Category: Special Issues

Anthony Isaac Bradley

What are you currently working on?

Another poetry collection/manuscript. I promise I’ll actually send this one out for publication. For real this time.

What advice can you give to other writers?

Don’t write daily like we’re told to because we’re not all wealthy, funded artists. Write when you need to, build some momentum, then give that art some space. Next, polish those results up. Oh, and take criticism. I’ve met seasoned writers and newbies alike who would rather make an enemy than take a suggestion. Don’t be that person. You can’t belong to an art community if you refuse to learn. Seriously, shut the fuck up and listen. 

Can you tell us about your process in writing this series?

Old fashioned heartbreak. Just because it’s cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to you.

Who [and what] inspires you?

I refer to sources outside of the genre I’m working in. Everything is fair game (I believe that’s very important). I’m currently exploring vintage Queer pornography (pre-AIDS). It’s one of the only ways to see the community as it was before Republicans let an entire generation of art and artists waste away.

What are you reading?

Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by the late David Wojnarowicz. It’s a good reminder to be angry.

Anything else you’d like to share about your work or where we can find more?

Contact me at abradley24@hotmail.com for booking info regarding public events or commissions. Read and support the Infrarrealista Review: we’re publishing Central-Texans who don’t have a platform to share their art. Eventually we want to turn this into a non-profit for disenfranchised artists.

View Anthony Isaac Bradley’s work in Issue 1.3: Pride

Melodie Corrigall

Melodie Corrigall is an eclectic Canadian writer whose work has appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, Blue Lake Review, Corner Bar Magazine, Continue the Voice, Sybil, and Awakening Voices Literary Magazine (Check out www.melodiecorrigall.com)

Tell us about your process in writing, “Gift Unsolicited.”

 In recent years, I have been writing shorter stories or flash fiction. Although, all I knew about Flash Fiction was it was short. So I took a course in Flash Fiction and it opened up a new world. There is such a range of possibilities of what FF can be. Looking at lists or similar places where information could hide secrets, I thought of a custom form. It was a challenge to draw a picture of the sender and receiver but leave it to the reader to be a detective and fill in the blanks. Art is a two-way communication: you, the writer, and she/he the reader. Equal partners in the venture with, of course the assistance of the editor and/or publisher and perhaps an illustrator.

Have you read anything good lately?

I am reframing the question about reading anything good to note anything that inspired me recently. With the idea of moving my aging brain out of the box I looked at the documentary My Octopus Teacher. A documentary, (which I usually avoid) about a world under the sea (as someone who thinks the best things humans ever did was to crawl out of the water unto dry land this was a strange choice.) But the film was worth the Oscar. I went to bed thinking about it: the story, the photography, the structure, and the insight. Then I looked at an English production of Uncle Vayna by Chekov (a master playwright and short story writer). I was captured by the excellence of the production and the genius of a writer who over a hundred years ago was so insightful about universal social issues.

Can you offer advice to fellow artists?

Re advice. First be open to inspiration not ask, “Where could this be published.” Get it down: comic, sad, science fiction or literary. Then edit ruthlessly: that poignant line might be in the wrong story. Finally, when the story is ready, check out which publications publish stories or poems like yours (Duotrope is a great resource). Finally, cast off your vulnerable, soft skin and put on your crocodile hide and send out your story. I choose publications that accept simultaneous submissions otherwise my story may be the shelf for ten months and then be rejected. If you get a rejection (as we all do), appreciate that someone has read your story and explained that your story doesn’t meet the publication’s needs. If you are lucky you may get a comment that will improve your story. Then having made changes, if appropriate, send the story out again a.s.a.p.

Do you have any other creative pursuits?

My only other creative pursuits are being a thoughtful human being and encouraging my grandchildren to be creative. The arts community has been especially creative during these difficult times. Hats Off to all the editors, publishers and illustrators etc. who are keeping the short story alive and doing it for love of literature with little or no income for their efforts.

Which authors inspire you?

I am inspired by Barbara Pym, who had a good run as a novelist, then a long period when she was consider “out of date” then a come back in later life. And Magnus Mills who is described as “charming, timeless and slightly at a tangent to reality.” I describe myself as eclectic and these two writers are as different as night and day as are my stories. Don’t worry about genre or the flavor of the month, just get your story down. And have fun! 

Melodie’s work appears on page 13 of SBR’s May Issue 1.2

Jason Brandt Schaefer

Jason Brandt Schaefer

Jason Brandt Schaefer lives and works in Boulder, Colorado, where he founded the Empathic Editors book editing cooperative. In addition to his explorations in experimental poetry and storytelling, he’s a songwriter performing under the stage name Jason Brandt and a novelist seeking publication for his debut, titled Handfasting, a drama about a rural Texas family that converts from Lutheran Christianity to Wicca, the neo-pagan Earth religion better known as witchcraft. When he isn’t writing, editing, or playing music, he’s alternately out climbing and mountaineering in the wilderness or observing birds and squirrels in his back yard. He has work in The MacGuffin, at Past-Ten.com, and on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music.

What was your inspiration for this series?

The work of Carl Andre and other concrete poets out of the 1960s planted the seed. As an editor, I spend my days poring over text to the point of semantic satiation, where words repeated or perceived too often begin to lose their meanings. In this particularly tumultuous era of U.S. history, the loss of meaning within even the most basic concepts, sometimes even the definitions of words themselves, has forced us to construct new meaning out of the symbols we have become used to. So this is an editor-poet’s take on the situation.

Tell us about your writing process.

It all begins with repetition. Of a whole word, a consonant or vowel group, or a single letter. I use a Courier font group to begin to explore permutations because, like a typewriter, each character occupies the same amount of space on a page, allowing me to produce a poem whose letters match a grid. When I find something interesting within a word or phrase that through permutation can produce some slant meaning, I attempt to capitalize on it using whitespace, arrangement, and the color red, signifying editor’s ink, the educator’s pen, and of course blood, the fluid of both life and death. Perhaps these words are bleeding at the seams where they have been deconstructed.

What are you reading?

Right now, I’m reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist, and Stephen Graham Jones’s novel Growing Up Dead in Texas. And a lot of travel and nature writing and print news. Maybe I should read something more fun.

What advice can you give other readers?

Read a ton, learn your craft, open up to the world, find your own style and process, trust it, and keep going. That’s all the advice you need. There is no wrong way to do art.

What are some of your other creative pursuits?

I’m seeking representation for a novel I finally finished in 2020 and considering diving into a new novel idea that’s been rattling around in my head. Alongside that, I’m playing saxophone in a funk band, and I’m leading a small group as a singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Find more of Jason’s work beginning on page 12 of Skink Beat Review’s Open House: Issue 1.1