Interview with Andrei Codrescu

by Richard Edwards

Essayist, National Public Radio columnist, novelist, poet, screenwriter, and editor of Exquisite Corpse, Andrei Codrescu answered our questions about Exquisite Corpse and his recent book New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings From The City. Codrescu was born in Romania in 1946 and came to the United States in 1966. He is a regular on NPR’s All Things Considered and a MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He has published a vast body of work. For more information about Mr. Codrescu and his works please visit him at http://codrescu.com/. He answered our questions by email.

EWR: It is said that the surrealist method exquisite cadaver is similar to the old parlor game Consequences. Have you ever played that game?

Andrei Codrescu: Never played Consequences, but I’m quite sure that the consequences of writing Corpses are dire. People are transformed, Eros is thrilled. In the mid-60s in New York and San Francisco I collaborated with all the poets I knew. Some of that may have been Consequences. We wrote “classical” corpses, but invented other forms of collaboration as well, from variations on Renga (Japanese linked haiku) to trance epics composed without sleeping until they reached some arbitrary dimensions (like one hundred pages!) I taught students the Way of the Corpse in Baltimore, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. In the mid 90s in New York at the Drawing Gallery I conducted the composition of a “living corpse” by a large audience armed with magic markers who inscribed a naked man for a full two hours. Is that like Consequences?

EWR: You’ve talked before about how much work it takes to edit Exquisite Corpse, and you have even said that your submissions tripled when you took the publication to an online format. Why did you decide in 1999 to begin publishing Exquisite Corpse online?

Codrescu: The delusion of cheapness and the delusion of ease. Paying the printer became exorbitant. I also thought that anything was easier than pasting, folding, mailing, and licking envelopes. Boy, was I wrong! Online publishing takes even more attention, plus constant monitoring of submissions. We tried a “Corpse Cafe” for a while in real time, but it ballooned quickly into hundreds of topics that couldn’t be managed. The graphomaniacs had a field day, even as the editor collapsed.

EWR: Many academic journals refuse to take online submissions. Why does Exquisite Corpseallow writers and poets to submit so freely to such a prestigious publication?

Codrescu: Many academic journals are not worth either reading or submitting to. The reason they don’t accept online submissions is for fear of encountering material that might upset their world-view. At the Corpse, we keep hoping for submissions that might overthrow us altogether. Unfortunately, the very word “submission” erases all revolutionary potential.

EWR: What submissions do you most enjoy reading?

Codrescu: Craven ones. If you are going to submit, submit wholly. Surrender everything. Unfortunately, writers who submit to online publications are not very different from writers who submit to paper mills. Most writers haven’t yet realized the potential of the internet, the possibilities of integrating sound, images, links, live cams, etc. For that matter, neither have we, the editors. The Corpse only recently, and timidly, began to use audio and video. True, we didn’t have the server space for a long time, but things move fast in pixel land.

EWR: Do you ever get any submissions from Romanian writers?

Codrescu: Yes, many. We published in several languages for a time. We serialized a Mexican novel in Spanish and English on facing columns, and used Romanian and other foreign-language texts. The problem there was proofing: those diacriticals can kill you.

EWR: The landscape of publishing has changed a great deal since 1983 when you started Exquisite Corpse. The internet has created a proliferation of online literary publications.

Do you ever surf the web to read literary zines?

Codrescu: I don’t. I can barely read mine. I like old books. I’m not a natural at this surfing biz — I was born at a time and in a country where you could go to prison for a HANDWRITTEN poem, for chrissakes. You could get ten years for typing some stupid thing. If you actually printed a pamphlet that made fun of the dictator’s chin, you could be executed. I know it’s hard to believe, but printed words still give me a chill. What if somebody catches me reading? I still lock up all my writings at the end of the day, either with a password or in a fireproof safe with an exploding timer device.

EWR: Do you have any words of wisdom for editors thinking about starting their own literary publication?

