INTERVIEWS

Last month I had the honor of being featured in Sapling, the weekly newsletter of Black Lawrence Press.

Sapling is a subscription-based newsletter dedicated to showcasing small presses and journals (details and subscription options can be found here.)  It’s an excellent resource for writers that includes open submission calls, interviews, and more. My interview as RwA founding editor is reprinted below, with permission.

Sapling: What should people know who may not be familiar with Riddled with Arrows?

Shannon Connor Winward: Riddled with Arrows is an online literary journal dedicated to metafiction and metapoems (ars poetica), and writing that celebrates the process and product of writing as art. We are zealously writer-friendly: we offer a modest payment for contributors, a super-fast turnaround on fee-free submissions and—when possible and warranted—a personal note for rejected work.

 

Sapling: How did your name come about?

SCW: The journal takes its name from “Poetry,” a poem by Pablo Neruda:

“…and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows
, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.”

 

SaplingWhat do you pay close attention to when reading submissions? Any deal breakers?

SCW: Riddled with Arrows exclusively publishes metafiction/poetry and writing about writing. You could submit the most stunning piece of writing we’ve ever read, but if it is not about writing, or at least self-referential in some way, we can’t use it.

Sapling: Where do you imagine Riddled with Arrows to be headed over the next couple years? What’s on the horizon?

SCW: Right now we’re working towards sustainability. Riddled with Arrows is a passion project that is entirely writer-funded—we have been blessed with a wide network of writers and linguaphiles whose financial support has launched us into our second year—but we are hoping to generate enough in-house income to keep paying contributors for years to come, and maybe even raise our contributors’ rates.

Content-wise, we are very interested in the interactive nature of web design as it can be applied to literature.  We’ve been dabbling in hypertext and embedded effects that enhance the reading experience—we definitely want to do more of that.  The focus of Riddled will always be the writing, but we’ve got some fun interactive projects in the queue.

 

Sapling: As an editor, what is the hardest part of your job? The best part?

SCW: The hardest part comes at the very end of the selection process when I have to choose which of my favorites to put in an issue and which to set free.  It’s always painful to say no to something wonderful that just doesn’t fit, for whatever reason. The best part, though, is seeing that finished product, and admiring the way all the selected works fit together to complete an issue. Particularly when Ro, our Design Editor, starts working her magic to make the words come alive on the site–it always surpasses my original vision. With all of the administrative work that goes into producing a journal, even an online one, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of why we decided to do this—but that moment when it finally comes together makes it all worthwhile.

 

Sapling: If you were stranded on a desert island for a week with only three books which books would you want to have with you?

SCW: An anthology of world poetry, a blank notebook, and the fattest dictionary I can find.

 

Sapling: Just for fun (because we like fun and the number three) if Riddled with Arrows was a person what three things would it be thinking about obsessively?

SCW: Which journals are opening/closing to subs this week, a better word than “perspicacious” in the penultimate line of that poem, and whether coffee is the source of or the solution to all these strange somatic symptoms…

 Shannon Connor Winward is the author of the Elgin-award winning chapbook, Undoing Winter and winner of the 2018 Delaware Division of the Arts Emerging Artist Fellowship in Literature. Her work has appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Lunch Ticket, The Pedestal Magazine, Minola Review, The Monarch Review, Qu, Literary Mama, Rivet, and elsewhere.www.shannonconnorwinward.com
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  For more info:

The editors at The Alchemy Press have been posing Q&A to the writers of the Book of Ancient Wonders

Publication7

Read the original interview at the publisher’s blog ALCHEMY PRESS

Q&A: Shannon Connor Winward

Under the spotlight today: SHANNON CONNOR WINWARD
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Tell us a little about yourself, and what you like to write?

I’m an American author and poet. Most of what I create is speculative – some sci-fi, fantasy, and what’s been called “mythpunk” – though I write a little bit of everything. On my blog I talk about real life: the writing process, the emotional ups and downs. I chronicle my experiences raising a child with special needs, because I feel there’s a lack of information and empathy for families who have to go through this, and it’s my way of contributing to a larger conversation. I like to write about what touches me, what fascinates me. A lot of my stories deal with death and madness, but not in a macabre sense. I like to explore liminalities.

What inspired you to write Passage?

I minored in anthropology as an undergrad, with a special interest in the Celts of Britain and Ireland. I was writing a thesis on Celtic death rituals, which is largely speculative due to a scarcity of archaeological evidence. I came across a discussion of how the Celts may have used the monoliths as a means of connecting themselves psychologically to the landscape, since they had emigrated there, and places like Newgrange and Stonehenge predated their culture considerably. I became so distracted with the idea that I wrote “Passage” instead of what I was meant to be working on. I scribbled it in the middle of my research notes.

If the TARDIS could drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go?

I’d love to visit Great Britain in the Iron Age – though, to be honest, if the Doctor came to get me, I wouldn’t be picky.

What appeals to you most about ancient sites/landscapes?

I feel a closer kinship to ancient religions than to modern ones, at least in a spiritual sense. Our ancestors were more intimately tied to nature and her cycles, and that is reflected in their sacred sites.

What do you have coming out next?

I have poems due out in various magazines, all TBA, and I’ve been invited to participate in some local fiction anthologies. Right now I’m working on a sci-fi story inspired by Egyptian mythology and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a modern-day fairy tale about a wicked librarian. I’m also working on my second novel, an urban fantasy, and my first poetry collection. I publish updates and links to my work on my blog.

[Shannon Connor Winward’s writing has appeared in many venues including: Pedestal Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Strange Horizons, Illumen, This Modern Writer [Pank Magazine], Hip Mama Zine and the anthologies Twisted Fairy Tales: Volume Two, Jack-o’-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy and Spectacular: Fantasy Favorites. Her poem “All Souls’ Day” is nominated for a 2012 Rhysling Award.]