free to reject or resist our suggestions.  Our team structure allows for multiple voices and points of view on what’s working or not working in a manuscript, which ultimately means a more thorough reader’s perspective.  Our Managing Editors distill that information and keep an open dialogue with authors from first read to final draft. We’ve found in many instances that authors and editors continue to stay in touch even after the journey has finished and the book is in print. There's no better indicator of a successful working relationship than that. 

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Justin Lafreniere is the Prose Editor at Stillhouse Press and worked as the Assistant Managing Editor for POP! (Mark Polanzak, March 2016) and the Managing Editor for Maybe Mermaids & Robots are Lonely: Stories (Matthew Fogarty, September 2016).  He graduated with an MFA in fiction from George Mason University in 2016, where he also served as the Fiction Editor for So to Speak, GMU's feminist literary journal.  His work has appeared in Charlotte Viewpoint, The Western Online, and Frostwriting.

Adventures on the Indie Bookstore Route, Pt. 2

by Madeline Dell'Aria

It's summertime and like any true book lover knows, it's time to kick up your feet, soak up the sun, and relax with a good book. Whether you're picking up the latest book of the season or a classic from the canon, we're here to show your the best places throughout the D.M.V. for scoring fresh reads—our fantastic indie book shops, of course!

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ONE MORE PAGE

Arlington, VA

Tucked away beneath sprawling condos near the East Falls Church Metro, One More Page Books is a relatively new addition to its lovely Arlington neighborhood and is quickly becoming a community hub for authors, bibliophiles, and pleasure readers alike.

Inspired by her time working on a book truck during her college days, former consultant Eileen McGervey quit her job and founded One More Page Books on Jan. 21, 2011. The bookstore exhibits McGervey's love of mystery and fiction, but also harbors a small wonderland of children’s books, and most intriguingly, wine, beer, and locally-crafted chocolates—such natural complements to a good book, that it’s a crime other bookstores don’t do the same.

Buying inventory for a small store can be tricky. Staffer Lelia Nebeker calls it a negotiation between what the staff loves and what the community wants. Gauging a community's preferences takes time. Over the years they have found that political books are in surprisingly low demand for a shop only six Metro stops west of DC. What does sell well, beyond their ample mystery and fiction collection, is humor, followed by biography and historical books. One More Page Books often stocks recognizable names, but not exactly the best-seller list. However, if a customer wants a book they don’t carry, they can order it and have it available within 24 hours.

Instead of a contemporary Staff Favorites section, the staff write their suggestions on heart-shaped sticky notes and attach them to the cover of their favorite books. This practice is more organic for the staff, as they’re encouraged to add a note whenever the store stocks a book they love. Even the wine and chocolates are peppered with these bright little papers. Behind the cash register, a cabinet is so plastered with Post-its from books they’ve sold that the wood underneath is masked entirely.

One More Page Books also encourages customers to return by hosting an extensive series of community events, such as wine tastings, author readings, and even karaoke. Five events are forthcoming in July alone: the first, a reading from author David Krugler on July 9th.

With a selection of complimentary food and drinks, a colorful, laissez-faire approach to staff suggestions, a host of quirky and entertaining events, and a visit from President Obama to boot, One More Page may be a young bookstore, but it has quickly established itself as a venerable hub in the metropolitan area.

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Madeline Dell’Aria, a Northern Virginia native, recently graduated from George Mason University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Growing up she wanted to become a tree, a witch, or an explorer; so she became a writer.

From Still to Shelf: Reading Like an Artist

By Benjamin A. Rader

Reading slush is a difficult job: most of our readers are writers themselves, so evaluating manuscripts for publication often involves quieting the aesthetic we apply to our own work and letting the new manuscript tell us how to read it.

"One part restraint, one part literary potential, and two parts education, the manuscript selection process at Stillhouse aims to find that wholly new, original piece of art, while pushing readers to revise their ideas about how art works."

Whether they work for Media or Editorial, every staff member at Stillhouse begins as a reader. Readers assess manuscripts from a craft perspective, yet also aim to somehow quantify the emotional experience of reading the book.  Striving to maintain a reading staff with a diverse range of creative backgrounds and editorial styles is essential. A collection of diverse voices and selective eyes is part of what makes the selection process nuanced and thorough.   

Our selection process begins with the Submittable portal. Once a writer submits his or her manuscript, the Submissions Editor assigns it for first reads. First readers perform a close reading of each work to evaluate its voice, story, structure and—most importantly—literary potential. Readers are required to read at least the first 30 pages or three chapters of a manuscript before rejecting it, though they may not recommend any manuscript for publication without reading it completely. Each reader must use the  Reader Response Sheet to record the page at which they stopped reading and an explanation, rank the manuscript on a scale of 0 to 10, and indicate whether or not they think the book has publication potential, using examples of the text to support their decision. Readers also provide notes about the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript to aid their justifications.

Stillhouse Staff (left to right): Madeline Dell'Aria, Kate Lewis, Hannah Campeanu, Katie Ray.

Occasionally, we find a manuscript with a voice and concept readers love, but that needs significant developmental editing. Because Stillhouse is a small operation, we work with writers to develop their manuscript over the span of (at least) one year before publication, and occasionally longer than that. In first reads, readers are tasked not only with evaluating the manuscript for what it is, but also imagining what the book could be. They are asked to imagine what the work will look like in one year, its potential for evolution.

If the majority of readers assigned to a manuscript think it should be published or if the manuscript is designated as a “maybe” (a consistent score of 5 or 6), it’s sent to another group of readers for second reads. Second readers have often worked for Stillhouse for several semesters, proving their ability to critically analyze work at the sentence and developmental level. The process for second reads is the same, albeit more stringent; second readers almost never use the “maybe” designation. If a second reader recommends the manuscript, it moves on to the prose or poetry editors. Three different categories of readers must agree on the work before Stillhouse's head editor, Marcos L. Martínez sees it. 

The measured selection process, in addition to providing a pool from which to draw books, serves another crucial function: education and artistic maturation, the Stillhouse ethos. Every time a reader disagrees with another reader, they are growing and evolving their own literary voice and their craft.  Since readers inherently understand the importance of artistic development, they actively work to push against their own aesthetic. By pushing and pulling, with each manuscript they argue for or against, readers hone their editorial eye and further develop Stillhouse's collaborative aesthetic. One part restraint, one part literary potential, and two parts education, the manuscript selection process at Stillhouse aims to find that wholly new, original piece of art, while pushing readers to revise their ideas about how art works.

It is difficult to quantify the type of work we look for, though perhaps one of our greatest strengths is that we aim to offer writers a safe place for work that other publishers challenge; those works that are impossible to sell to the big publishing houses because they “aren’t marketable” or easily categorized.

Can't place it in a genre, or fit it in a box? Yeah, we love that.

