EDITORIAL

Interview with Robert Vaughan by Christian Mailloux

From a Cervena Barva Press Reading, September 12, 2007 with Lucille Lang Day and Diana Der-Hovanessian.

F. D. Reeve passed away at the end of June. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laura, their family and friends. Bill and I were very sad and shocked to hear this news. I first met Franklin through Diana Der-Hovansessian when I had the reading series at the Pierre Menard Gallery. Franklin read for the Cervena Barva Press Reading Series and the minute I met him, I just loved him. He was such a nice person, a gem! I wrote on Facebook recently that once in a while in life, you meet someone who touches your heart, Franklin was one of those. We recently were working on his chapbook and getting it ready to publish from his "Blue Cat" series. Rest in peace and know your poetry will live on... You had such an impact on so many of us.

Cervena Barva Press Studio Events Editors Speak Series Guest: Jennifer Barber, editor of Salamander Tuesday, July 9th, 2013 7:00PM Admission at the Door: $5.00 Literary Journal Publishing: Salamander, a magazine for poetry, fiction, and memoirs Because the past several years have seen many changes in the literary publishing world, including the advent of on-line content, on-line submissions, and the use of social media for publicity, we will look at the effect of these changes on writers and editors. We will also discuss the continuities. We will use Salamander-now in its twentieth year-as a case history. Practical matters, as well as questions of editorial selection and vision, will be covered, and discussion is encouraged. Directions & parking: The Center for the Arts is located between Davis Square and Union Square. Parking is located behind the armory at the rear of the building. Arts at the Armory is approximately a 15 minute walk from Davis Square which is on the MTBA Red Line. You can also find us by using either the MBTA RT 88 and RT 90 bus that can be caught either at Lechmere (Green Line) or Davis Square (Red Line). Get off at the Highland Avenue and Lowell Street stop. You can also get to us from Sullivan Square (Orange Line) by using the MBTA RT 90 bus. Get off at the Highland Avenue and Benton Road stop. Inside the Armory: Go inside main doors and walk straight ahead about 30 feet, look for the door on the right to the stairs down to the basement. (There is an elevator just after the stairs.) Once in the basement walk through the basement lobby straight ahead about 20 feet, first door on the right is the Červená Barva Press Studio. Poetry Workshop Series Instructor: Jennifer Barber Saturday, July 13th, 2013 1:00-3:00PM Registration: $45.00 Sense of a Beginning, Sense of an Ending This workshop will focus on two key aspects of the poem: the first line, which defines the speaker, tone, and realm that the poem is about to enter; and the last line, which ideally closes the poem in a way that simultaneously completes the arc while also providing an opening into the silence that follows. Participants should bring one poem of their own, as well as a list of five new opening lines and five new closing lines for poems yet to be written. We will complete an exercise during the workshop and, as time permits, examine some beginnings and endings to well-known poems. Cervena Barva Press Studio Basement Room B8 Center for the Arts at the Armory 191 Highland Avenue Somerville, MA (Directions below) Gloria Mindock: editor@cervenabarvapress.com To register and pay for this Workshop securely using your Paypal account or a Credit Card, please click the button below... Registration: $45.00 Or visit our Workshop page at: http://www.cervenabarvapress.com/workshop.htm Or send check or money order payable to: Cervena Barva Press PO Box 440357 W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222 The Center for the Arts is located between Davis Square and Union Square. Parking is located behind the armory at the rear of the building. Arts at the Armory is approximately a 15 minute walk from Davis Square which is on the MTBA Red Line. You can also find us by using either the MBTA RT 88 and RT 90 bus that can be caught either at Lechmere (Green Line) or Davis Square (Red Line). Get off at the Highland Avenue and Lowell Street stop. You can also get to us from Sullivan Square (Orange Line) by using the MBTA RT 90 bus. Get off at the Highland Avenue and Benton Road stop. A MEMOIR TALK and WORKSHOP Instructor: Mary Bonina Register for A MEMOIR TALK and WORKSHOP with MARY BONINA author of the memoir My Father's Eyes forthcoming September, 2013. A MEMOIR TALK and WORKSHOP Session #1 only: $20.00 Saturday 17 August 2013, 12:00 - 1:00 PM A MEMOIR TALK and WORKSHOP Session #1, #2, #3: $80.00 Saturday 17 August 2013, 12:00 - 1:00 PM Saturday 24 August 2013, 12:00- 1:00 PM Saturday 24 August 2013, 1:30-2:30 PM Session #1, Saturday 17 August 2013, 12:00 - 1:00 PM: An entertaining and informative talk about memoir and other forms of personal writing. Those attending-whether interested in the genre for their own reading pleasure, or others considering a personal writing project-will receive a bibliography of some inspiring examples; a Q & A will follow the talk. Registration for this session alone is open to all readers/writers ($20). To register and pay for Session #1 of the Memoir Workshop securely using your Paypal account or a Credit Card, please click the link below... (Please Note: If you plan to purchase and attend all 3 sessions, scroll down and use the link below instead of this one.) Note: Plan to attend the two one- hour sessions the following week? Make sure to register & attend Session #1 as well (required); fee for the three-sessions is $80. Use button below to register and pay for all 3 sessions! Welcome to anyone interested in exploring the possibilities, those who have already decided to begin their own personal essay or memoir writing project, as well as those who have one in progress. Session#2, Saturday 24 August 2013, 12:00- 1:00 PM: In the first of back-to-back sessions, we'll take a closer look at examples of memoir and other personal writing. Issues considered include: readership, techniques for the telling, and strategies for beginning. Participants will be supplied with handouts as well as pencils and markers and newsprint sheets to create maps, lists, timelines, drawings, etc., which might be used as blueprints for a future personal writing project. 1:00 - 1:30 PM - Lunch Break Session #3: Saturday 24 August 2013 1:30-2:30 PM: A moderated discussion using a selection of blueprints created, brainstorming notes, and writing samples collected in session #2. Focus will be on writing for general interest vs. recording family history and the importance of the elements of good research and writing in both. To register and pay for all 3 sessions of the Memoir Workshop securely using your Paypal account or a Credit Card, please click the link below... Cervena Barva Press Studio Basement Room B8 Center for the Arts at the Armory 191 Highland Avenue Somerville, MA (Directions below) Gloria Mindock: editor@cervenabarvapress.com Or visit our Workshop page at: http://www.cervenabarvapress.com/workshop.htm Registration: Session #1: $20.00 Session #1, #2, #3: $80.00 To register and pay for this Workshop securely using your Paypal account or a Credit Card, please click one of the links below... A MEMOIR TALK and WORKSHOP Session #1: $20.00 A MEMOIR TALK and WORKSHOP All 3 Sessions: $80.00 Or send check or money order payable to: Cervena Barva Press PO Box 440357 W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222 The Center for the Arts is located between Davis Square and Union Square. Parking is located behind the armory at the rear of the building. Arts at the Armory is approximately a 15 minute walk from Davis Square which is on the MTBA Red Line. You can also find us by using either the MBTA RT 88 and RT 90 bus that can be caught either at Lechmere (Green Line) or Davis Square (Red Line). Get off at the Highland Avenue and Lowell Street stop. You can also get to us from Sullivan Square (Orange Line) by using the MBTA RT 90 bus. Get off at the Highland Avenue and Benton Road stop.

