Transcript Archive

[Intro Music]

CELINA 0:08

Hi, ​Asterisks. I’m Celina.

EMMA 0:12

And I’m Emma.

CELINA 0:12

And today we’re here with Poupeh Missaghi is a writer, translator, and editor. Her debut book trans(re)lating house one (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a hybrid investigation of the role of the witness through the frame of the 2009 protests in Iran. Her second book, Sound Museum, forthcoming from Coffee House Press in 2024, investigates the history of global torture enterprise. Her translation of Nasim Marashi’s I’ll be Strong for You was published in 2021 with Astra House, and she has two other translation books forthcoming in 2023 and 2024. An assistant professor of literary arts and studies at the University of Denver and a faculty mentor at Pacific Northwest College of Art MFA, she is currently based in Denver, Colorado.

Thank you so much Poupeh for being here with us. We’re so excited to hear what you have to say.

POUPEH 1:03

Thanks for inviting me. It’s exciting to be here with both of you.

EMMA 1:07

Yeah, of course. To begin, Celina and I have read and really enjoyed your book trans(re)lating house one, and there’s this one excerpt that I really like, and it’s when you wrote about the filmmaker, and the kind of separate narrative that they were supposed to tell, and were supposed to make into a film:

“Woven together, the larger picture could be deemed too bleak, vile, untrue. Could cause them to run into trouble with the officials. So the women appearing in front of the camera remain unaware of the others, or pretend to be… Even though she, who made their words appear on the screen in the language of the Other, has seen them all, knows them all, has watched the pieces come together to create this one mass, one story.”

So I think it's really interesting because it tackles a lot of different aspects of what it means to kind of create, um, that sort of media. And I was wondering, how do you see the role of the reporter, the journalist, or the writer, the filmmaker? Is this the role of them? Um, is this the role of the citizens, the family? And what does this have to do with the fragmenting or coming together of trans(re)lating house one? Because I'd see it as— it's a collection of so many different things and an exploration, and as you go through, you're simultaneously searching and trying to figure out how you want to tell the story. So what do you really mean by the different angles and the different meanings that, uh, this story could take on, depending on how it's told and, um, what is lost or what's found, creating something for the other versus for telling just the telling story in and of itself.

POUPEH MISSAGHI 2:34

Yeah. I guess I would differentiate between the role of the reporter and the writer. They're not necessarily the same. They can be, but they are not always the same. But in that excerpt that you read, I think what brings all of these different roles together, the journalist, the writer, the reporter, the citizens, the family is this idea of we always have a limited perspective no matter how expansive our point of view is. Um. There is no way we can access all the different angles of a story. But I guess what is important in that is one of the central aspects of the book to keep asking questions, right? And to, um, not to take everything as fact, um, but continue with the search and with fragmentation kind of ties back to the same idea of asking questions. It's like, I don't really... especially in that book I'm not working with a consistent narrative. I'm not working with a more traditional, linear narrative where we have access to all sides of the stories or even to the protagonist's story— It's all fragmentation. And I think that's important. When we are writing about moments of transition, when we are writing about, um, trauma, when we are writing about documentation itself, the role of the archive, fragmentation is at the center of all of this. Um, so I wanted that to be part of the book as well. And then the last part of your question is: What is lost in creating content for the, uh, other? So I kind of want to complicate that question by saying that even if we are creating content for others. We are always also creating content for ourselves. We are always our first audience. And what is lost is the gap that always exists between reality and representation of reality. No matter what we do, even if it's a photograph, we are always losing some aspects of reality.

EMMA 4:54

Yeah, I think that also really has to do with how I view the quote. I see it as like, um. I think it's interesting that you emphasize that woven together the larger picture, um, could not be— could be more untrue than the separate people in and of themselves. So do you mean that in a context of covering, um, a larger political message– that sometimes we lose the human side of things? And that's why, um, in order to– like, in the process of creating something that the other— or into creating a complete product‚ why does the she– in this case, why does the main character have to hide part of it or pretend to be unaware? Does that uh, make her less sensitive to each individual story so she can better portray a whole?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 5:39

I don't think it's less sensitive. It's more of a question of safety. And the framework of that specific project that, um, that section of the book talks about, right. So it's kind of like if all the actors, actresses, the crew of the film, if they all knew each other, they could also as easily, um, be a risk to each other. Um, so it's a question of safety for that specific section, right. But it's also to go back to the fragmentation and the whole. It's important when a story is told from different angles or different entry points. And that's why one coverage is never enough, especially if we are thinking, well, I guess I have an issue with larger narratives, like grand narratives. I'm interested in, um, small narratives that join together and create, like a kilt of a story.

EMMA 6:38

Yeah. That also kind of relates to, um, when you said later on that most international festivals are looking for certain narratives of vaccination, um, victimhood. That they pay attention to the social politics instead of the aesthetics, and you really emphasize instead of. And not alongside. So what was your process with kind of dealing with that aspect, um, and writing, trans(re)lating house one and trans(re)lating house one with its prose, um, that's really graceful and oftentimes really poetic, and it's focused on dreams and the subconscious that focuses on the individual people, um, and love. I think there's this one aspect that was like talking about the maps. Like:

“People who speak your language. Images that speak your city. Black and white are dominant. But our lives are in color. Everyday a new color. The cafe should stay open so we return.” “Some people you can’t help but love.”

