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Midwestern Gothic #11
Midwestern Gothic: Issue 11 Fall 2013
Featuring Creative Nonfiction from Emilio DeGrazia, Tanya Eby, Rachael Hanel, Amanda Hilles, Nathan Jandl, Kim Lozano, David Mathews, Alex Mattingly, Lori A. May, Micah McCrary, Jennifer Murvin, Keith Rebec, David Wayne Reed, John G. Rodwan, Jr., Sara C. Ross, Mikaela Shea, Richard Terrill, Tracy Tucker, Michael Van Kerckhove, James Vescovi, Scott Winter, Dave Woehrle. Midwestern Gothic is a quarterly print literary journal out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, dedicated to featuring work about or inspired by the Midwest, by writers who live or have lived here. Midwestern Gothic aims to collect the very best in writing inspired by the Midwest.
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 16, 2013
79 people want to read
About the author
Midwestern Gothic
22 books3 followersMidwestern Gothic (ISSN 2159-8827) is a quarterly print literary journal out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, dedicated to featuring work about or inspired by the Midwest, by writers who live or have lived here. Midwestern Gothic aims to collect the very best in Midwestern writing in a way that has never been done before, cataloging the oeuvre of an often-overlooked region of the United States ripe with its own mythologies and tall tales. Don’t be fooled by our name. Gothic fiction is often defined as the inclusion of deeply flawed, often “grotesque” characters in realistic (and, oftentimes unpleasant) settings/situations. At Midwestern Gothic, we take to heart the realistic aspects of Gothic fiction. Not every piece needs to be dark or twisted or full of despair, but we are looking for real life, inspired by the region, good, bad, or ugly. Ultimately, we’re striving to catalog the best of Midwestern writers, and whether it be pieces physically set in the Midwest, or work inspired by your time living here, we want it.
Source: About Midwester Gothic
Source: About Midwester Gothic
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 17, 2013
I won this anthology of non fiction shorts through a Goodreads first reads giveaway. It's always hard for me to rate a collection, particularly when it's one of many different authors. All the pieces were well written, and as can be expected, some hit harder with me than others. A 2 rating may seem dramatically critical, but I am using the "it was OK" descriptive.
To be fair, there were 4s and 5s in there. For me, my favorites were "Beating Up Chuck Klosterman", "Now I Understand", "The Killers", and "Listen for the Birds". Each of those were entertaining and there were others I liked well enough.
I think the "non-fiction" short story feel might have also influenced my rating. In part essays, in part mini-memoirs......I must admit towards the end the process was a little stale for me so if your work was in the back of the group I apologize as my interest had fled. It is a very interesting concept, and really interspective non-fiction readers will likely be delighted. In this case, my personal taste has more to do with a 2 star rating than the quality of the writing.
To be fair, there were 4s and 5s in there. For me, my favorites were "Beating Up Chuck Klosterman", "Now I Understand", "The Killers", and "Listen for the Birds". Each of those were entertaining and there were others I liked well enough.
I think the "non-fiction" short story feel might have also influenced my rating. In part essays, in part mini-memoirs......I must admit towards the end the process was a little stale for me so if your work was in the back of the group I apologize as my interest had fled. It is a very interesting concept, and really interspective non-fiction readers will likely be delighted. In this case, my personal taste has more to do with a 2 star rating than the quality of the writing.
October 7, 2013
***EDITOR'S COMMENTARY***
The Fall Issue of Midwestern Gothic is a special one – for the first time we’re focusing exclusively on Creative Nonfiction. Over the course of publishing over ten issues we’d always get a few request here and there about whether we accepted essays. This go round, we thought it’d be interesting to deviate from our format a little bit and explore the Midwest in a new way.
Even though folks don’t think of us as a Creative Nonfiction publication – we still received a lot of fantastic work from around the Midwest. There was plenty we loved that we had to turn down. A lot of the essays we received explored similar themes and it became an unenviable task to put together an issue that covered the spectrum of the Midwestern experience without becoming a one-note issue. As always, I was extremely happy with the result – if only because we published a handful of humorous pieces in this one. We say we want the “good, bad and ugly,” and we get a lot of bad and ugly. It was refreshing to read pieces that made me laugh out loud for once. (Take note, send happy stories in the future, guys!)