Codrescu: Make sure you’re young. You can do that by counting how many times you become sexually aroused when you read something in praise of your work. If more than once, you’re young. Secondly, only publish what truly turns you on. Don’t pay old debts by publishing bad stuff. Don’t make a “career” out of either publishing or writing. Use your organ (of dissemination) as an investigative tool into the mysteries of the universe. If you encounter a mystery, make it bigger and more mysterious, to quote Lucian Blaga. Don’t suffer fools and have a sharp cadre of in-house critics.

EWR: What do you recommend editors do to help New Orleans, your adoptive home and iconic American city?

Codrescu: Sponsor a New Orleans writer to your writing colony, home, or institution. Come to new Orleans and become great. Every serious American writer did, from Whitman to me.

EWR: What projects can our readers look forward to from you in the future?

Codrescu: A film featuring the Mississippi River. An epic poem about upstate New York utopias (the Shakers, Oneida, the Mormons). A book/novel called “Channelled Wisdom.”

EWR: Thank you.

Codrescu: De nada.

Interview with Nin Andrews

Nin Andrews was called “the Wonder Woman of poetry” by Entertainment Weekly in 2010, and the description couldn’t be more accurate. Here poems draw you in, make you tell the truth, to yourself, in both laughter and deep reflection. . Her most recent book, Southern Comfort (CavanKerry Press) was well received by critics and audiences. Entertainment Weekly says of Andrews, “She’s a sly sophisticate, a raucous verse-maker, a mischievous observer with a long memory.” Publishers Weekly observes, “her art lies in her ability to transport readers to a place where it’s possible to savor the waning of childhood innocence.” Andrews has authored 7 books of poetry, and is the recipient of the 2 Ohio Arts Council grants. She has her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. We were honored by her interview.

EWR: Can you talk a little about what you are doing now? 

Andrews: I just finished Why God Is a Woman, which is forthcoming from BOA in early 2015. The book is a series of linked prose poems about an imaginary island where the genders have reversed roles, and women rule.  The men are the beautiful sex, forever going the beauty salons and worrying about their hair, their weight, their hairiness.  They quit work as soon as they are married.  After all, men are designed for domesticity so what else would they want to do with their lives?

But it’s not just a book about gender roles. It’s about a unique society, complete with its own culture, problems, and myths.  It was so much fun to write. You can hear a sample here:

Three-Minute Fiction Judge’s Favorite

EWR: You have said before that it is the process and act of creating that you truly love about poetry.  Can you say what it is about the process that motivates you to go forward and create more?  Is it a feeling?

Andrews: When I am not writing, I feel like a plant with sunlight.  A sky without color.  A dog without a tail to wag—not that there aren’t tail-less dogs, but you get my drift. I suppose you could say I am addicted to writing.  Without my poetry fix, I go into withdrawal. But you asked what is it about the act of creating that I love, and the answer is that I love the feeling of watching ideas race through my mind in pictures, words, moods, dreamscapes, and colors.

There is a downside to every addiction, and one of the downsides to this one is that I don’t care for my work as much when it’s finished.  So I’m not much good at self-promotion.  I’m much more interested in the next poem, series of poems, or book.

EWR: What do you hope your poetry does in the world?

Andrews: When I was a girl, my mother would read poetry aloud to me. I absolutely hated it.  Poetry was like bees in my brain, buzzing and stinging.  But after a while, the poems began to speak to me.  Some took me into other realms—poems like “The Ancient Mariner” or “Annabel Lee.”   They were magic.  Pure magic.  Like swimming in a cool lake at night.

I think that’s what  art can do for you.  A dance, a song, a poem, a painting—it can transport you, if only for a moment, to unexpected destinations.  That’s what I want from poetry, mine and others.

EWR: Are you obsessed with anything in your poetry today?

Andrews: I’m always obsessed with something.  For a few years I was obsessing on gender issues, which resulted in Why God Is a Woman.  Now I have been thinking about racism, and I am working on a collection of poems based on my southern childhood that focus on race. I’m also obsessing on all the poets who have influenced me, all the poets I have fallen in love with.  I’m working on a collection called The Last Orgasm to honor my poet-gods.

