Interview with Katrina Denza

Katrina Denza, who as guest editor selected the stories for the awesome Issue 27, shares her thoughts on the experience and on what qualities moved her in these 15 wonderful stories.

Steven McDermott: What surprised you the most about your guest editing experience at STORYGLOSSIA?

Katrina Denza: Well, a couple of things. First, I had no idea of the amount of work reading that many pieces from beginning to end would entail. Not to mention, responding to the work, and later, editing when needed. So I guess I’m surprised you’re still sane after all this time.

That being said, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Another thing that surprised me was the fact that every time I printed out a story and started to read, I was rooting for it. I’ve heard writers say they suspect that editors read looking for an excuse to reject, and probably that’s true for some, but that wasn’t the case with me. With each piece, I was hoping desperately that this would be the one. It was rare that I knew without a doubt a certain piece fit my sensibilities, but when it did, the moment was sweet.

SM: You mentioned in your introduction to the issue that the submission pool was strong and a lot of good stories were passed over. What factored into your final decision for those stories that were close, but ultimately rejected?

KD: The pool was strong. This answer’s probably not very helpful, but the bottom line is my gut. If I read a piece and it didn’t make me stop breathing, then it didn’t get in. There were about three, near the end, that did affect me in that way. The decision then became a matter of which fit the overall tone of the issue most, and regretfully, I had to pass on stories I admired.

SM: Did a theme emerge as you were selecting stories?

KD: Yes, I’d say that all these fictional people have an aching desire for connection. I suppose you could say that’s true of most, if not all fiction, but in these stories this desire was strongly visceral. Another common quality is the honesty of the writing and of the characters. It takes a great deal of courage to be honest at that kind of level. It’s a way of life: to live without apology. I admire that in fiction and I’m drawn to that kind of honesty in real life. One more important quality that makes each stand out is the apparent respect, if not love, the writers clearly have for their characters. I don’t know that every writer is successful writing about such flawed, raw, characters with the same kind of reverence or care, but these fifteen were.

SM: Among the submissions that you didn’t select were there any trends or themes you noticed?

KD: There were a lot of really good stories I considered but passed on for various reasons. And there were a few that didn’t really have a chance with me from the start, but I read through anyway. Those few usually turned me off from the first page by a lack of respect: for their characters, for humanity, for life. For instance, I’m not interested in reading a diatribe, disguised as fiction, on fat people. In fact, I’d advise those writers to come up with a description more imaginative than simply fat. That kind of laziness tells me more about the writer than the character. I also wasn’t interested in misogynist tales, or woman-as-victim stories, or gratuitous violence.

SM: What are some of the magic moments in the stories you selected?

KD: I like this question. Because you’re right, each had that one magic moment, or several, when I let go of the breath I was holding and said to myself, yes! Most of these stories brought me to tears. It might be easier if I list what I loved about each, because I want to include all of them.

In “Hook,” the soft, lulling narration, and then the surprise of what the narrator is asking for. Claudia Smith is a gifted writer in that she’s always plugged in emotionally. There is always this lovely reverence for life that I can feel in her work and this piece blew me away. There’s this moment in the motel when the narrator tenderly holds the man’s head in her lap, such a surprise that was, and yet, truthful, and then her pragmatism in the last paragraph. Pure magic.

In “Passengers,” the magic for me was when the narrator knows he’s learned something about his girlfriend, this interesting yet unpleasant story about why her father did jail time, that underlines how different they are and that they don’t really have a chance, and she takes his hand and asks him not to let go and he squeezes her hand hard, almost willing the inevitable not to happen, but you know it will. Loved it.

Myfanwy Collins has long impressed me with her work because she’s not afraid to show us the underside of the rock, so to speak. It’s as if in her stories, she’s saying to the reader, Look, you hold back your judgment and I’ll show you something you didn’t know about humanity. In “Timmy is Dead,” the narration is witty, it’s mannered, and wonderfully paced and yet there’s plenty of good stuff to be found under the rocks.

In “Wanda,” I was charmed by the simple humanity of it. Here’s this couple trying to hook up, and they’re a bit awkward and out of practice, but they go for it anyway. And Keat’s descriptions are beautiful. In particular, this passage slayed me: “The new road ran along the ridge, above the old road, which wound down the middle of the valley, the town bulging around it like a rat half digested passing through a snake's belly. Like some day the old road would finally shit the town out, a wet heap of dirty bricks, broken bottles, and unemployed old men.”

“I See You in the Bright Night,” is a gorgeous story of acceptance. I doubt many could include child sexual abuse and pull it off with the amount of class and subtlety Prato did. What makes it work is that the abuse is mere history. The narrator does not define herself by it. Instead of focusing on the past, the story is about acceptance on all levels, and of both main characters. To really see a person and still accept them is a gift, and Prato’s story is a gift in that way.