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Benjamin A. Rader is the Submissions Editor at Stillhouse Press and an MFA candidate in the fiction program at George Mason. A year prior, he was awarded a teaching fellowship for his short fiction and poetry at Seton Hall University. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Northern Virginia Review, The I-70 Review, filling Station, The Tulip Tree Review, and others.    

Adventures on the Indie Bookstore Route, Pt. 1

by Madeline Dell'Aria

It's summertime and like any true book lover knows, it's time to kick up your feet, soak up the sun, and relax with a good book. Whether you're picking up the latest book of the season or a classic from the canon, we're here to show your the best places throughout the D.M.V. for scoring fresh reads—our fantastic indie book shops, of course!

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Source: http://holeintheweb.com/

HOLE IN THE WALL BOOKS

Falls Church, VA

Hole in the Wall Books is located right in the middle of placid Falls Church, VA at 904 W Broad St. The quaint bookstore’s azure door is a gateway to a different time: specializing primarily in science-fiction, fantasy, and comics, books at Hole in the Wall are stacked, squeezed, and pigeon-holed in overlapping arrangement. This overabundance of fiction, the must of buried tomes thick in the air, harkens back to literature’s tactile, page-flipping, pre-Kindle origins. While its name implies a tightly packed space, this bounty of books is hardly stifling, creating instead an entrance to infinite worlds and spaces ripe for exploration.

The concatenation of literary sources is curated by the knowledgeable and affable founders, Michael and Edie Nally. In 1979, Michael began running a small book section of what was then Record and Tape Exchange. This store would later move, but Michael’s "Hole in the Wall" would remain, eventually occupying the entire space of the original store.

Besides the collection, which has certainly expanded over the years, little has changed since 1979; there is no computer system, reference books are used instead of Google, and cell phones are seldom spotted. The only exception to the owners’ pursuit of antiquity is the store’s website, and (naturally) their up-to-date collection of comics and a miscellany of geek genres. Particularly strong are the science fiction and fantasy collections, which reflect the taste of the founders. This bookstore is largely operated on a buy-sell-trade basis, and the collection similarly reflects the diversity of the Washington metropolitan area.

The store is accessible via MetroBus on Broad Street and has a surprisingly large parking lot, given the diminutive size of the store. For those avid genre-fiction readers seeking escape in fantasy, adventure, or just a bygone era, there may be no better locale than Hole in the Wall Books.

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Madeline Dell’Aria, a Northern Virginia native, recently graduated from George Mason University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Growing up she wanted to become a tree, a witch, or an explorer; so she became a writer.

Pop Culture and Poetry: A Conversation with Sass Brown

This week on Moonshine Murmurs, we interview Alexandria, VA-based poet, Sass Brown. A D.C. native and a former George Mason University professor, Brown is avidly involved in the local literary community and the author of USA-1000, a book of poetry that won the 2014 Crab Orchard Series Poetry Award. Now she is currently at work on her next manuscript, but she took some time to talk with us about USA-1000 and her experiences as a poet in the nation’s capitol.

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In your interview with Southern Illinois University Press (SIUP), you talked about the challenge of submitting USA-1000 to contests for seventeen years before it was accepted for publication. How did you approach the submission process, and do you have any advice for other writers?

USA-1000 (Southern University Illinois Press, 2014)

Sass Brown: I sent USA-1000 everywhere in the beginning. Eventually, I realized that some places consistently chose my manuscript as a finalist, while others never responded with a positive note. It sounds obvious now, but the best strategy is to keep sending to the presses that like your work and publish writing like yours. In order to do that, you have to be familiar with their aesthetics, which requires a lot of homework.

A few other things I learned from the submission process: if a press' website doesn't look professional, the press may not be professional either. I learned this the hard way, when my book was accepted twice for publication prior to SIUP, but the editors didn't follow through. And if you're getting good feedback, don't be afraid to keep sending the same manuscript to the same competitions. I was worried that my book would get stale, but the final judge is different every year. Ironically, after all those years of submitting my manuscript everywhere, my book won another publication competition just three weeks after it was accepted by SIUP! Sometimes it just takes tenacity and a little bit of luck.

How did USA-1000 evolve over the years from when you first started submitting it to contests to when it was published?

SB: I probably removed and replaced about a dozen poems in the manuscript, but the rest remained essentially the same. The main difference is in the order; instead of grouping poems chronologically or strictly by theme, eventually I ordered the manuscript instinctually. I looked at the last line of each poem and let it guide me to the first line of the next. I also put what I considered to be some of my strongest poems first.

I was surprised by how much I learned from the editing process once the manuscript had been accepted. I reworked passages in a few poems, but mainly I tightened the language. Having to read it over so many times, I noticed connections between poems that either were unconscious or I had forgotten. The editing process taught me so much about what I was trying to say.

MM: You’ve discussed the themes of USA-1000, which included consumerism, longing for connection, and the difference between image and reality, in previous interviews. Do you feel that you've said all you have to say about those subjects, or are you still coming back to them in your poetry today?

SB: I'm not as focused on the longing for connection anymore, now that I'm married... or rather, many of the new poems are about negotiating the intimacy of marriage. I don't think I ever will have completely exhausted the themes in USA-1000; I have to keep writing about my obsessions because passion makes for heartfelt poetry.

But the way I approach the subject matter today is different. My new manuscript is darker. I have been struggling with chronic illness for the past five years, and it has changed the direction of my writing.  Now I am researching and writing about my experience, as well as medical oddities, experimental medicine, perfectionism, and the strange otherness of the body— especially the aging, decaying, or sick body—and the risky things we do to keep it well and beautiful.

My favorite poems are those with a complicated tone, one that shuttles back and forth between humor and tragedy. One of my friends said that the experience of reading my poems is like having been slipped a mickey; they appear harmless and amusing on the surface, but by the end, they are deeply unsettling.

You've worked as a professor of creative writing and composition at several universities, including George Mason. How has your experience teaching affected your writing, and vice versa?

SB: From my days as a counselor at UVA's Young Writers' Workshop, teaching reminded me to pay close attention to detail, to see how poems ticked on a micro level. Often, I brought in other artistic mediums (film, visual art, music, and advertising) as prompts, since I draw much of my inspiration from popular culture. I really miss teaching because it allowed me to share my favorite writing. Unfortunately, I found that I spent so much time commenting on student work that I neglected my own. It can be difficult to silence my internal teacher, editor, and proofreader when writing a first draft, but it's absolutely necessary.

Are you currently writing full time, or do you have a separate job as well?

SB: I work at the Arts Club of Washington as their award administrator of the Marfield Prize, the national award for nonfiction arts writing. It's the ideal job for a writer—part-time, so there's plenty of time to work on my next book, and a great opportunity to interact with artists in different genres. What could be better than reading books and promoting the arts for a living? We just announced this year's winner, Michael Riedel, for his book Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway. I’ve been planning his upcoming visit to D.C., including a school visit and an interview with Washington Post drama critic Peter Marks on May 18.

You’ve spent a lot of your life living and working in and around D.C. When people not from the around here think of D.C., they probably don’t think of a thriving literary community. What has your experience working and writing in the D.C. area been like?