There are a few pieces from that collection here:

Three Orgasms by Nin Andrews

EWR: You do poetry readings.  I was wondering if you like them.  Do you enjoy bringing your work to an audience in this way?

Andrews: I do and I don’t.   I love bringing the poems to life, talking to audiences, and trying to entertain. I also love other poets, and having a chance to meet and talk to them about their process. But I am an introvert, so I find them exhausting.

EWR: Do you draw the cartoons on your site?

Andrews: Yes, I draw them with Flash, an Adobe drawing program.  I use my mouse as if it were a paintbrush or pencil.

EWR: What image, in any of your poems, do you love?

Andrews: Wow, that’s a tough question.  The first thought that comes to my mind—and I don’t know if I love it—but it’s the image of being eaten by a tiger from the poem, “The Cat,” which is in my collection, Sleeping with Houdini.  It’s about a childhood nightmare I used to have. The feeling from that dream is something I still experience when I feel uneasy—like something is clawing my insides.  It’s hard to explain, so here’s an excerpt:

“That night I dreamt I was eaten by a tiger.  How did he eat you? a therapist asked years later.  Slowly.  That’s how.  He kept me alive night after night, licking the salt form my fingers and tears and the nape of my neck until he become my mind.  He became my fears and the song of my thoughts like the soft padding of slippered feet as I walked the hallways on sleepless nights.  He became the absence inside me long after he left, a faint sensation, like tiny claws just beginning to sink into my gut and groin.  It’s that feeling I came to define as being alive.”

EWR: Reading a lot of your poetry I was wondering if you feel that writing about being a women helps you better connect to being a woman, or do you feel that being a women helps you connect to your poetry? I mean do you connect better to yourself by writing poetry, or do you writer better poetry by being connected to yourself?

Andrews: These feel like several questions.  First, I would say that writing about being a woman really did help me connect to being a woman.  It made me think about all of the issues I have with my gender, both personally and culturally.  Second, I don’t know if being a woman helps me connect to my poetry.   But third, I do connect to myself  by writing poetry.  Poetry is a way of listening to my mind and heart, and also of listening to the mind and heart of others.  I think it’s a way of dialing in, connecting deeply, and being present.

EWR: You talk about silence in your poetry.  Do you feel being quiet or being still is good for poetry?

Andrews: I love to be completely alone and still for hours at a time. Then I can listen closely. I write best in silence.

EWR: You have said in other interviews that you write in more than one style at a time.  Can you talk about that process a little?

Andrews: Yes, I always like to have a few projects going on.  I work on one for a while, and then I switch to another.  I do this because I can overwork a poem or a series of poems and totally destroy the quality of the work.  I have an over-zealous critic in my brain.  I might rewrite a poem fifty times.  I start spinning my wheels. Then I make myself switch to another poem or project.  That way I can return to the work later with fresh eyes.

EWR: Do you have anything you would like to add or anything upcoming? 

Andrews: I would say that someone might think, after reading my answers, that I write my poetry alone, which I do of course.  But I keep a community of poets in my mind and on my shelf.  I feel as if I am in an ongoing dialog with others.  If there weren’t amazing poets out there writing and inspiring me, poets like Denise Duhamel, Rick Bursky, Shivani Mehta, David Lehman, Kathleen McGookey, Carol Maldow, Tim Seibles, Claire Bateman, and so many others, I don’t know if I’d be writing as happily.  I love to open my email and find a new book from a friend.  I love the feeling of knowing there are others—I mean there are so many other amazing and beautiful poets—by beautiful I mean, spiritually beautiful—slaving away on each word, each line, each page, creating insightful, moving, even transcendent poems.  It’s as if there is an entire symphony out there, and I love being a small part of it. #

 This interview was moved from another part of our site. This interview is from 2007.

Joshua Radin’s music has created compelling emotional landscapes for such television shows as Scrubs,Grey’s Anatomy, and North Shore. His song “Star Mile” is on The Last Kiss movie soundtrack. His new album We Were Here received 4 stars from Rolling Stone. For more information on Joshua Radin please visit his website.  He responded to our questions by email.

