Directed by Alan Smithee #6: The Line of Action

A series of musings on movies, memories, and storytelling.

by Cassie Hayes, Fiction Editor

Movies manipulate time. Real time seems to freeze and hang suspended until the final credits, when you stumble out of the darkness and wander around the parking lot trying to find your car, the world suddenly hard and huge and real again—too silent and serious compared to the world of light and shadow that you just left. Even the onscreen dramatic time jumps and flashes back and flashes forward, carried along by music, dialogue, and sound effects. Movies let you feel like you cheated time—you stole some back. For an hour and a half or two hours, you experienced a story that would have taken you days, weeks, months, or even years to experience in real life.

Most narratives do this. Hitchcock famously said that drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

One of my favorite movies is Once Upon a Time in the West. As a very quiet and slightly musically-inclined person, my favorite character in that movie is Charles Bronson’s “Harmonica,” so named because he never gives his real name—he is known mainly by the harmonica he carries on a string around his neck and the mournful musical motif that he often plays. The movie is an epic—set in the magnificent mythological American West, where conflicts of good versus evil, tradition versus progress, and man versus man are played out in operatic proportions. I literally have goose bumps by the end of the movie every time I watch it.

Harmonica is on a quest for revenge—he wants to kill Frank, the cruel antagonist played to perfection by somebody who I had always thought exuded kindness and principle, Henry Fonda. Harmonica goes doggedly after Frank with single-minded focus and unrelenting purpose. The wheezing harmonica motif underscores this determination, this desire for revenge burning inside of a man who seems so cool and collected on the outside.

That sense of grit is romanticized. It reminds me of my dad as a high school freshman going out for football and breaking both wrists on the first day of practice, then going out again as a sophomore and breaking both wrists on the first day AGAIN.

It reminds me of me as a girl going to the week-long softball camp hosted by the Waxahachie High School softball program every summer, and every summer getting sick, turning ghost-white and getting lightheaded and dizzy, the coach always hosing me off, giving me a popsicle, and calling my parents. Every. Single. Summer.

Grit? Maybe. Also, more likely, just being a stubborn idiot.

Stories can get you out of the rut your life is in. Stories can allow you to let go of the stubborn memories of the past and move on. Stories can change your heart, your mind, and your very soul.

Storytelling isn’t self-help therapy any more than listening to stories is. Whether you’re writing, reading, watching a movie, or making a movie, even though you’re probing the mess you are—displaying your dysfunction—you’re also crafting a narrative, manipulating time and facts, and putting on a new identity. You’re rediscovering the world and inviting others to join you in your rediscovery. It’s a craft, it’s a calling, and it’s hard work.

Which brings me to the title of this post: The Line of Action. The almighty “line of action” in movie-making is an imaginary line drawn in front of the camera—you put the camera on one side of the line and don’t cross it, thereby avoiding continuity problems editing. Of course, like most rules, this one gets broken every now and then, but generally it keeps the action or dialogue from being confusing, with random reversals of left and right screen space, when it’s edited together.

Just like with the name “Alan Smithee,” I tie a bunch of meaning to the phrase “the line of action” that isn’t really there and doesn’t have much of anything to do with the concept.

The phrase reminds me of the line in the sand drawn by William Travis at the Alamo. The line of ACTION. The phrase gives me the feeling that you’re about to make a choice that you will act on, a choice like the ones often at the climax of a short story, a book chapter, or a movie scene. You will make this choice and you will change because of it. You will cross the line of action, even if it might be confusing. Your life will take on a new trajectory.

Take a look at Arkana. The small literary journal that’s really a tiny bleep on the radar of hundreds of literary journals popping up online. Yes, there’s stubborn grit and passion that keep us going and will keep us going in the future. Yes, there’s the belief that writing and storytelling is more than just therapy—that it’s not for the individual but for the community.

But more than all that, what will keep Arkana, and all literature, alive is a belief in the power of change.

We are small but mighty. Literature here and everywhere is the line of action. Time builds forward like a stone wall separating what was and what could be, but we cross that wall and carve stories out of the stone, beauty out of the boundaries.

Voices out of the silence.

That’s why I love movies, stories, and being part of a literary journal. The world gives you a million examples of dysfunction and hate to turn you bitter, but as long as there are people promoting, creating, and experiencing art then empathy is being shared and there is hope for the future. There is an audience held together by light they can see through the darkness. There is the hush of emotion, the quiet of reflection, and the smell of popcorn.

And the bitterness fades out.

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Cassie Hayes is a scribomaniac, film aficionado, and sometime taco-maker from Waxahachie, Texas. She received her bachelor’s from the University of Texas at Arlington and now attends the Arkansas Writers MFA Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various print and online literary journals.

