Crystal Gibbins: What is one of your
favorite pieces from SRR’s inaugural issue? Why?
Jennifer Dean: One of my favorite
pieces from the first issue is the pair of flash fiction pieces by Kate LaDew
"Thomas Edison's Blue Bird" and "Nikola Telsa's White
Pigeon." Part of the appeal is the creative imagining of these two historic
figures who have seen a recent surge of interest in popular consciousness but
mostly, I like the idea of Telsa and his pigeon. Telsa's depiction is endearing
and haunting, and I appreciate, given what we're learning about the two
inventors, the juxtaposition of Edison being unable to hear a song-bird and
Telsa as being so deeply connected to a pigeon that he mourns for it.
CG: What things do you
like to see show up in SRR’s
submission queue?
JD: Mostly what I notice
about my interests is that I'm looking for examples of expansive but deliberate
thinking in writing, whether it be poetry or prose. What that looks like in
practice is writing that artfully employ conventional and experimental literary
techniques in a conscious and purposeful way to share a message or a
perspective. I'm also looking for writing that does these things and still
manages to surprise me into an emotional response as a human being and not as a
writer appreciating a really good technique.
CG: Who is your favorite
writer? Why?
JD: I have a habit of
going through binge-phases with certain authors. I'll find a book, read the
entire thing in a sitting, and then run to the library or a book store to get
the rest of the author's work. Sometimes, it's about finding out about the rest
of a story line, but most times its just that reading their writing feels like
gulping water after hard labor in the sun. I did that with Billy Collins' work
and B.H. Fairchild, but my favorite instance of doing it was after I read Alice
Hoffman's The Probable Future a few summers back. I loved it so
much I read it twice in a row then spent the rest of the summer hunting down
and reading her books. She's a definite favorite. I guess you could describe
her style as 'magical realism'; her stories tend to be set in New England and
their central characters are almost always women. She has a kind of lyric and
symbolic symmetry to her narratives that read as natural and compelling. As a
poet I appreciate that especially, and it's probably why almost every summer,
whether I mean to or not, I end up eventually re-reading The Probable
Future.
CG: Besides SRR submissions, what or who are you
reading lately?
JD: Against my better
judgment I spend a lot of time reading social commentary blogs like the
feminist-minded Jezebel.com and news-y stuff like Slate.com. I recently read
Simone DeBeauvoir's The Second Sex. It makes normal conversations a
little difficult sometimes. What I read when all of that stuff gets heavy
and exhausting is Cracked.com articles about weird science, animals, and how
scary Australia is. Then I look at videos of baby animals on Youtube. I
packed all my own books but one of the few I kept close at hand (and re-read
all the time) is poet Amy Fleury's Beautiful Trouble.
CG: What are you working
on right now?
JD: I think as a result
of the recent glut of news coverage over things like the kidnapping of Amanda
Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michele Knight in Cleveland, the Steubenville Rape
Case, Elizabeth Smart, and an absolute avalanche of reports of instances of
domestic violence I've begun a cross-genre manuscript on the topic(s) of rape,
domestic violence, and sexuality in the United States.
It started as erasure poetry. There were so, so, so many words
being written about these events and their cultural relevance, about the
victims, about women and men, and then new stories surface and the process
starts all over again. I got so emotionally exhausted reading about these
things that the only way I could initially respond was by blacking out the
worst of it. The practice revealed a lot that required a more expansive
response, so now I'm doing exploratory non-fiction writing. It's tough as a
subject, but I think part of the urge to do this kind of work comes from the
sense that simply documenting or witnessing isn't enough.
CG: Where can we read
your own work?
JD: I have poems
published at Red
River Review, Torrid Literature Journal, Gutter Eloquence Magazine, and
elsewhere.