EWR: When did you first begin writing songs?

 Joshua Radin: I first began writing songs almost three years ago. “Winter” was the first song that came out.

 EWR: How does the inspiration for writing a song usually come to you?

 Radin: Well, this first album came out of a breakup with this girl in New York. I lived with her for six years and the last year or two was really rough. I had no way of expressing myself as I was writing comedy at the time, and so I picked up the guitar and all these songs about falling in and out of love poured out.

 EWR: What method do you generally use for writing your songs?

 Radin: I can’t say that I have any method. I usually just keep a little notebook in my back pocket and write down lyrics as they come to me. Then when I feel I have a song, I figure out the melody.

 EWR: Your songs have been featured on the television shows Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy, and North Shore. What is it about your music, do you feel, that makes it such a good backdrop for stories?

 Radin: I guess it’s because I think very visually when I write and also because my voice is so soft that you can use it as background without dominating the dialogue.

  EWR: In your song “Winter” you use abstractions to create phantom-like emotions. What do your songs usually begin as, one line, an idea, an image?

 Radin: An image. Usually. Not always.

 EWR: You have been compared to many different bands like Simon and Garfunkel or Iron and Wine. Who are your musical influences?

 Radin: Both of those, obviously. Also, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Cat Stevens, Elliott Smith and Nick Drake.

 EWR: Are there any musicians who have influenced your work that would surprise your listeners?

 Radin:  Probably not. Ha.

 EWR: What do you love about music?

 Radin: That would take entirely too long to answer in this format. Stay tuned for a novel in 67 segments.

 EWR: Have you been influenced by any writers or poets?

 Radin: Many. E.E. Cummings, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Balzac, Salinger, Pushkin, Hesse, and so many others.

 EWR: What can our readers look forward to from you in the future?

 Radin: Many dates on the road, in this country and others, as well as my next record – but the next record won’t be coming out for some time so enjoy this one.

Interview with Stephen Dunn

by Richard Edwards

Stephen Dunn is the author of 14 collections of poetry and the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his work Different Hours. He is the recipient of many awards including the James Wright Prize, three fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has also been awarded an Academy Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts & Letters, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the Theodore Roethke Prize, The Levinson Prize, and the Oscar Blumenthal Prize. He is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. His newest collection Everything Else in the Worldis out from

W. W. Norton. Professor Dunn responded to our questions by email. This interview was first published on our HTML pages. It was recently moved to Writing Sense.

EWR: You were a professional basketball player, and you’ve said you once entertained the idea of becoming a sportswriter. Is there any game in history you would like to go back to, be there physically, and comment on or write about?

Stephen Dunn: It’s more accurate to say that I was a college player who played one year of semi-pro basketball. I was a pretty good college player and an insignificant pro player. But if I could go back to any one game (it occurred in a rather good league when I was in my mid-twenties), it would be the game I scored 47 points. I was a better me for an hour or two. But if I were to write about a particular moment or event it’s likely I’d choose one of those moments when I failed or came up short. That’s when one is more likely to engage self, and when discoveries tend to occur. Moments of accomplishment make us feel too good about ourselves. Good for the scrapbook, bad for the poem.

EWR:  You’ve talked about how ideas are important to you in other interviews. How do the ideas of your past collections influence your current writing?

Dunn: Ideas, ideally, are what the poem in process helps you find. So I rarely have them before the poem begins. And my philosophical habit is to doubt them when they occur. After all, poets don’t often have original ideas; at our best we have original ways of presenting or enacting them. I think of myself as a man wishing to be overheard as he thinks his way down the page, an orchestrator of effects. But to answer your question as you posed it, the answer is I don’t know. I suppose that I’m the sum of all I’ve thought and imagined and experienced, and that informs my writing in some way. Best for me not to know exactly how.

EWR:  If your poems could become “real” and accomplish anything, what would you most like for one of your poems to do in the world?

Dunn: My poems are real, and now and then speak with some persuasion to strangers, or at least some of my mail tells me so. I suppose I’d like a poem of mine to be memorable enough that people would like to say it and show it to others. Very sentient and intelligent others. I’d like my imagination, for a little while, to become theirs.