Directed by Alan Smithee #5: When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend

A series of musings on movies, memories, and storytelling.

by Cassie Hayes, Fiction Editor

My mom will probably read this series of “Directed by Alan Smithee” posts and call me a liar.

It’ll probably be like watching the movie adaptation of the book you really love—gasping and head shaking and accusations of “That’s not how it happened!”

I exaggerate—I lie. Which parts, I don’t even know. Whenever my mom tells stories about me as a kid I don’t remember the instances the same way as she does at all. She mentions things that I didn’t even care about and don’t even think of anymore. She never mentions things that I still have dreams, even nightmares about.

In my favorite John Wayne/John Ford movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a reporter near the end says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” When I re-watched this movie recently, as someone who just spent two semesters working as an intern at the Oxford American, where the bulk of my work was fact-checking articles before they were published, I gasped at that line. Facts corrupted? The Truth turned into a farce, a myth, a legend? Over my dead body and the dead bodies of noble fact-checkers everywhere!

Oh, please. Here’s another thing besides being a liar that my mom knows about me that you should probably know too: I’m a bit melodramatic. I used to tell my mom sunlight was searing my retinas. I once thought I was going to die from eating an overcooked hot dog.

But ah, who cares? Where would the world be without a little lying and melodrama? The single tear, the mentor’s satisfied smile and nod, the lush orchestration as the hero rides off into the sunset with his arm around his girl. That stuff doesn’t exist in real life.

However, the feelings generated from those instances do exist.

Or so I like to think.

Stories and art bottle up those feelings in convenient little containers so that people can carry them around. It’s the old “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story” idea. Except really I think that truth doesn’t exist AT ALL without a good story. I hear somebody talking about Christianity, preaching at people, I think the whole religion is a load of crap. I read the bible or hear a believer tell a personal story, I think I need to jump into the next body of water and be re-baptized. Maybe being a storyteller I’m a little biased. I bet physicists think physics is the absolute, where-it’s-at, capital-T Truth. But I can’t shake the feeling that the world, at least as we humans know it, needs art, needs stories, whether they be fiction or fact.

I, of course, am a bit heavy-handed with the fiction. My name should be a disclaimer for “take what follows with a grain of salt” just as Alan Smithee’s name is a disclaimer for “some stuff went down” and “some stuff hit the fan.” I always feel so insecure writing nonfiction. In an earlier post I wrote about bawling when watching Bambi. How can I be sure that I cried because Bambi’s mom bit the dust or if I really just found “Little April Showers” insufferable?

Dispute not with her: she is a lunatic. This random Shakespeare quote sums it up—I’m crazy, I’m a bit delusional, I don’t fit in with the rest of the world a lot of the time—so take whatever I say but take it with a touch of skepticism.

My stories are like magic tricks—meant to make you believe in them even when you know they can’t be true.

I’d be an awful magician. After each trick I’d want to explain excitedly how it was done. I might even assign some larger meaning to it—relating it to my life and storytelling and art until all the magic has been displaced into words. I’d probably write some rambling blog post about it.

How much can anybody really remember about anything? And who has ownership of a childhood story—the child who felt the moment or the adult who could interpret the moment?

The answer is neither of the above. Sorry, Mom, but the ownership of any story rests with the storyteller and the listener. The storyteller calls the legend fact. The listener “prints” the legend, buying into the charade instead of disputing it.

Basically, when the fiction becomes truth, print the fiction.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the rough-and-ready John Wayne character calls the tenderfoot Jimmy Stewart character “Pilgrim.” What a lovely nickname, really, even though the Wayne character means it to be kinda demeaning. Really the movie is about the legendary Wild West and the dying of that legend as the frontier closes and the land becomes “civilized” with lawyers and schools and fair democracy. A lot of the movie is about questioning the legend—Jimmy Stewart doesn’t buy into Wayne’s macho tactics of tough talk with a hand on a pistol and gritted teeth, the traditional Wild West way of dealing with things. Meanwhile, though, Stewart becomes his own legend—the Pilgrim who came and tamed the West.

The movie is a classic for a reason—it’s as relevant today as it was in 1962, when it was released. It makes you think about storytelling, legends versus facts, how legends play into politics and influence government, how in turn those legends have real-life effects.

It makes you realize that every story, no matter how honorably told, is shaped in a way by the storyteller’s sensibilities and perceptions. But it also makes you realize that you as a listener also have a bit of ownership over the story—you get to decide what you’re going to swallow, what you’re going to find meaningful and carry around with you.