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Interview with Robert Vaughan
by Christian Mailloux

Robert Vaughan leads writing roundtables at Redbird- Redoak Writing. His writing has appeared in hundreds of journals. His short prose, “10,000 Dollar Pyramid” was a finalist in the Micro-Fiction Awards 2012. Also, “Ten Notes to the Guy Studying Jujitsu” was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award 2013. He is senior flash fiction editor at JMWW, and Lost in Thought magazines. His book, Flash Fiction Fridays, is at Amazon.

His website is at: http://www.robert-vaughan.com/

Order Microtones from The Lost Bookshelf...

You currently host the Flash Fiction Friday segment of the Lake Effect radio show on WUWM, and have written a wealth of flash fiction pieces yourself. What drove you to pursue this medium?

I was turned on by some of the earliest current writers of the flash fiction genre- Kathy Fish, Etgar Keret, Kim Chinquee, Barry Hannah, Elizabeth Ellen, Claudia Smith. There are so many superb short fiction writers! And I was turned on by elements of heat, a charge I felt when I'd read a tremendous flash piece. So I tried my hand at them, and began submitting pieces to online and print journals in 2008. The Flash Fiction Friday radio show came about in 2010, after I'd been a guest on the WUWM Lake Effect program and read several flash pieces of my writing.

What do you feel can be accomplished through the writing of flash fiction as opposed to longer forms of fictional writing?