EWR:  You won the Pulitzer Prize for Different Hours in 2001. It was your eleventh collection of poetry. Does the collection mark any change in your methods of writing?

Dunn: I truly don’t know the answer to that, except to say that it was written around the time I was approaching 60, and no male in my family had ever reached that age. So it was written with an acute sense of mortality. As for methods, nothing different, the poems came as they came, and I kept the ones that seemed most genuine.

EWR:  You seem to have an almost intimate voice when it comes to relating to your audience. You’ve written many poems in the second person. Do you usually have someone in mind as your audience while you write?

Dunn: “Almost intimate” is an interesting way to put it. I like intimacy of most kinds, but am a rather closed personality, someone who often explores intimacy by managing it on the page. I let the reader know only what I consider to be useful to the poem. Your “almost” suggests that you might be perceiving that. I like boundaries – the best intimacies in my experience come about because of boundaries. Someone letting you in, or you letting someone in. Formal pleasures, in a sense. No, I don’t have someone in mind as an audience when I write, unless that someone is an ideal reader, someone, who if you said the best thing you could say or made the best move you could make, would see and hear it.

EWR:  You are said to be a very good teacher. Is there any one poem you would like to see taught to, let us say, high school students across the country?

Dunn: No, not really. What I’d like to see are high school teachers teaching poems they truly love. I’d like to see them infusing the classroom with their passion and enthusiasm for poetry, persuading by example that poetry matters.

EWR:   At one time you wrote advertisements for a living. What is something you hate about television commercials?

Dunn: No, I never wrote advertisements for a living. I wrote in-house brochures that went to the sales force of a corporation.  Even with that kind of writing, my soul was in danger, which was why many years ago I quit, and tried to see if I was good enough to take a chance at becoming the kind of writer I wished to be. What I hate about most commercials is what I hate about society-speak and political cant. The debasement of language.

EWR:  In your poem “The Last Hours” you write, “There’s some innocence left.” What advice do you give to other poets or writers, who might be living or working in a place they do not feel they belong, about keeping their innocence?

Dunn: If you live fully in this world, innocence is neither possible nor desirable. I’d say seek a deepening of experience. Try to make your craft equal to all those slings and arrows that are certain to come your way.

EWR:  You’ve been interviewed numerous times. Is there any question you’ve never been asked and wish you could answer?

Dunn: None that I can think of right now.

EWR:  What can our readers look forward to from you in the future?

Dunn: With luck, more poems. Perhaps another book of essays.

EWR: Thank you.

This is our Interview with Junot Díaz it was moved from an old html page. It originally published on EWR in 2007.

Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Story and have been featured in Best American Short Stories, and Best American Short Fiction. Díaz is the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Drown.He is a graduate of Rutgers University, and he received his M.F.A. from Cornell University. He currently teaches writing at MIT. He responded to our questions by email.

EWR: How were you inspired to become a writer?

Junot Díaz: A) The desire to tell stories got rooted in me early and never stopped growing. 

Díaz: I’m not so sure. I can’t honestly say what role my writing plays psychically. I just know that if it doesn’t break my fucking heart it probably ain’t worth pushing it on anybody else, but maybe the ‘gritty’ you mention has more to do with my memories of how incredibly fucked-up people can be, even good people, especially good people. EWR: Your stories have been described as having a “gritty” realism. Is your writing ever emotionally therapeutic?

EWR: What music do you like to listen to?

Díaz: Right now I’ve been rocking the new Clipse album which is straight bananas.  I’m mostly a hiphop head (20 plus years and counting) and Latin music lover and have a strange jones for Angolan music.  

EWR: How does an idea for a story usually come to you?

Díaz: A memory, almost always.  More of an emotional memory than an image or a detail and then I try desperately to bring that to life with words. 

EWR: Many contemporary writers like Raymond Carver have described the creation of a story being something like putting one line after another without a plan.  How do you generally write your stories?