In other words, you believe what you choose to believe, Pilgrim.

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Cassie Hayes is a scribomaniac, film aficionado, and sometime taco-maker from Waxahachie, Texas. She received her bachelor’s from the University of Texas at Arlington and now attends the Arkansas Writers MFA Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various print and online literary journals.

ARKANA UPDATE

A brief compilation of Issue 2 Notes from the Editors.

by the Arkana Staff

Issue 2 has been live for about a month, and we as the Arkana staff have had plenty of time to reflect on the work in our last issue. Here’s what our genre editors are saying about Arkana and our second issue:

“We sought a synthesis of the real and the ideal.”

“To me, this is the important work of Arkana: fully committing to diversity in a way that goes beyond mere lip-service or checkmarks in boxes.”

“When we get a piece that shows us a slice of someone’s experience that we’ve never seen published elsewhere, or a piece that opens up an exciting thinking space—like a hidden passageway in an old familiar library—that’s when the staff starts having conversations.”

“The characters in these stories are survivors.”

“We read each piece that is submitted and publish excellent prose with a clear voice that elucidates people’s real lives.”

“There was a feeling that we had touched common humanity and heard voices we needed to hear that we hadn’t exactly heard before. There was an awe that always accompanies the taking in of good art.”

“We trust our contributors to be the experts of their experience.”

“Please tell a struggling artist how much their work means to you. We all need to know that somebody is listening, that somebody cares.”

“We want to hear your voices. We want to continue to hear the voices that have been silenced, but speak to us and bring us the awe.”

Comb through our editor notes to read more about how our second issue came together and what it represents—where does Arkana stand in the modern world and publishing industry? As poet Oliver de la Paz said in his interview with us (included in issue 2), writing can be a time machine. It can transmit the past, transform the present, and transport us into the future. So make sure to take a look!

And submit, submit, SUBMIT! We want to read your work, see your passion, hear YOUR voice. We probably won’t be reading work until the school year, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis—so send ‘em our way whenever they’re ready. We can’t wait to get started on the next issue!

Follow our blog for periodic behind-the-scene updates, notes from the editors, and personal musings from our staff. Head on over to our main website for submission guidelines, more info about what exactly Arkana is, and just to read and/or listen to (because we have a brand new audio feature) some great new literature.

We’re so glad to have you—go to arkanamag.org now!

Directed by Alan Smithee #3: Match Cut

A series of musings on movies, memories, and storytelling.

by Cassie Hayes, Fiction Editor

Hands down the best thing about movies is that you can use them as an excuse to eat popcorn.

When I was a kid, me and my dad would have movie nights. Typically the billing consisted of Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, the Three Stooges, or old Universal horror pictures—Dracula, Frankenstein, and, my favorite, the Wolf Man. At first I cared little about the movies—I didn’t really get why they didn’t have any color, or why the actors talked so fast and stiffly—but I absolutely loved the way my dad made popcorn. At the time I thought he was some kind of master popcorn chef who knew this amazing secret ingredient that no one else knew to add. In reality, all he did was melt butter in the microwave and pour it into the popcorn bag. My job was to shake the bag using both hands, careful not to spill popcorn everywhere—though I don’t know why I had to be careful about making a mess when he didn’t. He never covered the bowl of butter with plastic wrap, so our microwave ended up looking like a warzone, much to my mother’s chagrin.

The Wolf Man is, I think, the first non-animated movie that truly captivated me. It was the first movie that made me care more about the story than the popcorn. I was amazed especially by Maleva, the gypsy woman who tries to help Larry Talbot after he is bitten by her son, a werewolf. I liked her mysteriousness, her sensitivity, her knowledge, and her dedication to her family.

And of course I was also captivated by the whole idea of werewolves, human beings transforming into out-of-control beasts.

I wasn’t scared at all by the movie. Maybe I’d already been desensitized somehow by television (I used to like the show Cops), other movies (Bambi?) and brow-beaten bible stories, but I didn’t hide my eyes or bury my face in my father’s shoulder when kind, mild-mannered Larry Talbot turned into a giant man-eating wolf. Not a bit. Instead, I couldn’t look away. How AWESOME, somebody becoming something else, something so different that his own father doesn’t recognize him!

But Maleva did recognize him.

The match cut is a transition in film editing in which one shot cuts to another shot that has graphic elements—a subject or action—matching the previous frame. It makes readers see parallels between two different subjects and also can represent a jump in time. For instance, in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey one of the monkeys throws a bone into the air. The bone tumbles against a blank sky, and then there’s a cut to a satellite tumbling in space. So the audience can follow that time has shifted forward and that there are parallels between the bone and the satellite—two of the few things easily followed in 2001.

