Dear Identity Theory Readers,
This will be a fast email.
I recently created a LinkedIn page for Identity Theory.
Every other post on LinkedIn contains the word “onboarding.”
It’s like an airplane concourse, that LinkedIn.
Anyway.
We onboarded two new editors to our staff.
L.A. Sklba is our new interviews editor. Surya Hendry is a new assistant editor.
Or try onboarding yourself.
(We need a fiction editor and a visuals editor.)
I Will Now Add Headlines to This Email to Break up the Text
Alina Stefanescu interviewed poet Sandra Simonds and artist Summer J. Hart.
Here’s Alina’s intro to the interview:
“Over the course of the COVID pandemic, I had the chance to meet poets in small virtual rooms. What began as an effort to get feedback on drafts turned into a ritual, a safe space carved into the week where we could discuss the unspeakable anxieties of parenting in the context of developing poems and reading the work of others. This generative space led to a collaborative chapbook, 11 Triptychs, which began as a correspondence between poet Sandra Simonds and interdisciplinary artist Summer J. Hart.”
A Website Called headlinecapitalization.com Can Help You Capitalize Headlines Based on Style Preferences
Let the robots do the thinking for you. That’s my motto.
Here’s Margaret LaFleur’s interview with Sequoia Nagamatsu. Sequoia is the author of How High We Go in the Dark. In this interview he talks about his robot dog and his plague novel.
We Are Holding a [Power Adjective] Writing Contest
If you want people to click on your headlines, you need power words. But not too powerful. You don’t want your headlines to look like spam or clickbait. One solution is to make every headline a little game of Mad Libs.
But as I was saying, we have a new contest. You can send us fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, but it has to be exactly 2022 words long. You also have the bonus option to send us a set of two 22-word poems.
We don’t know the prizes or the complete list of judges yet. It’s 2022. Nothing is certain. Write what you want. Expectations are hindrances.
Stephen Tries His Hand at Microfiction
Stephen Snowder gave microfiction a shot.
Ampydoo Tries His Hand at Cartooning
Yes, we still have his cartoons.
The Half-Lives of Lit Mags
“Lit mags all start with a dream and an editor or two. The combination of magic, hard work, luck and editorial chemistry determine their path.”
Guinotte Wise on the half-lives of lit mags.
Exhibits Something Something
Jared Beloff wrote a poem. A poem! It’s called (hold on, I have to look this up) “Exhibits in the Museum of Dust.”
Yes, that is it. It remember it now. It goes something like:
“All foreground is background,
a violence of tender voices.
The children have adapted. They swirl,
a mobius strip of arms outstretched
catching lashes as they fall, their pockets full.
We shield our eyes pretending there is still
separation and sky.”
Horse + Garden
This one by Kathlene Postma flew under your radar (maybe it didn’t, I just like making baseless accusations at strangers). It’s a short story. There’s a horse. There’s a garden. Look it up.
Do You Remember That Commercial: “Look It up, Dear”
got to have a yellow woman if you’re a yellow man
Didn’t use the capitalization tool because those are David Mura’s words in his hybrid “Statements in Search of an Asian American Masculinity.”
6 Things Lady Gaga Has in Common With Hybrid Poems
One funny piece of the internet is this headline generator that creates clickbait headlines for you when you input a keyword. It gave me that headline when I typed in “hybrid poems.”
Not sure if Lady Gaga has anything in common with these three hybrid poems from Janelle Cordero, though. Sorry not sorry.
My Watch Buzzes When You Like My Tweets
It’s like a reverse electroshock therapy. I can’t figure out how to turn it off. Whenever someone likes a tweet at @identitytheory, my watch buzzes. This is how I experience your love.
Why Not Leave the Watch on the Counter?
Did you read “Scenes from a Marriage” yet? It’s pure CNF gold from Adrienne Marie Barrios:
“I place my Apple Watch on its charge and take my phone with me into the bathroom. I think about leaving it out; I agonize over what’s worse: you seeing it left on my vanity, or you thinking I’ve taken it into the bathroom to hide something. I always worry about what you think about me, about what I’m doing. Even when I’m not hiding anything.”
There Are No Words for This
“Grief, securing its furthest reach, may enclose someone as completely as a mother encloses a fetus.”
Read Melissa Wiley’s “Songs without Words.”
Don't Fall Prey to These Common Goodbye Scams
Another one from the clickbait headline generator. As the Television Personalities sang, “There’s no beautiful way of saying goodbye.”
Take care,
Matt Borondy
EIC
Identity Theory
P.S. Do you want to guest judge our writing contest this year? Drop me a line. (Respond to this email or whatever.)