I fell in love with “Bad Ideas” immediately. I laughed out loud in so many places, the characters are wonderfully, heroically flawed and I loved them both. And in the end Ehle doesn’t tie things up neatly and that works for me.

Miriam Cohen’s “To Cure a Hardened Heart,” takes on both how women deal with aging, and the inevitable separation that starts to occur between mother and daughter when the daughter hits adolescence. The way Cohen does this is totally magical and fresh. There are many, many, emotional layers underneath this amazing, absurd premise.

In “The Golden Dragon Express,” what impressed me was how van den Berg managed to create both a technically exquisite piece and a heap of emotional tension in so few words. For anyone wanting to learn the craft of writing short-shorts, this is a piece to be studied. Complete magic.

Terri Brown-Davidson’s piece “Seven Reece Mews” is also magic for me on many levels. The poetry of her sentences, the fearlessness of her subject matter, and the complexity of her characters. Right from the very first, I had an urge to read her sentences aloud, to hear the musicality of them, but underneath all that beauty is a heartbreaking, humane, rich story.

In Kathy Fish’s “Orlando” I was so hypnotized by the precise, exquisitely crafted sentences, and the richly drawn characters that manage to make seemingly ordinary moments extraordinary that by the end of the story I was completely in love with both characters. Her ending, that photo of the two of them that will never be seen by either of them, ever, is a gift to the reader. It’s like the photo is saying, “We were here, we had this moment, and it was enough.” Isn’t that what we all live for?

In “The Cone of Possibility,” Lambert shows us this wonderful microcosm of people whose lives are difficult and yet they help each other out. There’s something so hopeful about this story, something that says “Nothing, not poverty, not destructive forces of nature, not deep emotional pain, can stop our willingness to care for one another.”

Right away, Elaine Chiew charmed me with her hilarious and at times, heart-wrenching story, “Leng Lui is for Pretty Lady.” I laughed out loud, several times. There’s this terrific cadence and rhythm to Chiew’s voice and I dare anyone to read this passage and not fall in love: “My lot could be worse. It could be like Eliza-Eunice who got spanked in the head with a frying pan because her employer thought she'd stolen thirty-two Hong Kong dollars from an ashtray—Eliza-Eunice who died in the hospital a week later from a bloodclot in her brain caused by a concussion. Even if her employer rots in jail, who do you think is the loser? Lucky for me, Mrs. Kong isn't really too much into using an apparatus to give one a whipping. She likes the knuckle maneuver, a sharp and hard rap to the side of the head. Mr. Kong hardly seems to notice I'm around.”

This incredibly imaginative image of an ex-husband sticking out of a woman’s foot like some sort of splinter, is what made me fall in love with “Splinter.” Purcell writes about letting go, and the strength of friendship, with this fresh magical flair and it works. I loved it from beginning to end.

In Matt Baker’s “The Oldest Story in the World,” the narrator is flawed, knows this, and is about to be tested in ways he knows he shouldn’t be. He’s got this wife at home whom he loves, and who loves him—there’s nothing wrong with their marriage—but he’s in some far-off hotel room with an old girlfriend grieving the loss of a mutual friend, and ultimately grieving the loss of his youth. Like so many writers in this issue, Baker doesn’t flinch from the truth and that’s what gives this piece its magic.

I defy anyone to read Alicia Gifford’s “Back Wash” and not be moved. It’s an incredibly well-crafted story, yes, but where it really shines is in its ability to give us an every-man character in Jake, who’s in dire, desperate need to go outside the glittery box of this life he’s worked to create and connect. I suspect we all have a Jake inside us, this stripped down, aching need to be touched, to be loved, to be considered.

If this issue as a whole had a voice it would say “You and I are impossibly fucked up and I love you.”

Issue 27

Katrina was previously a member of the SmokeLong Quarterly editorial team, including guest editing their Issue Thirteen. She is a four-time Pushcart nominee for her short fiction and her stories can be found in recent issues of New Delta Review, The MacGuffin, SmokeLong Quarterly, Cranky, The Jabberwock Review, REAL, Emrys Journal, elimae, The Emerson Review, and are forthcoming from Confrontation and Passages North. Three of her stories have appeared in STORYGLOSSIA": Here's My Hand, Take It" appeared in Issue 13, "Snake Dreams" was awarded first runner-up in the 2006 STORYGLOSSIA Fiction Prize contest and appeared in Issue 16. Her story "Honeymoon" appeared in Issue 25.