I wonder who I would be match cut to if the options were Maleva and Larry Talbot. This is one of the many pointless question I wonder about. I also wonder about why I wonder about so many pointless questions.

Yet this isn’t a pointless. Somehow I think this question says something about my heritage, my vocation, my very essence.

Heavy stuff for a pretty cheesy 1940s Universal horror flick. Allow me to elaborate:

My mother’s side of the family is traditionally more stoic, more mysterious, more sensitive. There are bigger holes in the history of that side of my family—my grandfather’s “lost years” in between getting out of the Army in his twenties after WWII and marrying my grandmother when he was around forty, my grandmother’s tendency towards silence and pragmatism when asked about anything. How they come from swampy Caddo Lake in East Texas hidden among the weeping willows and curtains of gray moss. They remind me of Maleva.

My father’s side of the family is more passionate, hard, tough. I have heard stories about my great-grandfather—my father’s father’s father—his resilience and quick temper, how he raised his several brothers and sisters single-handedly during the Great Depression, how when he got mad he would very slowly and deliberately take off his glasses, fold them, put them in his pocket, and then commence to pummeling whoever was the poor soul that had made eye contact. I have seen threads of that temper in my grandfather and father and most certainly in me. Especially when I’m driving and somebody cuts me off.

That side of the family reminds me of the werewolf, Larry Talbot—the man suddenly turned beast.

Most likely I’m a bit of both, and since I’m really not that unique a human being, you could assume that if I’m a bit of both everybody is a bit of both, too.

You need both to tell a good story.

We at Arkana claim that our mission is to find stories that “work to discover and uncover the overlooked, the misunderstood, and the silent.” In the Wolf Man Maleva always recognizes Talbot, even when he’s a monstrous beast that even his own father doesn’t recognize. Stories, or at least the kind Arkana is after, wouldn’t work without both the dysfunctional monsters and the people able to still see the human in the beast.

A good storyteller combines the out-of-control nature of passion and feeling with the quiet wisdom of reflection.

And a good story listener supplies the popcorn.

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Cassie Hayes is a scribomaniac, film aficionado, and sometime taco-maker from Waxahachie, Texas. She received her bachelor’s from the University of Texas at Arlington and now attends the Arkansas Writers MFA Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various print and online literary journals.

Issue 2 Notes from the Editors: Poetry

A reflection on Arkana‘s first year in poetry.

by Drew S. Cook, Poetry Editor

Last month, the second issue of Arkana dropped, and we in the poetry section had a lot to be happy about. We had two new readers join us, and it was great to have more eyes and thoughts on the pieces that we selected. It was also a sentimental moment for me, since I expect that this will be my last issue as Poetry Editor. Not having any predecessors, I had no one with whom to compare my contributions. Perhaps I did well; perhaps I did not. In any case, as a team we did manage to publish some well-made, affecting work from varied identities and points of origin.

To me, this is the important work of Arkana: fully committing to diversity in a way that goes beyond mere lip-service or checkmarks in boxes. The world of poetry is like any other industry: there are people who have power and people who do not. There are matters of fashion to consider, and there are practices ascendant and descendant. There are cliques, and there are pressures to conform. As a Poetry Editor, I have felt a duty to consider these things, for even though I have, since grade school, found myself aligned with unpopular, unloved children, there is also a need to build platform, to attract readers. After all, without readers, we have not succeeded in giving voice to the voiceless. Rather, we have only dragged them from one silence to another.

I do hope that I have succeeded in finding balance between appealing to poetic orthodoxy and lifting up voices that have been excluded by that orthodoxy. In the second issue, I feel that the team established a pleasing variation between traditional and more contemporary presentation. We additionally managed to lift up varied perspectives based on geography and identity. In other words, we sought a synthesis of the real and the ideal.

The specific poems that the team chose for the second issue were all in keeping with Arkana’s mission. That is, they reflect the team’s respect for the dignity and variety of human experience. They also reflect a general lack of interest in the tyranny of the fashionable. I do not have any idea whether these poems would appeal to any particular tastemaker or school of thought, nor would I like to find out. In the end, we can only hope that you will see them as we do: as well-constructed, affecting works of art. I cannot speak for my successor, but, to me, there is nothing else that matters more.

Thank you, fellow reader, for joining us in this new adventure. Please continue to submit. Please tell your friends to submit. Please keep reading. Please tell your friends to keep reading. Most important, please tell a struggling artist how much their work means to you. We all need to know that somebody is listening, that somebody cares. Be that light in another’s life. See you when issue three hits!

