
Review: Victoria Chang’s “Barbie Chang” Lends Finely-Crafted, Poignant Voice to Life, Love, and Loss
It is an honor to have Victoria Chang as the poetry judge for So to Speak’s annual contest issue, which is currently open for contest submissions,
It is an honor to have Victoria Chang as the poetry judge for So to Speak’s annual contest issue, which is currently open for contest submissions,
We are pleased to announce that the So to Speak Blog’s Immigration Limited Series is now open for submissions. Please read our submission guidelines and submit
In this interview, Julie Marie Wade speaks with us about writing Catechism: A Love Story, and Kristina Marie Darling discusses the book’s design and layout decisions.
Wade: My guiding question for the project was: What happens after you reach adulthood? What next? Of course I was only seeking to answer this question in light of my own experience, but it seemed an important one to probe given how much emphasis had been placed in my youth on becoming the “right” kind of adult—successful, accomplished, and desirable to the right kind of men. My parents had wished for me a life of greater certainties, fiscal and otherwise, than they imagined were possible with a vocation in the Humanities and literary arts. They had always wanted me to be a medical doctor of some kind, but I had chosen to go a different way. The real deal-breaker, from their perspective, though, was that I had also chosen to give up the prospect of a heterosexual life once I fell indisputably in love with Angie Griffin during that first year of graduate school.
Darling: I try to design books that are beautiful as objects in themselves, enacting and communicating the kind of beauty found in the work. There’s a reason Julie’s work has gotten so much well-deserved recognition. She’s a gifted prose stylist who also addresses ambitious and compelling philosophical questions in her work.
Multimedia artist Christine Stoddard explores layers of representation. Her solo show of digital collages, “Little Stories” is on display at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia (July & August 2015).
I think it’s really important to recognize some of the issues I write about are bigger than myself. So if I’m able to connect on a bigger scale (whether that be with a community, nationally, or globally), I’ve achieved my purpose. But, I can’t reach anyone if I’m not first being honest with myself.