SB: I moved back to the D.C. area after receiving my MFA from Indiana University. I worked as a Visiting Writer-in-Residence at what was then Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, VA for one semester, and then I moved back to my hometown of Alexandria.

Growing up I had a misconception that the D.C. area was a cultural wasteland, but I was completely wrong. This is a great place to be a writer; the only drawback is that our area is so spread out that some events require a car. Some of my favorite places to hear readings are the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Library of Congress. Split This Rock just hosted an incredible line-up of speakers at their biannual festival devoted to social justice poetry. And with all of the universities in the area, you can attend a different writing event every night of the week.

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Sass Brown will give a reading at Atomic Books in Baltimore, MD on May 12th at 7 p.m. She will also read at the Beatley Central Library in Alexandria on May 25th at 7 p.m. More information can be found on her website, http://www.sassbrown.com.

The New Leaves Writers’ Conference: An Outsider’s Perspective

by Hailey Scherer

There are few things more enchanting than watching an author read his or her work aloud. They give voice to their narrator—something which Stillhouse Editor-in-Chief, Marcos L. Martínez defines as style, syntax, cadence, and tone, "but more like pheromones; something you know only when you feel it." The author fleshes out their work, their narrator's voice, with their own, making it sink into your bones. To hear the phrases fit the voices, to see the facial expressions, the unconscious body movements, is to experience their work on another level.

Mark Polanzak, reading from his debut hybrid memoir, POP! (Stillhouse Press, 2016).

As a visiting intern at Stillhouse Press and a high school senior with little experience in the professional writing world, I felt excited but largely unsure of what to expect from a "writers' conference." Would the discussions be stiff and formal? Would I feel excluded or in the way? Would I get to meet an actual author, those superhuman beings behind all my favorite books? As the conference began, however, I was immediately swept up in the words of the very real, very human writers and their readings.

I watched authors affiliated with Northern Virginia's small publishing community read from their recently published and award-winning works. I sat in rooms filled to the walls with George Mason students, Stillhouse Press and Gazing Grain editors, and others like me—lovers of the literary world who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The energy was palpable. It shifting in flavor from reading to reading, but was always charged with a positive, fascinating intensity.  

By reading from their work or answering questions, each writer had the opportunity to instill in the audience some message, about themselves, their work, the world, or all three. Gazing Grain's Nora Brooks infused emotion and personality into the practical affair of cooking, using it to explore things that make us uncomfortable, while Heidi Czerwiec discussed the socioeconomic, political, and environmental issues of western North Dakota in her work Sweet/Crude. Czerwiec's poems read like a report, but with lovelier words, poetic phrasing, literary organization, and curious anecdote, which serves to simultaneously further her points and to make her work all the more interesting and beautiful.

Gazing Grain authors Heidi Czerwiec and Nora Brooks (left to right).

Mark Polanzak’s enthusiasm was particularly apparent, and rightly so, as part of the conference was dedicated to celebrating his first book POP!, a hilarious work about a decidedly un-hilarious subject, the death of his father. Polanzak described his book, quite fittingly, as “factually unreliable but emotionally true,” a work that really speaks to “the absurdity and integrity of memory," and his reading brought the audience to life. Listeners let out genuine, full-voiced laughs, sighing at the more poignant lines. Hearing him read from his book while the sun set on George Mason’s blooming cherry trees and the wind-rippled pond remains one of my favorite memories from the conference.

The collaborative, enthusiastic, supportive atmosphere of the New Leaves Writers’ Conference reminded me that writing is not as individual a career as one might think. Or if writing is an independent affair, the sharing of that writing—the part that makes it all worth it—is decidedly not. Authors may give a solo performance, may use their writing to untangle unprocessed trauma, like witnessing a devastating global event or experiencing the death of a parent, but it’s the collaboration between writer and editor, the interaction between author and reader, that gives writing its texture. This is where it all comes together, where you get to feel and see and hear a writer's work. It's in the exchange that the words take on meaning.

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Hailey Scherer is an intern at Stillhouse Press and a senior at Flint Hill High School. As an aspiring author/poet, she aims to learn as much as possible about writing and publishing during her internship this spring. She will be attending Dartmouth College in the fall.

Tattoos & Nostalgia: Designing Maybe Mermaids & Robots are Lonely

by Alex Walsh

I’m not saying that cover design for a novel is easy, but there is certainly an extra level of difficulty when it comes to creating a cover for a collection of short stories. Matthew Fogarty's Maybe Mermaids & Robots are Lonely, which will be published by Stillhouse Press in September, contains such a variety of vivid, weird, and beautifully unique stories that to simply represent one story on the cover would have an injustice to the collection as a whole. While a drawing of a mermaid and a robot may give you some sense of what lies within, it does not fully illustrate the incredible range of Fogarty’s work. What about dinosaurs in space? What about Bigfoot working as a temp? What about zombies and cowboys, and a man who accidentally hangs himself on a copper wire? What about André the Giant?

An early iteration of the "tattoo" concept created by Walsh.

With Maybe Mermaids & Robots are Lonely , my goal was to capture the whole of the collection, without giving away what it's really about. I wanted to allude to the presence of mythology and science fiction mixed with stories of great depth and realism, to greet the reader by saying, “In the pages of this book, you are going to see a lot of strange things and meet many interesting characters along the way. Come on in.”

Early in the editing process, conversations with Matt led me in the direction of creating a tattoo-like cover—something bold with vivid color, heavy in meaning and closely associated with memory. From there, I made a few sketches and designs that never came to fruition. Some were gritty, some were too complex, and some were overly cartoonish, but the real sticking point was that none captured the presence of nostalgia in the book. That was until we landed on the idea of the temporary tattoo, something people associate with childhood. Temporary tattoos represent a time in life when we’re most likely to drift into a world of make-believe, when we can erase our mistakes and are allowed countless "do-overs." But temporary tattoos are also associated with the weighty notion of the permanent tattoo, a very real and deeply meaningful adult concept. To us, this seemed to align perfectly with the tone of the book.

The Final Result: Maybe Mermaids & Robots are Lonely: 38 Stories and a Novella, Stillhouse Press, 2016

I then looked at how temporary tattoos come packaged: each fit tightly together on a single sheet of paper. It seemed like a viable way to feature all (or most) of the Maybe Mermaids characters on the cover, each placed closely against the others to make an almost-solid, almost-patterned image. Matthew and I selected 18 characters and objects from the stories, and I drew out each one. In order to keep things simple, all were inked with very little detail. This allowed the images to blanket the entire area of the cover without distracting from the title and secondary text. Then I selected bright, eye-catching colors, which I felt embodied the richness and energy of the book, and the cover became what it is today.

In a single glance, the reader may pick out a mermaid, a guitar, the Pope’s hat, a dog, a yeti, or an astronaut. They may ask questions about these creatures: What is a jet and an old Plymouth doing together on book? Who is this robot? What's Elvis got to do with anything? Each image comes together as part of one large tableau that suggests a new world filled with adventure and mystery, but also feels familiar.