I can tell a heightened story in a more condensed, compressed format, and flash fiction challenges me to do so succinctly by selecting every single word that best suits the form. In revisions, I craft each sentence in a manner that is technical, and lyrical, similarly to poetry in this sense. The flash form also lends itself to more play, abstraction, surrealism. I also like to be fresh with the context of the form itself- diptychs, triptychs, the whole piece in one entire sentence, or tweet-sized (140 characters). These are all "constructs" in which it becomes almost a game, or a puzzle in which to fit a piece. So, in this way, the writing is akin to geometry and equations, also.

What are you currently reading? Are there any authors you find yourself returning to again and again?

I tend to read more than one book and genre most of the time. So, currently I am reading Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max, What The Right Hand Knows by Tom Healy, Racing Hummingbirds by Jeannee Verlee and The Many Woods of Grief by Lucas Farrell. This highly informs how I write: I never know what form I might write on any given day. As far as repeating authors, a partial list might be David Wojnarowitz, Patti Smith, Marie Howe, David Foster Wallace, Simon Perchik, Lydia Davis, Mark Doty, Meg Tuite, Len Kuntz. There are many, many more.

Plays you have written have been performed in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. What themes do you like to incorporate in your theater work, and do you use the same subjects in your prose?

Some of the themes I've incorporated into my plays are broken homes or homelessness, unfulfilled dreams (the "American Dream"), impact of death(s) or destructive, addicted behaviors, competitive siblings, abstract beliefs that are unconventional, gullible choices, fatalism versus free will. I do explore some of these same subjects in prose and poetry form(s). And I continue to craft plays, also. My pattern has been to birth a new play about every five years.

Tell us a bit about your editorial positions at JMWW magazine and Lost in Thought magazine. What brought you into contact with these publications? What is your process like for narrowing down submissions?

I've been at JMWW for two years. I started as an associate fiction editor, and last summer when a co-worker, John, left to promote his latest novel, head editor Jen Michalski asked me to step into our Senior Flash Fiction editor role. Around the same time I started with JMWW, I was also flash fiction editor at Thunderclap! Magazine for eight print issues.

Around the time Thunderclap ended, I'd published a piece called "3C's" (also included in Microtones) in Lost in Thought magazine, issue 2. I loved the concept of Lost in Thought- combines stunning art with poetry and flash pieces. When I'd heard that Kyle Schruder, the editor at LIT was too busy to continue the magazine, I wrote and asked how I might help. We negotiated and he asked if I might handle the writers, read submissions, and Kyle would do the rest- find artists, match the pieces, layout and publishing. We published Lost in Thought #3 last October, and published Lost in Thought #4 in February.

As far as submissions go, I like original, inventive and bold work. I'm more interested in a lack of convention than I am getting something right, or trendy bon vivant writing.

Describe your process for writing poetry. Do you approach poems like you would a fiction piece, or do you have distinct ways of thinking about these forms?

I try to write every day. Poems come in rare, unexpected moments. Sometimes from prompts, visuals and music work really well, settings can also assist. My writing studio is on the second floor of my house and I look out into hundred year old oaks, soaring hawks, deer and other woodland animals. It's an honor to live so close to nature and I find that inspiring. I feel like my best work needs to simmer, either on the page, or in my heart. As an example, I wrote a response to the tragedies that occurred in the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin last summer. But not that day, or even that week. I sensed it was four parts, like a musical quartet, and connected to other moments of personal violence that I have experienced. And so, it became "The Thief" which was published in December at Red Fez. I also workshop my writing, in roundtables where I get instant written and verbal feedback. And online, I workshop weekly with other writers in which we share original work.

What are some of the things that inspired you while composing your chapbook Microtones, which was released by Cervena Barva Press in March, 2013?

The concept, Microtones, came from Harry Partch, an American outsider musician who developed an entirely new microtonal scale and built various custom-made instruments, like the Chromelodeon, in which to play his pieces. His life story inspired me, the idea of notes between the standard scales, as we've come to know it, felt right to get "in there," within the construct of these pieces. I grew up playing piano, spent endless hours practicing classical, and modern pieces. I also played various brass instruments (trumpet, tuba, baritone horn). Music has always informed my work, probably always will. I feel links directly, and indirectly from music to writing, lyrics to poetry, and multiple other crossovers, various threads in which I cannot articulate. Microtones became an exploration, then, of the interior lives of the characters, or of life itself. I also loved how it sounds, the aural aspect of the word and realize that I have a desire to work from this perspective: how does each poem sound? I love to read my work aloud, at readings and roundtables. So that is another thread, connection, a loop back to music.

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