Díaz: Well, I write slowly and I write over and over and over again.  I don’t get a real sense of my stories until about the tenth version. Which is a very inefficient way of doing things but it’s the only way I know how to. 

EWR: You have at times drawn comparisons between your work and science fiction. Do you like to read science fiction?

Díaz: Oh, scifi was my original genre. It’s what I read as a kid, the only words I really cared about until I got to college.  Then literature of color blew my wig completely.  Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, Cristina Garcia, Oscar Hijuelos, Maxine Hong Kingston etc.  Wasn’t until I read Octavia Butler that I realized that I could have both. 

EWR: What writers do you feel have most influenced how you create your stories?

Díaz: Shit, so many. James Joyce and Ron Carlson and Denis Johnson and Edward Rivera and Sandra Cisneros and Reginald McKnight just for structure alone. 

EWR: What books are you reading now?

Díaz: I’m on a Spanish kick.  I’m reading Arturo Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s Pathfinders.  Finishing Moby Dick again.  One of those nerds who’s always reading.  Also Richard Sala’s Delphine.  

EWR: What projects can our readers look forward to from you in the future?

Díaz: Novel’s done. Will be out fall 2007. No title yet. But I’ll nail it soon enough. 

EWR: Thank you.

Díaz: Thank you.

On Halloween night I was able to sit down for an online chat and a movie with Brent Armour, the editor and creator of HelloHorror.

EWR:
Here we are on Halloween night with Hello Horror editor Brent Armour. Brent and I will be talking about the state of Horror lit. Brent I was wondering if you might want to talk a little about Hello Horror (http://hellohorror.com/) an outstanding example of a horror lit magazine. What made you decide to start the publication?

Brent Armour:
To be honest, the idea came completely by accident. I’ve always loved horror and I’ve always wanted to start my own publication. My best friend is a huge fan of the show “Dead Like Me” and there’s a company in the show called “HelloHappyTime”. My friend named his YouTube channel after that and I decided to get the URL for him. I couldn’t believe it was available. So I checked out other “Hello__” URLs, and HelloHorror was available. I bought it and let it sit for a bit before I come up with concept for our literary journal.

EWR:
The magazine you are running is pretty unique in that it doesn’t have any movie related horror. It’s all horror lit. Do you find that the web is a robust place for horror these days, and horror fiction? Are you getting a lot of good horror fiction submissions?

Brent Armour:
Well, really, the web seems to be a robust place for everything, if you know where to look. The submissions we receive are awesome. We can’t accept all of them, obviously, but we get a lot of “I’ve been looking for a site like yours”. People really gravitate to the fact that we mete out gore in small doses and focus on the psychological. That’s the number one reason we turn down submissions actually. The horror is too focused on gore.

EWR:
It does seem like some horror sites are over the top gore. That’s one reason that I liked your site so much. Do you find that you are getting more than one submission from each person? I mean, are you getting a following of certain writers?

Brent Armour:
We actively encourage “repeat offenders”.

EWR:
What type of horror submission do you really love, are there a few on your site you would point out?
Feel free to share the links, if you can.

Brent Armour:
I really love serialized work. My first real novel was “Great Expectations” and I think it’s such a good book because it was written as serialized fiction. I’m hoping for more serialized works in the coming issues. Right now we have a wonderful author named Gary Clifton who I’m working with regularly on his “Margot” character. You can find his latest story with us here: http://hellohorror.com/GaryClifton_MindsEye.htm

EWR:
Have you developed a relationship with some writers?

Brent Armour:
Oh sure. Chris Castle, Gary Clifton, Rob Boffard, Derek Plymesser, Jessica Bower. Just to name a few. Chris and Gary have been with us from the start.

EWR:
Are there any works that you really dislike? Submissions I mean. Things you just won’t publish…

Brent Armour:
Well I don’t want to be too specific lest someone know I’m referring to their work, but extreme gore is an immediate no. I can enjoy it on my own, but when I see it in the submission queue I feel it just evidences the fact that this person did not read the submission guidelines and that really miffs me. I also won’t publish something about suicide unless it actually has a horror element. Suicide itself is not scary. It’s heartbreaking. Insert Debbie Downer noise here _____.