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Alex Walsh is a book designer for Stillhouse Press and Copy Editor for Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art.  He is also a student at GMU, where he is seeking his MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction.

The Road Less Traveled: a Visit With Porochista Khakpour

by Leslie Goetsch

Khakpour currently lives in New York, where she is Writer in Residence at Bard College.

Born in Tehran and raised in California, the enigmatic and seemingly enchanted Porochista Khakpour has crossed the country and beyond in pursuit of the writing life. As she says in her essay, “My Life in the New Age” (Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2016), “I always liked the road less traveled.” One of Khakpour’s latest stops was Fall for the Book’s New Leaves Writer’s Conference March 21, where she spent the day and night as a visiting writer.   

The Last Illusion, Bloomsbury, 2014

Khakpour kicked off the first day of the conference with a reading from her latest novel, The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She began her reading with a discussion about the medieval Persian epic, the Shahnameh, which serves as the inspiration for The Last Illusion. Khakpour’s retelling of the legend centers on the character Zal, a child of the “wrong color,” whose mother raises him in a cage, along with her other “darlings,” birds. These two passages from Khakpour’s novel demonstrate her range as a writer. The first offers a daring, poignant scene in which Zal is cursed by his suicidal mother; the second a humorous view of Zal as he approaches adulthood in early 2000’s New York, where he takes a job at a pet store and falls in love with a canary.  (Zal’s story is also the inspiration behind the three striking feathers tattooed on Khakpour’s right hand and wrist, and although she makes it clear her mother would prefer the tattoo removed, it’s hard to imagine her without this physical reminder of how writing has directed her life.)

As part of her visit, Khakpour also spent time conferencing with MFA students about their work, offering suggestions and a personalized reading list, as well as advice on how to navigate the writing world. Despite battling a recurrence of Lyme Disease (precipitated by a car accident late last year), Khakpour’s energy never flagged. She was funny, smart, nurturing, and constructive as she discussed her writing, assuring students that there is, in fact, a life after the MFA and opened herself up to questions.

Porochista Khakpour appears 3 in from the left; Leslie Goetsch appears 3 in from the right.

Khakpour’s struggle with illness is the subject of her next book, Sick (forthcoming in 2017). Sick is a real-time recount of Khakpour’s ongoing struggle with Lyme Disease, including her difficulty finding a diagnosis, exploring treatment options, and her determination not to let the physical symptoms of the disease interfere with her writing career.  While she has published many nonfiction essays and reviews, this will be her first full-length nonfiction work. During a question and answer session with the author, Khakpour explained that she first became interested in the project because she felt her experience could help others suffering from the disease. Interestingly enough, Khakpour says she originally wanted to publish a pamphlet that could be distributed to hospitals and doctors’ offices, though her publisher inspired her to turn her reflections into a memoir.

The subject and style of Sick are a significant departure from the magical, moving fiction of The Last Illusion, but as her reading at George Mason revealed, Khakpour is a storyteller whose spirit and insight marks all of her writing. There is little doubt that when the memoir debuts next year, it will make for a powerful and affecting read, and greatly add to the ongoing conversation about Lyme-related illness.

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Leslie Goetsch is an MFA student at George Mason University. She is the author of Back Creek (Bancroft Press, 2008), a coming of age novel set in rural Virginia.

Tis The Season... For Writing Conferences!

It’s March, and the warmer weather marks not only the start of spring, but also the beginning of conference season for literary organizations all over the country. The Association of Writing and Writing Professionals, the largest literary conference in North America, is in Los Angeles this year. But fret not; you don’t have to travel across the country to broaden your writing horizons.

The D.C. area has some fantastic conferences to offer that will appeal to all writers, regardless of your experience, genre, or medium. Each conference has something unique to offer, with plenty of readings, panels, workshops, and networking and social opportunities to choose from. Take a look at our round-up of local conferences to see how you can get involved  in the D.C. area literary scene this spring.

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NEW LEAVES WRITER'S CONFERENCE

Hosted by: Fall For The Book
Where: George Mason University, Fairfax Campus
Mon. March 21st- Thurs. March 24th
Registration: Free

 New Leaves’ events are all in the evenings, which makes it perfect for busy D.C. students and professionals. The events include readings by established authors Porochista Khakpour, Leslie Jamison, Jennifer Atkinson, Heather Green, and Tim Denevi, as well as the annual Loud Fire reading by George Mason MFA candidates.

Tuesday, March 22, Stillhouse Press will celebrate the release of its second book, the hybrid memoir POP! , from debut author Mark Polanzak. Fellow press, Gazing Grain will host a reading by Heidi Czerweic and Nora Brooks, the winner and runner-up of their recent chapbook contest.

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CONVERSATIONS & CONNECTIONS: WRITERS CONNECT CONFERENCE

Hosted by: Barrelhouse Magazine
Where: George Mason University, Arlington Campus
Sat. April 23rd
Registration: $70 ($65 for students)

Conversations and Connections is a great place to meet local writers and improve your craft. The one-day conference features panels and workshops on flash fiction, writing ethnicity, and “late bloomer” authors, among others. Writers Connect is known for its relaxed atmosphere and emphasis on networking; with an “editor speed date” for lunch and a boxed wine happy hour, you’ll be hard-pressed to leave without a few new friends and contacts in the D.C. literary world.  Your registration fee also nets you a free book by by one of the authors speaking at the conference and a year’s subscription to a participating literary magazine. All proceeds from the conference go toward supporting participating small presses and literary journals.

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BOOKS ALIVE! WASHINGTON WRITERS CONFERENCE

Hosted by: The Washington Independent Review of Books
Where: Bethesda Marriott at Pook’s Hill Road
Fri. April 29th- Sat. April 30th
Registration: $240 until April 1; $130 for full-time students

Whether you’re a new writer or a seasoned veteran, Books Alive! is a great way to learn more about the publishing industry and what’s going on in writing right now. 

The conference begins Friday evening with a relaxed social, followed by a panel on how to pitch an agent. Writers can then use the suggestions from the panel in the Agent Pitch sessions, which will take place throughout the day Saturday. This year’s keynote speaker is Bob Woodward, award-winning investigative journalist for The Washington Post and best-selling nonfiction author, followed by panels on everything from voice in memoir to adapting books to film.

Be sure to catch the Small Press Panel at the end of the day, which will feature Director of the Santa Fe Writers Project and Friend of Stillhouse, Andrew Gifford and our very own Editor-in-Chief Marcos L. Martínez!

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Michelle Webber is the Social Media Editor for Stillhouse Press.  She is currently working on a science fiction novel and is a fiction candidate in George Mason University's BFA Program.