My favorite in this issue was “Beating Up Chuck Klosterman by Scott Winter. Right from the beginning scene, in which he pays off the title right away, you can’t help but chuckle at Winter’s self depreciating and unecessarily vindictive writing. The whole piece is about how the author has lived and dealt with a perceived rivalry and Klosterman’s meteoric rise in the world of not just literature, but pop culture. Here’s a short excerpt:
"The fantasy is visceral and consequential and really pretty easy. We step out into the alley behind the Zoo Bar, the three of us, and Pete and I light up our straight Marlboros, not the Lights we’ve been smoking with the idea of tapering off to healthier lungs and longer lives. But who needs to prolong lives like these, anyway?
We talk to him about the Oscars, about the upcoming Transformers movie, about Family Guy or the BCS system or Oprah’s Book Club—any sort of low-level cultural phenomenon that seems to fascinate him, as shown in his books, in his radio commentary, in his sports blogging. In mid-sentence, I bull-rush him into the dumpster. More than my 190 pounds, what pins him there is his shock. I deliver body blows until his ego drops somewhere beneath his bruised kidneys. I’m all adrenaline and I knock his teeth into his throat, then I’m spent. Above his bloody face and broken horn-rims, I light up another smoke, and Pete and I head inside to finish our beers, drinking in the taste of the hops, the adrenaline of physical accomplishment and literary purification.
From this point forward, our lives would be better.
They would have to be."
The Fall Issue of Midwestern Gothic is a special one – for the first time we’re focusing exclusively on Creative Nonfiction. Over the course of publishing over ten issues we’d always get a few request here and there about whether we accepted essays. This go round, we thought it’d be interesting to deviate from our format a little bit and explore the Midwest in a new way.
Even though folks don’t think of us as a Creative Nonfiction publication – we still received a lot of fantastic work from around the Midwest. There was plenty we loved that we had to turn down. A lot of the essays we received explored similar themes and it became an unenviable task to put together an issue that covered the spectrum of the Midwestern experience without becoming a one-note issue. As always, I was extremely happy with the result – if only because we published a handful of humorous pieces in this one. We say we want the “good, bad and ugly,” and we get a lot of bad and ugly. It was refreshing to read pieces that made me laugh out loud for once. (Take note, send happy stories in the future, guys!)
My favorite in this issue was “Beating Up Chuck Klosterman by Scott Winter. Right from the beginning scene, in which he pays off the title right away, you can’t help but chuckle at Winter’s self depreciating and unecessarily vindictive writing. The whole piece is about how the author has lived and dealt with a perceived rivalry and Klosterman’s meteoric rise in the world of not just literature, but pop culture. Here’s a short excerpt:
"The fantasy is visceral and consequential and really pretty easy. We step out into the alley behind the Zoo Bar, the three of us, and Pete and I light up our straight Marlboros, not the Lights we’ve been smoking with the idea of tapering off to healthier lungs and longer lives. But who needs to prolong lives like these, anyway?
We talk to him about the Oscars, about the upcoming Transformers movie, about Family Guy or the BCS system or Oprah’s Book Club—any sort of low-level cultural phenomenon that seems to fascinate him, as shown in his books, in his radio commentary, in his sports blogging. In mid-sentence, I bull-rush him into the dumpster. More than my 190 pounds, what pins him there is his shock. I deliver body blows until his ego drops somewhere beneath his bruised kidneys. I’m all adrenaline and I knock his teeth into his throat, then I’m spent. Above his bloody face and broken horn-rims, I light up another smoke, and Pete and I head inside to finish our beers, drinking in the taste of the hops, the adrenaline of physical accomplishment and literary purification.
From this point forward, our lives would be better.
They would have to be."
October 27, 2013
Ok, I'm a little biased as I am part of this issue. But I'm in awesome company! Cheers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews