Posts Tagged: Editors Showcase

“What it is that moves and thrums”

At the IR Editors Showcase, we were presented with some challenging, excellent questions. I asked our outgoing and incoming genre editors to respond, and I’ve corralled their answers for you. Today, we have Fiction Editor Rachel Lyon, Poetry Editor Cate Lycurgus, and Nonfiction Editor Sarah Suksiri!

 

1. Why are literary journals significant?

RL: I think the most meaningful thing to me about lit journals is that they’re a way of forming community without necessarily sharing a space. We can read the work of other writers, and feel close to them, and participate in the dialogues that interest us with people whose work we respect, without being in the same city or state or country. Plus, because they are curated by editors who know something about what’s going on in their field, the quality of work tends to be higher.

CL: Literary publications are a testament to the power of the imagination and the power of language, both of which are undervalued, yet necessary parts of our lives–in order to innovate, to make sense of the nonsensical, to connect with others, to provide wonder or surprise or consolation or astonishment. Literary journals have the potential to find this expression and to share it.

SS: Journals are significant, because they make us keep asking this question. Seriously, what other line of work and craft is there where the participants keep asking themselves, “Is anything that we’re doing relevant?” The fact that we (journals) are so concerned with what it is that moves and thrums in the world is part of what makes us relevant.

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Indiana Review Editors Showcase

Indiana Review is sponsoring another reading: this time featuring the work of our lovely editors! Join us Monday, April 23rd from 7-8:30 P.M. in the Great Room at the Honors College (when you enter the building, take a right and then another right immediately and you’re there). Deborah Kim, Jennifer Luebbers, Rachel Lyon, Cate Lycurgus, and Sarah Suksiri will read selected works featuring a mix of fiction and poetry.

Deborah Kim is the Editor of Indiana Review, and she writes about magical creatures, food, and home. She would like a DeLorean one day.

 

Jennifer Luebbers serves as Associate Editor, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2011, Cream City Review, The Journal, Massachusetts Review, and Washington Square Review, among others. Most recently, Marie Howe selected her poem, “Barn Elegy,” as the recipient of Washington Square’s 2012 Poetry Award.

Rachel Lyon is the Fiction Editor. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared in Toad, Hobart, The Saint Ann’s Review, and Arts & Letters. She was this year’s recipient of the Ledig House International Writers’ Colony Fellowship. She also volunteers with the Bloomington Writing Project, a free community resource for help with writing, and does art features for the NPR station WFIU.

Cate Lycurgus is the Poetry Editor. Outside of her IR duties, she remains busy spreading her love for literature. Like Rachel, she is also currently working with the Bloomington Writing Project. In addition, she teaches creative writing to second and third graders in The Project School in Bloomington.

Sarah Suksiri, the Nonfiction Editor, gets excited about creative and journalistic nonfiction, but spends her time writing poetry. She has also published several restaurant, art, and book reviews.

 

Following their readings, we’ll have a Q&A session to discuss publishing and the future of creative work. If you have questions about the publishing industry or the writer’s world (ranging from print vs. digital literature, making it in a world saturated with voices, how to handle rejection), we’re happy to answer them. We hope to have an honest conversation about both the joys and the difficulties of thriving in these communities. Above all, we’d like to celebrate the value of creative work to society and to the individual.

We are also excited that two of IU’s undergraduate literary journals are co-sponsoring the event with us: Crimson Umbrella Review and Labyrinth.

The Crimson Umbrella Review is a self-run and self-directed online literary journal that is published monthly during the academic school year. The review’s goal is to provide every writer or artist with an umbrella to protect and shelter them as they develop their work and writing skills. The Crimson Umbrella Review believes that each writer or artist should have a safe-haven that allows him or her to publish his or her works freely, in a supportive, stress-free zone.

Labyrinth is a literary magazine sponsored through IU’s Hutton Honors College. Labyrinth’s goal is to publish outstanding undergraduate work in poetry, prose, and visual arts. They accept submissions in photography, painting, poetry, and prose (up to 1000 words). They hope that by having a magazine that displays the best of students’ artistic achievements, they encourage others to share what they have to say with the rest of the student body.