A Lesson in Tension

By Suzy Rigdon

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of the novels Pears on a Willow Tree (Harper Perennial, 1999) and A Year and a Day: A Novel (Harper Perennial, 2005). Her collection of linked stories, This Angel on My Chest (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), was the recipient the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. More here: http://lesliepietrzyk.com/

Compelling writing is about tension, Leslie Pietrzyk told graduate students from George Mason's MFA program during her Visiting Writers workshop in early February. Invoking the hallmarks of Alfred Hitchcock, Pietrzyk gave the example of film: if the audience sees a group of people on a train and then it explodes, we are surprised, Pietrzyk said. However, if we watch a group of men playing cards on the train and beneath their seat, visible only to the audience, the bomb counts down the seconds, we are hooked, our hearts racing.

Pietrzyk knows tension. Her fascinating collection This Angel on My Chest (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) revolves around a single theme: in each of the stories, a woman’s young husband dies unexpectedly. From the very start, we know the direction each story will take; yet we read all sixteen stories, waiting for each discovery, anxious to see how the widow(s) will react. With each new tale, we grieve or laugh or shout alongside her.

If we see the bomb ticking away, we will sympathize. We will feel connected to the character, to their struggles. We become invested.

For Pietrzyk's craft workshop, I chose to work on a piece that had already earned a handful of rejections from literary magazines. Turns out the problem was pretty straightforward: I had pulled a punch in my story, springing a revelation on readers just as it had been sprung on me during the writing process. But readers don't like to be surprised, Pietrzyk said. They feel duped, tricked, like in The Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis' character finally discovers he was dead the whole time. It’s better to give more information to the reader up front, rather than surprise them later. If we see the bomb ticking away, we will sympathize. We will feel connected to the character, to their struggles. We become invested.

This Angel on My Chest, University of Pittburgh Press, 2015

In Pietrzyk's story “I am the Widow," the title sets up the tension well. Widow is a strong word—evocative. Even before we start reading, we feel we know this woman. We become settled in our expectations, so even as the widow mentally (and seemingly irrationally) lashes out at the friends and family during her husband’s funeral, at the mementos they drop into his coffin, we stay with her. Her pain and anger makes us hurt, too.

Pietrzyk is a master of her craft. She tells stories in the second person, transforms narrative into lists and indices of foods, a quiz, and even a 40-page craft lecture told from twelve different perspectives. She builds stories from the point of tension. As she explained during her craft seminar, tension has to come somewhere between the external story (i.e. the plot and action), and the internal story (the emotional life and motivations of characters that ultimately create conflict). Even when writing in the most unconventional of ways, Pietrzyk succeeds at this.

At her reading, Pietrzyk told a crowded room of writers and readers that her self-challenge while writing This Angel on My Chest. was to feature at least one hard truth about herself as a woman, a writer, a wife or a widow in each of her stories. She considered releasing the book without giving readers the truth of her inspiration, but ultimately decided she needed to. Although she hopes readers don’t get wrapped up in looking for the factual truth in her stories, this knowledge creates a different type of tension.

Good analysis and good writing both stem from the same place: asking questions. How do you begin to revise a story you’ve spent weeks on, one that has already been rejected a few times? Think about the tension, Pietrzyk recommends. What kind of story do you want this to be? What do you want the reader to care about? Everything needs to lead toward something, she said. And in This Angel on My Chest—as in all of her writing—everything does.

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Suzy Rigdon is the author of Into the Night (Spencer Hill Press, 2014), and has also been published in The Albion Review and Word of Mouth Literary Magazine. She is a second year MFA candidate in fiction at George Mason University, where she is the Marketing Director for the Fall for the Book literary festival. To find out more, visit her website at suzannerigdonauthor.com or follow her on Twitter @SuzyRigdon.

The "Process" of Grief: POP!

By Mark Polanzak, author of Stillhouse Press' first memoir, POP!

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

If you've seen Sam Raimi’s comedy-horror film Drag Me to Hell, you'll understand my writing and grieving process pretty well. The main character, Christine, finds herself cursed and goes to a medium for help. The medium channels the dark spirit haunting her into a goat in order to slaughter it and rid Christine of the curse. There are parallels between Raimi’s film and my father’s death, and subsequently my writing about it years later. But although there is a proper process for channeling spirits, there isn’t a prescribed path for grieving. And instead of a goat, there’s my first book, POP!.

As a bereaved seventeen-year-old, I didn’t want to go through the grieving process. Not because I didn’t want to admit that I had lost my dad—though that was in there—but because it seemed really, really difficult and complicated. I didn’t want to cross the Rubicon that separates blissful teenage naivety and experienced young adulthood. I was having enough trouble learning the mitosis cycle and how cosine waves worked; I would surely botch the task of grief. But of course you can’t refuse to grieve. It’s autonomic.

One important thing I learned about grief is that there is no standard process. You can’t do it wrong. The order of grief operations we’ve all heard about—denial, anger, acceptance, and stuff—isn’t real. The person who conceived of it flat out made it up. But I didn’t know this between the ages of 17 and 21, which messed me up. I thought there was a right way to grieve, and so my sadness and sacredness and confusion and anxiety—all coming at me out of order and without warning—were compounded by a sense of self-castigation that I wasn’t doing it right, wasn’t being serious and dedicated enough to the process of grieving. I had no control over any of it. It owned me.

POP!, Stillhouse Press, March 2016

The process of writing my very personal, if-not-exactly-memoir, POP! mirrors my discoveries along the path of grief. After two years of writing fabulist, fantastical, magically realist, and absurdist short stories in my MFA program at the University of Arizona, I thought it was time to write a magical, fantastical novel. It seemed really, really hard, but I did it anyway. I began a book (it was about a stick figure). And pretty quickly, I hit an enormous problem in the story (big shock—the character was flat). I abandoned it after a year. I concluded that I was not ready to write a book, not there yet. So, I stopped trying.

I thought that there was a certain way a book was supposed to look sound, arc, unfold, and there was a way a writer wrote a book—through diligence every single day, working through scenes, developing characters, constructing plot and making the setting just so—I knew I couldn’t be working on a book when I began, at first haphazardly, writing what would become POP!. I wrote unlinked vignettes in a notebook, wrote a scene four different ways, drew characters and then redrew them, stuck them where they didn’t belong, and never gave a thought to the elements that I believed all real books needed.

But that’s just it: there is no proper way to write a book. These vignettes, fragments, character morphs, and all the rest eventually presented themselves as parts of a single organism that was steadily growing together. The pieces I had simply thought of as good practice for a big project began to come together, to brush up against one another, until one day there was a whole. The ending scene reached back and connected to the beginning. I had done it without really knowing it. I had written a book.

The book is about my father’s death, its many meanings and effects on me as a son and a writer, and on my mom and my brother. Yet I was never sad while writing it; I was in the medium’s trance. I was excited and energized to be writing something personal, something that broke the rules of how I felt I was supposed to write. I am sad now when I read sections of POP!. I channeled my grief into the book. It no longer possesses me. I can kill the goat or keep it.