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Read or listen to the poems included in Arkana’s Issue 2:
“Creative Writing in Oman”
“Flea Market”
“Don’t Forget Aleppo”
The poetry contest winner: “Poem for Thalia”
“When Can You Come”

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Drew S. Cook was born in Ouachita Memorial Hospital near the banks of the Ouachita River.  His hometown of Hot Springs is cradled by the Ouachita Mountains and lies east of the Ouachita National Forest. The sights and voices of that region continue to inform his writing. Drew studied literature and philosophy at Hendrix college before moving to Ohio, where he did information technology work in manufacturing plants for over a decade. Drew has since returned to Arkansas to study writing at the University of Central Arkansas. His interests include pentameter and lithium. Drew’s poems have appeared in Pleiades, Bear Review, and elsewhere.

Directed by Alan Smithee #2: Stingers

A series of musings on movies, memories, and storytelling.

by Cassie Hayes, Fiction Editor

The only movie I’ve ever started and been unable to finish is Bambi.

Yeah, that’s right—the animated Disney movie with the cute forest animals. When my parents put it in the VCR and I settled in to watch it as a small kid, I was really into it until that stupid song “Little April Shower” starts playing and—*spoiler alert*—Bambi’s mom dies. I then proceeded to start bawling, moaning, and chastising my parents for allowing me to watch a film that I believed at the time children should never be exposed to.

Yeah. Bambi. The one kids all over the world adore.

To this day I cringe when I hear “Little April Shower.” I still, although I like to think I’m quite a bit more stable than I was as a kid, have not watched the full movie, perhaps out of some distant childhood fear carried over into adulthood but more likely because I’m lazy and just haven’t bothered to put it on if only for a degree of closure. I can only imagine what my poor parents were thinking when I had a giant meltdown over a Disney movie—I bet they wondered how in the world they managed to bring into the world such a messed-up kid.

You would think maybe I just didn’t like dark movies. But my favorite childhood movie was The Lion King—a.k.a. Hamlet for Kids. So we have our death, betrayal, and revenge bases covered. Perhaps I cried because I didn’t think Bambi really had the gumption to get revenge—he was a little momma’s boy set adrift into the big bad world with nobody but that stupid rabbit to guide and protect him.

Or maybe I cried because, for some reason, in that moment I felt a surge of uncontrollable empathy.

Stories will do that to ya. Like with relationships and fatty food, sometimes you go in looking for a good time and end up feeling more than you bargained for.

In movies and screenwriting, there is often “stingers” at the end of scenes—sharp lines that wrap up what a scene is trying to do or say. Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. Door slam. Cut. And ta-da the scene is complete. These stingers drive home the point of the scene and are often emotionally charged.

In real life, endings are sometimes emotionally charged, and sometimes not. I actually kind of wish there were stingers marking some of the endings that have happened in my life—many of the endings that haunt me the most are the ones where things sort of just drifted away. No Rhett Butler. No door slam. No cut. Sometimes I think real life is like the movies, or at least could be. Other times I think I’m too much of a wishful thinker.

I can’t remember the last silly show me and my sister put on to entertain our parents and grandparents before me and my sister grew up. I don’t know what my last high school class was before I graduated or who was in it. I couldn’t begin to tell you what I was really thinking when I was a little kid ordering my parents to turn off Bambi.

I could have used a stinger for each of those moments, cementing them into my reality.

But instead they’re just lost, blurry memories that I know must exist, but I can’t exactly bring to mind, that I can’t exactly conjure in THIS moment right now today as I sit here at age twenty-two, by some twist of fate at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas instead of at my home in Waxahachie, Texas.

My, my I can be such a bummer sometimes. But fear not—good news is on the way:

In stories, we can find what is lost, cement what has crumbled, prime for action what has long lay dormant. I feel like writing down those moments now makes them real somehow, validates them as reality. I feel like the simple act of telling the story is the door slam, the stinger, and the endings have been clarified.

And even better, every time I feel great empathy from a story well told, I feel like my feelings about the endings have been validated as well. I feel connected to humanity. I still feel like a total mess, but like everybody else is a total mess too.

And being a total mess can be wonderful.

That shared sense of messiness pops up in great stories of all shapes and sizes. I feel it every time I open a book, read submissions or what we’ve published in Arkana, or watch a movie. Dysfunction is reality. Dysfunction is life. Dysfunction is interesting. And people are horribly dysfunctional, horribly interesting.

