Dear Identity Theory Readers,
This was a vibes week on our site. We hope you enjoy these vibes.
First, a CNF Piece About Living in a Dead RV
It’s written by Edmund Sandoval and titled “When my brother and I lived in a dead RV on the edge of a permaculture farm in southwestern New Mexico.”
A sample of the vibes:
When we didn’t carry phones, when we printed directions from the internet, kept fold-out maps in the glovebox, and slept in the rest stop lot, shivering under our coats, waking with the featureless dawn.
When my brother wore pinhole glasses to drive or just squinted into the night, hunched over the wheel, the gear shift thrumming between us, how it took us a thousand miles before we were honest with each other, and how we were relieved because we were not as holy as we’d thought each other to be.
Also, a Poem by Matthew E. Henry (MEH)
It’s called “when asked how to avoid being seen as racist.”
The vibes go like this:
I assume
it was only the one time, but something
engorged him—something a stiff pint of Guinness
roused from flaccid slumber, but didn’t conceive.
even the Bible at Fergus’ bedside says
the mouth speaks the heart, though I assume other
appendages follow suit. to answer
your question, those with a legitimate
worry should avoid petting zoos and farms
And Then There’s Colonel Fuzzbutt
Your latest cartoon from Alan Michael Parker.
We Hired New Staff Members
Three new editors joined the staff this week: our first “overnight editor,” a new fiction team member, and another do-it-all assistant editor. They have official bios on our site, but I’m just gonna type some random stuff about them.
Eliza Davis, Overnight Editor
Eliza Davis graduated with a 2.1 in English Lit at Cambridge. I don’t know what that means, so I’m not sure if she wants me to tell you that. Probably should have checked with her before writing this. She lives somewhere in the middle of nowhere in England and is working on her MA in Creative Writing. She has a dog. She’s the only person ever to send a video application to work on Identity Theory. It contained a critique of her adolescent poetry. Among other things, her role is to make fun of obscure stuff we published in 2004 and help decide which fiction submissions are worth a closer look. When not editing for Identity Theory, she devotes most of her energy towards trying to keep her goldfish alive.
Shipra Agarwal, Assistant Editor
Shipra Agarwal was a doctor in India, then she worked on branding initiatives for McDonald’s in India, and now she lives in Arizona and works for Identity Theory. This is a normal career path—exactly how you draw it up, really. She has written a novel-in-stories, and you should publish it. Also, she likes to hike. She will primarily be working on fiction editing.
Katy Goforth, Fiction Editor
Is that a bird on her head? Who can say? Katy Goforth is the second Katy (phonetically speaking) from South Carolina we’ve hired this month. Katy has advanced degrees in communication and works as a professional…communicator. We like to hire people who can communicate. Communication is a family value. (Wait, what does that mean?) Anyway, here she is, Katy Goforth, a professional communicator who has been published in some journals and written some novels and now has joined Identity Theory as fiction editor. Again, one must assume this is totally how she drew it up. Also, when she was a teacher of communication, she once took over Ron Rash’s old office. And, yes, she has a dog.
Anyway, hopefully I didn’t butcher these bios too horribly. The official bios are probably better. I’ll write a blog post about all the new staff members once we’re done adding people at the end of the month. They are all very nice. You can trust them with your words.
But What About the Dog?
An outlier with this hiring cycle is that 90% of the people who applied to work on the site were women. So, for the first time in my memory, we have a mostly female staff.
To even things out, we are offering a staff position to a good boy you know well: Iroh the corgi.
What should his title be?
Your Weekly Cage
I present you with more of the books we’ve received this month, along with their new BFF, Nicolas Cage:
You’ll Never Believe These 5 Easy Ways You Can Make Identity Theory the Best Literary Website on Earth - CLICK NOW!!!
Hope this helps,
Matt Borondy
Founder of One of the First 10,000 Literary Websites of All Time
Identity Theory