EWR:
Do you find that over the top gore is different on the page or in writing than in movies? I’m looking for the reason you turn away gore, is it just too real in writing?

Brent Armour:
I personally think reading is immensely more immersive than movies, but that’s not my reasoning. I just think we have enough gore, and that it’s a cheap and easy scare tactic that’s, pardon the pun, saturated the horror culture.

EWR:
Do you feel like online horror publications are too gory? I’m not asking you to name names…

Brent Armour:
Well, it is what readers tend to want, so they can’t be faulted for it. I’m sure our site would have taken off much faster if we weren’t very selective when it comes to gore. But yes, I think gratuitous gore robs the reader of a real horror experience, which is also why our site has garnered some interest. Although, we do have some gore. I say, use it as a means to an end or an end to a means. But when it’s the means AND the end, that’s too much.

EWR:
How are the submissions you get relating to the state of horror fiction? Do you feel like horror novels are going along with what you are seeing or do you feel like short horror fiction is taking a different direction?

Brent Armour:
I think short fiction is the wind that moves the sails of the novel ship, really. And if the caliber of authors that we see is any indication, the state of fiction is very good.

EWR:
Do you see any trends that you think will be coming to novels?

Brent Armour:
When we first started, we were bombarded with zombies and vampires. I would read submissions, turn on the television, and feel as if I were still reading! But as time went on, authors started to break from these topical frenzies and I think the rest of the horror world will be following suite soon enough.
We do have one author, Chris Castle, who does zombies very well, though. I count his story, “Zombie Cake”, among my favorite zombie pieces.

Here’s a link: http://hellohorror.com/ChrisCastle_ZombieCake.htm

EWR:
I’ve noticed that you have a lot of well published writers. You said before that people say they have been looking a site like HelloHorror, how do you feel you are different, other than what you’ve said already?

Brent Armour:
Well, apart from our philosophy, we have a very specific vision when it comes to everything else as well. We hired Ignacio Carrion from CircaNext.com as our Visual Editor and I think he’s brilliant and keeps the site’s visual integrity up to the highest of standards. Then there’s the time we take with our submissions and authors. If I really believe in a piece, I will work hand in hand with the author to get it up to snuff.

We have four editors and we all read every submission and vote on its inclusion. I get the extra tiebreaker vote. We publish every other month. One day, we’ll be monthly, but I’ve got to quit my day job first.

EWR:
Do you want to name your editors for use, to give them credit?

Brent Armour:
Oh certainly. Louise Preston and Isabella Caromel are both content editors and Ignacio Carrion is our visual editor. In addition to their editorial duties, Ignacio also handles to programming or coding of the site, Isabella frames the issues, picks each story for which issue, while Louise focuses on our relationships with the authors. Isabella is kind of mean, it’s what we love about her, but we don’t let her write rejection letters.

EWR:
That’s funny.

Brent Armour:
By the way: Tip for authors, NEVER respond angrily to a rejection letter.

EWR:
Do you get that often?

Brent Armour:
We won’t read anything you submit at that point. Oh sure. Louise misspelled some guy’s name and he called our journal a dirty rag or some such. Otherwise it was the kindest letter she’s ever written. He was still furious at being rejected and took it out on her under the guise of a typo. People sometimes forget that this is a profession, and to act professionally.

EWR:
We get that here too, sometimes. I could have started with this, but tell us about yourself.

Brent Armour:
Sure thing. I’m a native of Memphis Tennessee, which is more haunted than New Orleans, if you know where to look. I moved to Houston a few years ago, well, actually, Austin, but then Houston. I’m a writer myself, under a pen name, which I don’t share (sorry), and I freelance edit. Full time, I work for the local paper. Sadly, it’s in advertising. Right now, most of my free time outside of work is dedicated to HelloHorror. I read about 7-10 submissions a day.

EWR:
That’s the next question I want to ask you. How much time do you spend working on Hello Horror?