So, as my stinger for this post, here are a few reading suggestions from the pages of Arkana, featuring the human condition’s captivating messiness:
A flash fiction story about growing up, “The Life Cycle of a Human Girl”
A short story including a magical deer, “Be Thou Ravished Always With Her Love”
And a poem on the power of creative writing, “Creative Writing in Oman”

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Cassie Hayes is a scribomaniac, film aficionado, and sometime taco-maker from Waxahachie, Texas. She received her bachelor’s from the University of Texas at Arlington and now attends the Arkansas Writers MFA Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various print and online literary journals.

Issue 2 Notes from the Editors: Nonfiction

A brief note on writing and Arkana‘s nonfiction process.

by Jacqulyn West, Nonfiction Editor

I’ve finally learned to answer “yes” when people ask, “are you a writer?” Since I don’t write fiction and have a tenuous relationship with poetry, it’s seemed like a stretch to say what I’ve been writing is what others consider writing. Serving as Arkana’s nonfiction editor has changed my perspective and boosted my confidence, both about calling myself a writer and about nonfiction as a laudable and important genre.

Over the course of our first two issues, we’ve read over a hundred nonfiction submissions. We’re looking for pieces that fit our mission to publish work by people whose voices are not often represented in media, or work that challenges us to look at things with a new and different perspective. Many of the works we’ve received and read are good prose, but they don’t bring the fresh take or unusual aspect that we’re looking for. But when we get a piece that shows us a slice of someone’s experience that we’ve never seen published elsewhere, or a piece that opens up an exciting thinking space – like a hidden passageway in an old familiar library – that’s when the staff starts having conversations. “Did you read that piece? Could you believe they said that?! I’ve never heard anyone describe it that way. We should publish this!”

As a genre, nonfiction is nearly everywhere, from your shopping list and refrigerator notes at home, to personal ads and obituaries in the newspaper, to more formal and familiar essays and think pieces that describe or explain a person’s perspective or experience. Since nonfiction proliferates in our everyday lives with devices in our purses and pockets and screens everywhere, we’re dedicated to our search for the “mysteries and marginalized voices” in Arkana. We want to be the place where conversations start about ideas that folks have been carrying around without articulating, or where conversations continue about passionate concerns among our contributors and readers.

If there’s just one take-away I hope our blog readers and potential contributors get here, it’s that we trust our contributors to be the experts of their experience. We read each piece that is submitted and publish excellent prose with a clear voice that elucidates people’s real lives.

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Check out the two works of nonfiction included in Arkana‘s Issue 2:
“An Opening Closed to the Public: A Black Lesbian Separatist at Play”
“Pruritus”

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Jacqulyn Harper West is a poet of unfinished parts who prefers writing nonfiction. Her heart is in classic country music, especially the Bakersfield sound, and her scholarship ranges from feminist explications of her hometown’s cultural heritage tourism sites to code-meshing and hip hop as texts in first-year and creative writing pedagogy.

Issue 2 Notes from the Editors: Fiction

A story about the fiction included in Arkana Issue 2

By Cassie Hayes, Fiction Editor, and Liz Larson, Fiction Reader

A thing is incredible, if ever, only after it is told.
            —Eudora Welty, “No Place for You, My Love”

We’re going to tell you the story of the stories that the Arkana fiction editorial team chose for inclusion in our second issue. Is the story of the stories incredible? No. Not really. No golden beam of light came down to shine heavenly light upon any one of the four stories included. No angels sang. There were no trumpets or burning bushes or any other foolproof sign that said we have to publish these, that it is our moral responsibility to share these stories with the world.

But there was a haunting feeling left over after we read them. There was a feeling that we had touched common humanity and heard voices we needed to hear that we hadn’t exactly heard before. There was an awe that always accompanies the taking in of good art.

We had many exceptional fictions submitted, and we were hard pressed to make the tough choices. Believe us, every editorial team loves that kind of problem.

We noticed the uptick of diversity of submissions for this issue. Thank you submitters for listening to our mission statement, and keep that coming, please. We want to hear your voices. We want to continue to hear the voices that have been silenced, but speak to us and bring us the awe.

In the end we had to just go with the stories that worked together, forming a unified whole of themes and ideas. Because we have such sunny personalities, the four stories we ultimately chose deal with death. There’s a strange darkness to every one of them, but also a stiffened lip, “there’s no storm we can’t weather” sort of feeling too. The characters in these stories are survivors. Survivors who, like only survivors can, see and celebrate the beauty of life.

“Central Park: A Ghost Story” involves a strange attraction in blinding snow, the struggle to keep warm, to see, and to get back home. “Falling Season,” our contest winner, similarly involves attraction, strange because of societal norms, and the struggle to overcome the death of a parent. “The Winter Cabin,” our contest runner-up, like all the other stories, deals with attraction in the face of death—in this case a terminal illness—and also like the other stories shows nature as a dynamic force surrounding the characters. Finally, “Follow the Sun” portrays a woman determined to keep moving after the death of a spouse, facing ageism, poverty, and plain old bad luck.