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Mark Polanzak is the author of the forthcoming hybrid memoir, POP! (Stillhouse Press, 2016) and several short stories. Despite his conclusion that there are no rules in grieving or writing, he is currently writing a fictional rule book on etiquette. Read more about Polanzak here.

Getting Ambitious in 2016

We don’t just love to make incredible books; we like to read them, too. We read POPSUGAR’s yearly reading challenge and that got us thinking: how can we expand our reading horizons this year? What genres and authors have we neglected in the past? What new doors can they open for us creatively and intellectually? Here are just some of the ways that members of the Stillhouse Press staff plan to read more widely in 2016.

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The Left Hand of Darkness, Ace Books, 1969

“My reading resolution for 2016 is to read more science fiction and fantasy! I read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin over winter break, and I absolutely loved it. I was surprised that I hadn't read anything of hers sooner, considering how well known she is and how much I like science fiction. So now I'm reading everything by Le Guin that I can get my hands on. And once I'm done with that, I'll look for other speculative fiction authors who I either haven't heard of or haven't read anything by. I'm thinking I'll start with Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.”

- Hannah Campeanu, Moonshine Murmurs

Hannah Campeanu is an intern at Stillhouse Press and the editor of Moonshine Murmurs. She will graduate from George Mason this spring with her B.A. in English, and hopes to go into publishing.

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The Argonauts, Graywolf Press, 2015

“I'm currently obsessed with Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts. I saw her read and love her writing. She's setting the current trend in the academic MFA world for cross-genre and autotheory/autogender writing. She is not to be mistaken as a poet, but rather a writer. She is also not a fan of the word 'hybrid' but prefers the autotheory of identity.  And I am about to start on Ban En Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil Rider, another book that breaks beyond the traditions of research, theory, and poetry.”

- Qinglan Wang, Outreach & Events Coordinator

Qinglan Wang is a multilingual writer and teacher originally from Hawaii. She is currently the Outreach & Events Coordinator at Stillhouse Press and the Poetry Editor for Phoebe. Her work has been featured in Bone Bouquet, Deluge, and ROAR Magazine.

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The Goldfinch, Little, Brown & Co., 2013

“I wish I could say my goals for this year's 'pleasure reading' were lofty and lengthy texts like War and Peace, Ulysses, or Infinite Jest, but I truly just want to get through Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.  My daughter gave me her well-loved copy, so now I have an inroad, of sorts, into her world . . . always a good thing for a mom.  Besides, I'll read anything by an author whose last name is Tartt.  How could it not be grand?”

- Kate Lewis, Managing Editor

Kate Lewis is a second year Fiction candidate in George Mason's MFA program and a managing editor for Stillhouse Press.  Her work has appeared in Unscooped Bagel and Hail, Muse! Etc.

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NANO Fiction, Vol. 9, No. 1

"I have a stack of books on top of my bookshelf—things I've selected to 'read next,' except that stack is now about 30 books tall. To say that my resolution for 2016 is to read them all is a little ambitious, so I've settled on a goal that's more attainable: I'll be picking away at the stack, one story at a time, starting with Donald Barthelme's Forty Stories and the latest issue of NANO Fiction. I'm seriously in love with the short, short form. It's addictive, punchy, and the stories often stay with you far longer than it takes to actually read them. And the best part? You can read one a day and it only takes about ten minutes, which even on the busiest of days is still a realistic goal."

- Meghan McNamara, Founding Editor and Director of Media & Communications

Meghan McNamara is a third year Fiction candidate in George Mason's MFA program. She is a founding editorfor Stillhouse Press, where she serves as Director of Media & Communications. She is currently at work on a novel-length work, though she also appreciates a good short story. Her work has been featured in The Magnolia Review.

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Now that you’ve heard some of our goals, we want to know: what are your reading resolutions for 2016?

Tweet us @StillhousePress, or follow us on Facebook.

‘DELVE’ FOR MEANING

MANAGING EDITOR, DOUGLAS LUMAS, ON CREATING THE COVER ART FOR DIG

Preliminary Cover Art; Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Kent Adams.

One of the most difficult parts of turning a manuscript into a book is the visual nature of the final product: the cover. We certainly don't want to merely represent a story or poem, but to encapsulate what the whole of the manuscript is doing in the visual equivalent of a thirty-second pitch; essentially, how do we tell the reader what this book is about without telling them exactly what it's about? With DIG, one of my first goals was to create something that tapped into the material presence of a book—the page texture, the way that the physical construction mirrors the content—creating a conceptual argument for reading a physical book, a proposition as essential as DIG author, Bryan Borland's assertion that "the world needs another love poem / like it needs blood in the throat."

Working with Jonathan Kent Adams, the cover artist for DIG, we've been able to create something that transforms some of the more subtle themes in the text into a featured part of the experience of reading the book. Conversations with Bryan early in the editing process led us in the direction of imagining as abstract a landscape as possible, one in which definitions and forms become abstract as well—a concept that Jonathan's work engages with. While the editorial staff was deeply into the layers in the book's text, we picked up on the distinct visceral nature of the text, and Jonathan decided to foreground it.

The reader might work through the process of the book in a way that is similar to the tactile and visual nature of the cover that Jonathan has developed.

“After reading some of the manuscript for DIG, I realized how much my process as an artist related to the content of the poetry. I am constantly wanting my viewer to go within. To dig. To search. To rethink. To struggle. To reinvent. The content reminded me of peeling through all of the layers of the self. Digging to the heart. I used anatomy and figurative drawing, because I wanted the imagery to be about the human experience and not necessarily any specific objects. I also wanted something that was not very direct to the viewer. I wanted the image to seem as if you needed to search or pull back a layer. I believe the best art allows the viewer or reader to search. DIG made me search. I hope the cover is a reflection of that," Jonathan explained.

DIG in two parts; Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Kent Adams.

The reader might work through the process of the book in a way that is similar to the tactile and visual nature of the cover that Jonathan has developed. Essentially, the top-most layer engages with its nature as the 'skin' of the book, allowing the reader to delve further through physical layers until reaching the text itself—the most abstract part—the poems. Now that I write it, "delve" seems to be a perfect companion to the notion of digging, a willingness to fall headlong into what has been dug up. With the cut-out cover and the multi-layer physical depth of the book, the conceptual argument of the manuscript seems all that much clearer, that there's an essential kernel buried beneath the surface—even if you have to dig a little while to find it.

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DIG (forthcoming Sept. 2016) is a book of poems by Bryan Borland. Borland is the author of two previous collections of poetry, My Life As Adam and Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father.

Douglas J. Luman is the Poetry Editor for Stillhouse Press, the Book Reviews Editor for the Found Poetry Review, Editor of So to Speak, and Assistant Poetry Editor of the journal Phoebe. He can likely be found asleep in a library somewhere in Northern Virginia.

Origins of an Indie Press

A few months ago we posted an article from LitHub about the origin stories of several independent presses.  In the spirit of new beginnings, we have decided to reflect back on how our humble indie press first got its start. Not surprisingly to most of you who know us, it all began over a small batch whiskey and a serious love of books.

