Reading Period Now Closed
Filed under: Announcements, Art, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Post by: Sheila M
Thank you to all of our submitters for the the Fall 2012 Issue! We got a record number of creative work and are extremely excited to read through every piece! We really appreciate your support of So to Speak and discussing with us the effects and affects of feminism in our changing world. To all of our submitters, you can count on hearing from us in the near future!
Our next reading period for the Spring 2013 issue opens August 1, when we will be holding our poetry and nonfiction contest!
Happy Writing!
March 15, A Perfect Date to Submit Your Work
Filed under: Announcements, Art, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Post by: Sheila M
Our reading period for the Fall 2012 Issue closes today! We are looking for great poetry, nonfiction, and art , as well as fiction for our Fall 2012 contest, which will be judged by Ru Freeman.
If you haven’t hit that submit button yet, go ahead and do it now! We are excited and ready to read your work!
For the full submission guidelines, please visit our Submit page. To get a feel for what So to Speak enjoys reading and publishing, check out our inaugural online summer issue So to Speak Summer 2011 Online Issue featuring poetry and artor purchase a back issue!
Follow us on Twitter @SoToSpeakJrnl for fun feminist facts, musings and politics, and other awesomeness related to the literary and art world.
Happy writing!
Virginia Events:Poetry Slam
Filed under: Poetry, Post by: Sheila M, Starring Local Feminists
I enjoy curling up with a poetry book on a quiet evening as much as the next gal, but sometimes I just really want the in-your-face performance politics of slam poetry. This Friday, January 20th, Athenaeum in Alexadria will be hosting a poetry slam featuring local Virginia poet, Shelly Bell.
The event is free (yay!) with the opportunity for interested attendees to participate in the open mic for $10. Slam winners could earn a prize of $100 for first, $50 for second, and $25 for third. This is an awesome way to enjoy the company of fellow spoken word artists, get active and inspired, and perhaps make some coin!
A Collaboration Narrative of Julie Marie Wade and Sara J. Northerner
Filed under: Art, Fiction, Interview, Nonfiction, Poetry, Post by: Sheila M
I.
I first met Sara Northerner when I began my coursework in the PhD in Humanities program at the University of Louisville in August 2008. Sara was in her fourth year of the program at that time, having already completed coursework and nearing completion of her comprehensive exams. Since we were both graduate teaching fellows, I shared a lively office environment with Sara and a number of our colleagues, and I knew from our interactions that Sara was a serious, self-motivated scholar and a diligent artist. Though I cannot recall seeing any of her artwork during that first year, I can recall hearing her speak about art and watching her interact with students from her Creativity & the Arts and art theory classes. I recognized that she spoke, not only as a teacher committed to the study and appreciation of art, but as a practitioner—a practicing artist.
In May 2009, at the end of my first year as a doctoral student, my first book—a collection of lyric essays called Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures—won the Colgate University Press Nonfiction Book Award. Almost as soon as I received the news, I was encouraged to begin thinking about cover art. As seems to be typical in the publishing industry, Colgate University Press retained the last word for accepting or rejecting a work of art for the cover, but they actively encouraged me to seek out something I found representative of my book. On a hunch, I turned to Sara.
Though we were at this time only casual friends, the experience of working together to select a cover for my book helped to grow and solidify our friendship. Sara asked to read my book in manuscript form to help her get a feel for the kinds of images she might select from her own extensive catalogue. After twenty-five years as an artist, she understandably had a lot to choose from. She also told me, “If I don’t have anything, I know a lot of artists. I will help you find something that will work.”
Sara tells me now that her initial thought, just from hearing me talk about the formally experimental nature of the lyric essay and its reliance on fractured, braided narratives, was that the cover should be something abstract or perhaps something specifically illustrative of the book’s motifs, something like a wishbone itself. That was until she read the book. In reading, she took detailed notes and concluded that the cover needed a much more ethereal image that connected recurring images from the text, images like water and the body. She went through her own catalogue of photographs and selected some that seemed to have a quality that resonated with my prose. One of these was a color photograph of a rock formation in the middle of the sea that Sara had taken off the coast of Portugal in 2000. She thought it was an image I might like but didn’t tell me about her own hunch when we first met to look at images.