Reading submissions and choosing which pieces to accept is a humbling experience. Yes, humbling. Far from the Judgy McJudgypants persona you might think of in regards to editors at literary journals, we are not of jaundiced eye. More often than not, we feel the awe. Then, after the awe, we cut our eyes right and left, nervously making sure no one has seen our hand, that we actually care very much about the work we read and our submitters. But alas, our tells are loud and we give lousy poker face.

We can’t hide our excitement about these stories. Every time we open up a new submission, we find new complexity—that richness of experience that unfolds when you get to meet another voice. There are always new ways of seeing things, fresh perspectives, and just damn good prose that await our not-so-jaded eyes.

There’s also a feeling of being connected to the larger literary world when you’re getting to read submissions and publish wonderful stories like the four included in this issue, and that feeling is very humbling. We have a responsibility to publish work that both fits into the current literary landscape but also pushes the boundaries of contemporary fiction and society. Stories, when they are shared, can bring human beings together like nothing else, bridging ideologies and backgrounds and fostering empathy. Like the mythic Jacqulyn West, Arkana nonfiction editor, chanteuse, and wicked raconteur wrote in her blog post “Arkana Rooted in Diversity”: We’re all in this together, and we want to represent.

The story of the stories is hardly awe-inspiring. Behind-the-scenes production, getting the art out into the world, involves all the dull bits of reality that the art itself tends to cut out. Reading through submissions, emailing each other about the work, trying to pick four stories out of a plethora of good pieces, inputting those works on WordPress, sending out contracts, etc.

Hardly incredible, even when told.

But, still meaningful. After all, our main goal as an editorial team is not to have a great story, but to share the great stories we come across with you. And that duty and privilege, at least in our humble opinion, is incredible and awe-inspiring.

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Check out the four works of fiction included in Arkana’s Issue 2:
“Central Park: A Ghost Story”
“Falling Season”
“The Winter Cabin”
“Follow the Sun”

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Cassie Hayes is a fiction writer and sometime taco-maker from Waxahachie, Texas. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Arlington and now attends the Arkansas Writers MFA Program and interns at the Oxford American.

Liz Larson is a member of the Arkansas Writers MFA Program at the University of Central Arkansas. She is a bigly believer in risk-taking. Though fearful of falling down, she will do it with aplomb.

ARKANA UPDATE

by the Arkana Staff

It’s alive! It’s alive! Our new issue is now LIVE on the main Arkana website. This issue features plenty of mysteries and marginalized voices, including our recent contest winners and one of our contest runner-ups. We have poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and even translations—and we’ll be including an audio element of pieces being read aloud.

The poems included in this issue touch on nature, writing, art, beauty, and tragedy: “When Can You Come” by Ace Boggess, “Flea Market” by Cassandra Rockwood-Rice, “Creative Writing in Oman” by Kirsten Hemmy, “Don’t Forget Aleppo” by Shahé Mankerian, and our poetry contest winner “Poem for Thalia” by Elizabeth Oness.

The translations, full of mystery, spirituality, and grappling with loneliness: “You come again, Michael” by Zahid M. Naser (translated from Malay by Pauline Fan) and “Man Dines in His Father’s Slippers” by Marko Pogacar (translated from Croatian by Andrea Jurjevic).

The fiction, about the determination to survive and welcome life’s strange attractions despite potential death and destruction: “Central Park: A Ghost Story” by Michael Zimmerman, “Follow the Sun” by Karin Gall, our contest winner “Falling Season” by Judith Kessler, and our contest runner-up “The Winter Cabin” by Matthew Caldwell.

The creative nonfiction, which argue and muse about belonging, identity, and the significance of skin: “An Opening Closed to the Public: A Black Lesbian Separatist at Play” by Shawnta Smith and our contest winner “Pruritus” by J.D. Schraffenberger.

This issue also includes an interview with the poet Oliver de la Paz about publishing, writing, and inspiration.

To celebrate the new issue, yesterday we had a launch party at the Lantern Theatre in downtown Conway (pictured above). Editors read and spoke about the work and we voted to nominate pieces for the Best of the Web and the Pushcart. The party was a great way to get together with the community behind Arkana—the team of people behind the website—and to celebrate the wonderful work we uncovered and unveiled for this new issue. We were also excited to celebrate our recent additions of translation, audio, and our blog to the magazine, as well as this past year’s success in gaining readership and launching this now-not-so-brand-new online literary journal.