Relegation Books, est. 2012 by Dallas Hudgens

In Jan. 2014, George Mason University MFA alum Dallas Hudgens visited Creative Writing Professor Stephen Goodwin’s graduate-level class to talk about his own launch into small press publishing. Hudgens, who founded Relegation Books in 2012 after becoming disenchanted with his own experience publishing with a larger house, said he was inspired by what he saw during his visit. “After I spoke, I had the opportunity to watch as the students gave publishing presentations for the class. They were so well prepared and had done so much good research... Afterward, I thought it would be a good thing if the students had the opportunity to apply their knowledge and creativity to an actual press,” said Hudgens. He sat down with Goodwin and GMU’s MFA Program Director Bill Miller shortly thereafter to begin scheming on how they might offer students the opportunity to begin a small press of their own.

From there things progressed quite quickly. The first meetings with students took place in late Jan. 2014 and by March of that year, Stillhouse Press had begun to take form, centering on the idea of “craft publishing,” which Hudgens and Relegation Books’ publicist, Lauren Cerand came up with one evening over a few glasses of whiskey. “Lauren and I were talking about whiskey and craft distillers,” Hudgens said, “and she said that we were trying to do the same sort of thing with publishing. It’s not about the number of books that you publish, but taking on projects that are important to you and doing the best possible job every step along the way and also being open to new ways of doing things.”

The idea of working hand-in-hand with authors to deliver a more personal publishing experience was one which attracted the attention of Stillhouse’s founding editors, Marcos L. Martinez and Meghan McNamara. “We really latched onto this idea that being small was actually a very good thing, because it meant we could create a more intimate publishing experience with our authors. It’s their art, and they should have a say in how it is presented to the world,” McNamara said.

It was only a matter of months before Stillhouse had selected its first book, the short story collection Helen on 86th Street and Other Stories (Oct. 2014) by the late Wendi Kaufman. Kaufman was terminally ill with late stage cancer when the book was contracted, therefore time was of the essence. GMU Professor Scott W. Berg, who had been a close friend of Kaufman’s and now serves as the editorial advisor for Stillhouse, worked as the managing editor, helping to move the book through publication in just under three months. “It was a very fast process, and the students involved, especially Marcos and Meghan, worked very hard and did a great job,” said Hudgens.

The staff would go on to spend much of 2015 fielding submissions, putting together the annual Mary Roberts Rinehart Contest, and contracting nearly a dozen new books. In just less than two years, Stillhouse is on the heels of publishing its second book, POP! (forthcoming March 2016 from debut author Mark Polanzak), with four titles close behind it, including Stillhouse’s first foray into poetry. Hudgens said he’s pleased with the direction Stillhouse Press is heading and sees the press as both an asset to students, as well an inspiration for his own work with Relegation. “I hoped it would give students practical experience in the world of publishing, whether that eventually led to a job with a publisher or simply knowledge that would help them when their own books were published… As time goes on, I'm sure that I will learn more from their approach and experiences than they have learned from Relegation.”

Of course, as with all things fluid, running a student press is not without its challenges. “Continuity is important as new students come aboard and others leave,” said Hudgens. “Also, maintaining a clear vision and quality in production and publicity. But I know that everyone involved recognizes those and other challenges and will be prepared for them.”

So pour out a few fingers of moonshine and raise your glasses, folks! It’s time to usher in the new year and all of the exciting things that Stillhouse Press has planned.

Looking Ahead to 2016

Hello, readers!

My name is Hannah Campeanu. I am a third-year English major at George Mason University, and an editorial and research assistant here at Stillhouse Press. I am also the new editor of Moonshine Murmurs. My role as editor is like that of a curator in a museum—I’ll be working behind the scenes to bring you the best possible content related to craft publishing. But right now, I’m stepping out from behind the curtain to tell you about all the exciting things you can expect from Moonshine Murmurs in 2016.

Moonshine Murmurs editor, Hannah Campeanu

First, we decided that we wanted to move away from the event-review style that Moonshine Murmurs featured in its inaugural year.

We’d like to bring Moonshine Murmurs back to what it was originally meant to be: a platform to discuss the literary community in and around Washington, D.C and a place to broaden the conversation about writing and publishing industry.

Although people usually think of New York as the place to be for publishing, we know that D.C. is full of unusual and exciting writers, publishers, independent bookstores, and literary events, and we want to help share that community with you. As a small press, we have the rare opportunity to give you an inside look at our process and to include you in our conversations with our authors, staff, and guest writers.  We look forward to hosting that dialogue.

Over the next few months, it is my goal to bring you a new post every other Wednesday. Our focus will be on the literary scene in D.C. and the concepts and processes of craft publishing, and will occasionally provide a broader perspective about the publishing industry as a whole. Coming in January, I’ll be kicking things off with a look back at the early days of Stillhouse Press—our very own origin story, if you will. So as 2015 comes to a close, have a wonderful New Years and keep your eye out for great new Moonshine Murmurs content in 2016!

Cheers,

Hannah Campeanu

Stillhouse's Holiday Gift Guide

The holiday season is upon us, and all of us here at Stillhouse Press are eagerly awaiting the end of the semester, the chance to see our families, eat good food, and relax. As you make your own holiday plans, here are a few books our staff heartily recommend.

Whether you're looking for the perfect gift for a bookworm relative or just need something to while away those dark afternoon hours, we’ve got you covered. Cheers to you and yours, and happy reading!

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Prayers for the Living, Fig Tree Books, 2015

"Imagine the American dream—with all its possibilities and pitfalls—told through the lens of matriarch, Minnie Bloch, the narrator of Alan Cheuse’s Prayers for the Living. As a reader, I find Minnie’s voice remarkably engaging, at once fierce and philosophical. She witnesses her son's transformation from an impassioned rabbi to an American business executive. Sex, faith, and lineage weave through this novel, creating a taut multi-generational fabric. As a writer, I am fascinated by Cheuse’s chutzpah in reassessing one of his earliest novels, The Grandmother’s Club (1986), and rewriting it into a book as fresh and relevant as tomorrow’s news headlines about a mogul’s rise and fall. Eloquent and inspiring, Prayers for the Living is hands down my must read for 2015."

- Marcos L. Martínez, Editor in Chief

Marcos L. Martínez is a founding editor of Stillhouse Press and a Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction. As a Sally Merten Fellow, he has taught creative writing in Northern Virginia high schools and public libraries; his work has appeared in Whiskey Island, The HIV Here and Now Project, The Washington Blade, and RiverSedge.

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The Things We Don't Do, Open Letter, 2015

“I've really enjoyed The Things We Don't Do by Andres Neuman. One of my Intro. to Creative writing students brought it in and asked if I had read it, and I hadn't but the first story, ‘Happiness’ hooked me with its voice. Plus, I think I'd read just about anything that has a blurb from Roberto Bolaño on the cover.”