Brent Armour:
All of it. Haha. If we were a monthly publication, I’d probably be locked away in an asylum right now.

EWR:
Haha, it is amazing to me how much time you can spend on a site. Here I do about 5 hours a night sometimes more, it’s amazing really. Why do you do it?

Brent Armour:
Yup, it’s life gobbling, but I do love it. And that’s why I do it. I love to read. I love to edit. I love horror. I’m surprised I didn’t start something like this sooner in my life.

EWR:
Brent when did you start loving horror so much?

Brent Armour:
My dad told me that when I was a child, nothing would scare me. They were taking me to haunted houses at age 6. I apparently would criticize the lack of realism and try to start conversations with the “boogymen”.

EWR:
Haha. As a young child do you remember anything that did scare you?

Brent Armour:
I think I was searching for something that really scared me even back then. The first thing that really did, and I remember this vividly, was my grandmother’s Ouija board. She was already a scary character herself. She showed me the thing and told me something extremely creepy. “Ghosts don’t have a problem with time like we do. You can speak to your dead self with this, if you want, and find out how you’ll die”.

EWR:
Wow, yeah that’s pretty creepy! How old were you?

Brent Armour:
Young. I have no idea how young, 8? 10? Somewhere in there. I think the secret in horror lies in why my grandmother’s ideas about her Ouija board scared me so much. To give you something comfortable, yet unfathomable. Seeing that thing you’re so at ease with placed out there in an unimaginable void. Like a grandmother speaking to her dead self…

EWR:
Seems like it stuck with you. Do you look for that sort of creepy in the submissions you get?

Brent Armour:
Oh yeah. One of the first catchphrases in our request for submissions was that we were looking for works that cause “goosebumps and raised hairs”. It’s that sort of reaction that I hope the pieces we select will inspire in our readers.

EWR:
What’s next for Hello Horror?

Brent Armour:
Our next issue is themed, but I couldn’t bear the thought of a Christmas theme, so I went with religion instead. We don’t have cover art yet, by the way, so anyone reading this who’s interested, please submit!
We’re hoping for more serialization, some nonfiction, but that all depends on our submissions.

EWR:
Do you like new horror or old horror better? I know in older horror fiction they were not so in your face with what was happening…

Brent Armour:
I prefer new horror but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the classics. “The Turn of the Screw” is one of my favorites. But I’ll always love new takes and fresh perspectives. Anne Rice really turned me on to a craving for seeing how the old horror can become the new horror. Any fan of horror who hasn’t read “Ramses the Damned” should get on that, right away.

EWR:
Were you a fan of “The Vampire Chronicles”?

Brent Armour:
I was. I feel they petered into soap opera territory towards the end, but the first 3 or 4 were phenomenal. No one has, or I think can, top her take on the origins of vampires. I think that’s one of the reasons why some of the more modern series, like the True Blood books don’t try to touch it.

EWR:
I agree. I was a big fan too. I also enjoyed Clive Barkers work. Have you ever read The Great and Secret Show?

Brent Armour:
I have not. I read a collection of his shorts. The Books of Blood. He wrote that, right? There’s a story in that collection about a prostitute. She’s going down on a guy and he realizes that the reason she’s giving the best blowjob of his life is because she’s not breathing. That was incredibly creepy to me.
And there’s an example of what I talked about before. Sex is comfortable. Everyone loves it. Barker took that and threw it into the void. Suddenly, this isn’t sex, it’s necrophilia, and the guy doesn’t even realize it until it’s over.

EWR:
We are nearing the end of our movie, and I believe it is just about time to call it a night. I wanted to talk you for speaking with me on this Halloween. I have really enjoyed this interview. Was there anything you wanted to add that I did not ask?

Brent Armour:
You covered everything. Great interview. Also my first, but who’s counting? (Me. Thank you!)

EWR:
Ok, great, Happy Halloween and have great night.
Brent Armour is Creator and Editor in Chief of HelloHorror, and a freelance editor of horror, science fiction and just about anything else. Born and raised in Memphis, TN, he lives with his loving husband and far too many dogs in Houston, TX.