During the initial slide show of Sara’s art, I realized I liked everything I saw. I discovered, sitting in that cool coffee shop on a hot Louisville summer afternoon, that I was more than just a fan of Sara’s attitude about art. I was a fan of Sara’s art. When the photograph of the rock formation passed over the screen, I asked her to stop. “What’s that?” I asked. “And why is it so striking to me?”
A light came into Sara’s eyes as she told me about taking the photograph nearly a decade before from a cliff above the misty blue Portugal waters. Everything about the colors, the perspective, and the juxtaposition of water and land spoke to me instantly, viscerally. She smiled and said mysteriously, “I might have the right piece for you.”
What I didn’t know yet was that Sara had transformed this photograph into a compelling work of installation art that she kept in her home. The image was enlarged, printed digitally in several sections on a Japanese woven printmaking paper, then hand-stitched together. Sara’s stitching was visible to the viewer in a way I recognized as similar to my own practice of calling attention to the writing process in the midst of a lyric essay. For my readers also, my own seams are often showing.
And then of course, there were the eyes. For both Sara and me, the pair of eyes that recurred throughout the piece like a visual refrain suggested the eye-opening nature of art and the element of personal and sexual awakening that appears as a dominant theme in Wishbone. Sara later remarked, “The eyes have a certain meaning for me that they don’t for anyone else.” They are her mother’s eyes.
As much as I was taken with the original photograph, I was that much more enthralled by the work of art that Sara had created from it. Originally, for Sara, the art she had created from the photograph had been a transitional piece. She was working on a new process that combined an attention to bodies and landscapes. To prepare to share with my editors at Colgate, Sara photographed the final image many different ways, lighting it from the front, from behind, playing with its translucent quality. In this process, as her artwork evolved once again—this time into the cover of a book—Sara recounts that she was invigorated by seeing her visual art become part of another artist’s literary journey. The image, as she says, “took on a new meaning” as it began to relate to the words in my book.
The photographs of Sara’s mother’s eyes were from an earlier project, and Sara hadn’t yet told her mother that she had incorporated her eyes into this image. When she shared the image with her mother and asked her permission to use it, eyes included, as part of a book cover, her mother was receptive to the idea. She became our third collaborator, remarking to Sara, “Then, the eyes are universal. They aren’t necessarily mine.”
From there, with remarkable ease, the book came together. My editors at Colgate loved it, and to this day, the cover is one of the most remarked-upon aspects of Wishbone. When the book cover was projected on the enormous screen at the Lambda Literary Awards in May 2011, there was an audible gasp in the room. The image was that striking. I wished, in fact, that Sara had been there to hear it. Read more
Why I Am an Argument
Filed under: Lesson Plans, Post by: Sheila M, Starring Local Feminists
Closing out the Why I Am an Argument series for the year, 1st year college student, Estephanie, speaks honestly about her experiences of being a student, a kid, a woman, and Hispanic in America.
Managing to do both Great in School and Work
I think we have all read articles in newspapers, online, or elsewhere regarding high school drop outs and college enrollment statistics. We have all seen that these statistics show that minorities have the lowest rates on graduation and attending college and even finishing college. According to The National Canter for Educational Statistic, Hispanics actually make up the highest drop out high school rates. That is why I believe when people see Hispanics they sort of look down upon them. Like the time I was at a store, and the sales guy mentioned that I had clear English, which was a weird comment for me. It showed that when he sees a Hispanic, he thinks of them all having Hispanic accents. Or the time I was babysitting, and took the little girl to the park; this lady made a comment to someone else about me having a child at such a young age. I assume she thought the little girl was mine since people think of Hispanic females having kids in their teens. People seemed to give me a surprised expression when I tell them that I am going to college, which is also funny because I think the typical thing to do after high school is go to college. Isn’t it? My point is that I am an argument because I am a minority. When people say that it is not possible to go to school, I can show them that it is not impossible. Even though my family struggled with income, and eventually had our house foreclosed, that never stopped me from finding a way to achieve and go to school. There are always ways to overcome obstacles. For me, I started working, and have managed to do great in both school and work. I can show to people that even if you are a minority, you can go on and do good things and beat the statistics and the stereotypes that people have set for you.
Enjoy what you just read? Support feminist teachings in the classroom and tell Estephanie your thoughts!
♥ Sheila M
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