- Justin Lafreniere, Prose Editor

Justin Lafreniere is a writer living in Northern Virginia. He is the Fiction Editor for So to Speak and has been published in Charlotte Viewpoint, The Western Online, and Frostwriting.

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The Empathy Exams, Graywolf Press, 2014

“I suggest that people read Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, the winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. The essays in this collection range from working as a medical actor helping to train doctors, a 100-mile endurance race known as the toughest race on the planet, and an unusual disease which some people are not sure even exists. In all of these, Jamison contemplates the subject of empathy by examining the pain of others. It’s a great collection, and Jamison’s voice brilliantly tackles the subject.”

- Katie Ray, Prose Intern

Katie Ray is a creative nonfiction student in George Mason University's MFA program. She has previously been published in Prime Number and the Eckerd Review.

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Nets, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015

“Jen Bervin’s Nets should be familiar to many, even if they’ve never read or heard of it. Exploring Shakespeare’s sonnets, Bervin fashions poems out of what she takes away, creating an entirely new poem from what remains. Visually minimal as well, Nets is an example of the structural aphorism ‘less is more.'"

- Douglas Luman, Poetry Editor

Douglas Luman is a poet and editor. He is currently Stillhouse Press' Poetry Editor, the Book Reviews Editor for the Found Poetry Review, Editor of So to Speak, and Assistant Poetry Editor of the journal Phoebe. He can likely be found asleep in a library somewhere in Northern Virginia.

A Lesson Before Writing

By Kelly Foster

(Vintage 1994)

Speaking to themes found in his Oprah Book Club bestseller, A Lesson Before Dying (Vintage 1994), Ernest J. Gaines headlined events Sept. 28 at the 2015 Fall for the Book festival. In an event at George Mason University’s EagleBank Arena, Gaines joined Professor of English and African American Studies, Keith Clark, where the two men discussed the seedlings for Gaines’ novel, and its significance in bringing awareness to racial understanding.

“Everyone learns something,” Gaines said of the characters in his novel, though he could easily have been referring to himself and the audience. Gaines received a 1993 Macarthur Foundation Fellowship “Genius Grant,” which he won for brilliantly illustrating racism in his novels, drawing from his own history of dealing with prejudice. Due to segregation laws in the south, Gaines had never stepped inside a library until he left Louisiana. When he eventually moved to California, where he was finally able to visit a library for the first time, he “had never seen so many beautiful things,” he said. “I found I could sit there all day long and dream.” This dreaming led him further into his career, creating characters who resonate with readers.

Gaines also talked about the effect his characters—most of whom are uneducated, and largely inspired by his neighbors in Louisiana—have had on his own life. “All of them,” Gaines said, when asked if his characters surprised or represented him in any way. “My characters are a part of me—if I did not love my character, I could not write about him.”

Photo courtesy of @ErnestJGaines

He chuckled warmly when asked what advice he would give to aspiring writers. “Read, read, write, write. A writer is going to be a writer. Write about experience; write while under conditions,” Gaines declared in his characteristic raspy voice. “This world has never helped the artist—this isn’t new. But a writer is going to write.”

Gaines concluded with a reflection on his character, Jefferson’s death in the electric chair. “As a writer, I am going to write it so well, you’ll feel it,” he told Clark and the audience. Not unlike the powerful resolution to A Lesson Before Dying, it was a powerful ending to the conversation, the effect of his words clearly palpable within the audience. He said, for each person, he or she will gain an understanding of something in their life. For Gaines, it was creating characters, even as he was only just growing into a man himself. He advised younger audience members to keep pursuing their individual gifts until their own words become powerful too.

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Kelly Foster is a first year poet in the Bachelors of Fine Arts, Creative Writing program at George Mason University. She has lived in Northern Virginia for the past 10 years.

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Foster's post was selected as the winner of the Moonshine Murmurs Ernest J. Gaines Blog Contest.

Honorable Mention: Ana Machado Silva.

Write for us! Calling all George Mason University undergraduates:

In collaboration with the 2015 Fall for the Book Festival, Stillhouse Press is hosting a blog contest, complete with publication and cash prizes for 2 winners. Click HERE, for more details!

Risk and Obsession: A Craft Talk With Jericho Brown

By Frank Harder

For Jericho Brown, poetry is laced with doubt. The poet should remain vulnerable, frightened even, in the midst of writing. Each line break drives the poet further into uncertainty. Ironically, Brown feels most whole when thinking in lines. The process he suggested to young poets during his April 21 Visiting Writers craft talk at George Mason involves listening and riffing, relying on reflex and intuition. With this musician’s curiosity, sounds grow to have personality. For Brown, music and aesthetics—an appealing voice, tone, or arresting image—supercedes meaning. He might tell you a poem “needs more bass,” though he’d be pressed to tell you what exactly that means.

Photo Credit: Stephanie Mitchell, Harvard Staff Photographer

Brown, a name which is currently buzzing in the small but fervent poetry world, is a recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. An associate professor in English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Brown is the author of two books: the musically-driven Please (New Issues 2008), recipient of the 2009 American Book Award for Poetry, and The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), which recently won the 2015 Ainsfield-Wolf Book Award and received high praise from Library Journal, Coldfront, and The Academy of American Poets.

The New Testament, Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press 2014); winner ofthe 2015 Ainsfield-Wolf Book Award.

Brown’s advice to young poets was both energetic and organic during his craft talk. He selected readings from two of his essays, pausing only to clarify where his opinions on a subject had changed or complicated, and followed by opening himself up to our nervous questioning. It was this openness that kept us rapt in attention, the air of tension that characteristically surrounds a celebrity poet of Brown’s stature quickly dispelled, and the conversation livened. Listening to him speak, I sensed that the personal lies at the crux of Brown’s craft, even if the personal is a performance. Performance is closer to the self that one might think, as it keeps the speaker vulnerable in relation to his audience. “The artist’s answer is always risk,” Brown said in a tone of amused experience. “Faith keeps us breathing.”

For Brown, uncertainty drives the process. Take his poem spoken in the voice of Janis Joplin, “Track 5: Summertime” from Please. The lines “So nobody notices I’m such an ugly girl/I’m such an ugly girl” didn’t initially come to him direct from the mouth of Joplin. Rather, they were lines he could eagerly get behind, but had to figure out who might say them. As chance would have it, he had Joplin on his mind. Brown’s collage-like process of sorting through lines can be obsessive, and in describing it, he inadvertently answered the one question that many writers fuss over: “Do I need to write every day?” Brown does, he acknowledged, though he distinguished between writing something every day from writing a poem every day. In a span of 3-5 years, he said, you’re bound to write about only a limited amount of obsessions. Books can arise from bringing together these obsessions, attending to and even fostering them.  “Be complete in what you want to do and go all the way,” Brown said.

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Frank Harder is a graduate student with George Mason University's Creative Writing MFA program, where he studies and writes poetry. He grew up in northern New York and currently lives in Fairfax, VA.