Stay tuned here at the Arkana Blog for upcoming notes from the Arkana genre editors about what unifies the pieces we picked for publication, how we decided which pieces to publish, and where our work fits into the current literary landscape. Meanwhile, check out the work for yourself here.

Arkana Represents

The Impact of AWP, Past and Present

by Mikayla Davis, Poetry Reader

In 2014 I attended my first AWP in Seattle, planning to meet up with one of my creative writing instructors and some classmates from community college. I didn’t know what to expect, having only ever been to anime conventions in the past. But I was just starting to think about grad school, and a writers’ convention seemed like the perfect place to explore my options. If nothing else, I knew my undergraduate institution would be in attendance. It would be nice to gather with old friends and get their take on my plans.

So I made my plans, booked my hotel, scheduled out what panels I wanted to attend. I drove five hours across my home state.

Turns out, planning for panels was a misguided decision—as I became completely enthralled by the Book Fair. There were rows upon rows of booths and tables. There were probably at least fifty tables in each row. They filled this huge hall.Graduate schools, magazine publishers, businesses. People were wandering around, buying books, talking to people behind booths. There were author signings and readings, though the latter couldn’t be heard over the buzz of conversation. I spent hours there, just wandering and looking…but I rarely actually approached the booths, and no one tried to draw me in.

Three years later, I had the opportunity to attend AWP again—this time, manning a booth representing the University of Central Arkansas’s MFA program, the C.D. Wright Women Writers’ Conference, and, of course, Arkana.

My one goal was to engage with participants who, like me in 2014, were just wandering…wanting to ask questions, but not knowing how.

But how does one motivate others to visit your booth, when your budget is limited, and you have three major organizations to try and promote?

This is where my many trips to anime conventions came in handy.

If you’ve never been to one, I can tell you that they are bright, loud, and incredibly exciting. Think about Harry Potter when he first visits Diagon Alley. You don’t know where to look because everything seems interesting. People were drawn to the booths that were there, because they managed to be bigger and brighter than the environment around them. The booths at anime conventions often have activities you can interact with. Whether it’s merchandise or games, there is always something you can put your hands on. When I attended AWP in 2014, most of the booths only promoted free merchandise. Nothing was particularly interactive.

Though AWP is a lot less visually stimulating than an anime convention, I still began to brainstorming the aesthetic of our booth. Arkana could afford to be a lot less flashy than an anime convention, and still be visually appealing.

In order to invite visitors to our booth, we included several items on our table. For vertical appeal, we had a large banner that advertised the conference. For horizontal, we also had a banner that stretched across the bottom of the table that presented us as the UCA MFA program. We had various flyers, informational papers, and even stickers on the booth tables.

We also had a “Poet-tree” made from the branches of an actual tree, that at first blended into the black curtain that served as our separator from other booths. But as visitors began writing on the green paper “leaves” we provided, and hung them on the tree, they provided eye-catching pops of color on the dark backgrounds.

The “Poet-Tree” also doubled as an activity, something we could invite passersby to contribute to. It was something no other booth had.

We had another highly visual activity to draw people in. One of the other faculty members at UCA had happened upon a bubble cup vending machine at a flea market. They later found some cups for that machine, and—luckily for us‚—she was willing to let us use it for our booth at AWP.

We filled the capsules with candy, excerpts from women writers and Arkana contributors, and stickers, and invited attendees to donate a couple of quarters to win the prize.

All of these things really encouraged others to visit our table. Throughout the event, we received comments about how we were the most interesting table they passed by.

But there was really only one thing that really made us successful. If we hadn’t acquired a “Poet-Tree,” or a vending machine, or even tables at all, we could have succeeded with just one thing…our people.

With toothy grins, we stood out in the walkways of the Book Fair, greeting anyone who walked by. We offered flyers, compliments, and conversation. We were almost impossible to ignore. If we were sitting behind the table, it was because we were on break, or needed more supplies to hand out.

We were passionately involved in the process of pulling people in, and it showed. It helped that we truly believed in the organizations we were prompting, and particularly, the mission of Arkana. Our booth was certainly one of the busiest tables, and perhaps one of the most engaging booths at AWP.

While I worked the booth, all I could think of was 2014 me stepping forward and really getting involved in the world of writing conventions and submissions. It was one of the most thrilling and exciting literary experiences of my life. I am already eagerly planning on how to improve our booth for next year.

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Mikayla Davis is a UCA MFA candidate who specializes in poetry while dabbling in fiction. After getting her undergraduate degree at Eastern Washington University, she got lost in two-year business degrees from the local community college before finding her way back to the page. She has a love for cats and magic and has been published in various print and online journals.