So what has been your process in trying to combine the social politics of activism, um, with the aesthetics and trying to subvert that kind of point of view?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 7:37

Mhm. So the shortest answer would be the literary quality of the work. The form and the style was very important to me. It wasn't just, these are the things I want to say. It was more important to think about how I'm saying them. Especially if you… From my background or similar backgrounds, right, if you're writing within and from the so-called marginalized literature, it's more important to also be sensitive to how your work is going to be read. And also, in general, I'm not interested in just reporting. I'm interested in complicating the reporting. And there are different places for a, uh, straightforward reporting to be done. But I think if I'm doing the work as a literary offering, then it's important for me to really work with the, uh, aesthetics of my language. And that includes even the formal choices of, let's say, how my paragraphs are formed, or how I'm thinking about the page, about the white space, about, uh, how I'm organizing the language on the page, but also even on a sentence level.

CELINA 8:50

I like that you drew that line between what you're doing as a literary author versus a reporter. And it made me think about, there are times in your book when you reference people who have died during these protests. We have the mother and daughter, who just were bystanders. Then there was the blogger who was arrested by the cyber police. And then there are times in your book where you just list out corpse number 78, or you just have the word “corpse.” How do you think that differs from what we see in the news, where it almost seems like they try to use death and violence against bystanders or people as, like, a shock factor, and that is what we deem as reporting now. How do you think what you did differs from that?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 9:26

Mm. That's a good question. I think what happens with only seeing the violence without any context has several consequences. One is we grow numb to seeing violence, which I think is something that has already happened for us. The other problem of it is we don't necessarily ask questions, and we don't necessarily or we are not invited to think about the context as a whole. There is always the story of the side who has committed the violence and the side of the victim. But that—what about the larger, complicated story? And one of the things in the book, for me, was not to just create these violent documentations of these killings, but actually put it in the context of all the life that exists so that they're not just seen as victims, but we also see life and death coexisting together.

CELINA 10:27

I just like the way that kind of goes back to the original quote, when we talk about weaving together that larger picture, the way everything has all these different sides. And it makes me think of, um, when you wrote something for the Lighthouse Writers block, you wrote a piece called “The Many Voices of the Displaced.” Is it okay if we talk about that?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 10:43

Yeah, sure.

CELINA 10:44

You have this really great quote where you say, in “In this dire global and domestic environment, the literary and arts scenes do not seem to be doing enough to represent and bring forth the massive extent and complexity of this human catastrophe.”

And I like that in relation to what we were just saying: that if you grow used to violence, you grow numb to it. You're not seeing the life and the death coexisting with that complexity. What do you think the role of literature and art is in regards to these human crisises or protests or human violence?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 11:14

So part of me is very pessimist, and in a realistic sense, I think, well, there is literature and art created addressing all the human evil and violence, right? But history shows us that there is also a continuation of that, right? So it's not that by writing books or by creating art, we will stop whatever is happening that we don't want to stop, but it's more about how can we make sure that the resistance force exists in the face of, uh, the violence, right? So it might never stop it, but it's always making its life harder, and that's important. So I think if we consider the fact that our goal is to eliminate it, but we might never reach that ideal utopia, sometimes that might cause us to be hopeless and be like, okay, so what's the use of doing this work, right? But then what's the other option? The other option is just, like, to sit and let everything that we don't want to happen to us to happen. Well, I guess that's going to be even worse, right? So the only option we have is to continue doing what we believe in and to continue creating.

CELINA 12:26

I love that idea of art almost being like a thing and of rebellion against, violent in and of itself, just its mere existence. And then in that same article—

POUPEH MISSAGHI 12:34

Can I kind of—before you move on?

CELINA 12:36

Yes, of course!

POUPEH MISSAGHI 12:37

Mhm. I think especially as a younger writer or artist, when you're starting off, it's very important to remember that it's not all about the product or about publishing something or having something out there being seen by others. It's important to remember that the very process of creation itself, the process of thinking through language, thinking through your art materials, is actually the resistance, right? So through that process, we as individuals are changing. So even if someone is not out there to read us, we are still doing that work of resistance.

CELINA 13:15

I love that idea because obviously we're a literary magazine, and we're all young writers trying to get published. Sometimes I think we get in this frenzy where we're just trying to find things to write about, finish, publish, and it becomes almost mechanical, and it's almost like sometimes it feels like we're grabbing for subjects. So I guess it's kind of like when you said in that same article, what aggravates the issue even further is a lot of works delve into the subject, do so through problematic modes that may actually do more harm than help to spread the narratives of the displaced. So sometimes I think with art, we have such good intentions, and then those intentions don't always play out the way we want, because we're almost so caught up in that idea of must get published, must get some credit to my name. What ways do you think art nowadays seems to almost not speak for the displaced anymore, and has the opposite effect?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 14:00

We see that a lot when it comes to… you're referring to that article, like, to narratives of displacement or narratives of, um, racism, right? Or any kind of, um, groups whose voices have been oppressed. We see that a lot happening, and it's not always happening from the outside. Part of it is also happening from our own desires to tell stories, right. But then it's like sometimes the way you want to tell your story, there's not going to be an outlet for it, right? And then it's like after a while, you begin to change your own critical thinking and your own modes of presentation in order to be published, for example, right, or because you want to be published in a certain, um, journal, and you just start reshaping your work, right, but especially when you're younger, it's very important to think outside of the box and to think about, like, well, the key is to break a lot of the rules. So learn the rules, right? But at the same time, not think about reproducing a lot of the structures that already exist. And that needs a lot of being sensitive, thinking, asking questions again, right? And you mentioned the word intention, right? Intentions are important, but as you said, sometimes we have the best intentions, but the final work is still problematic, right? So the question is, if we are thinking about process of writing, right, not to really be so sure of ourselves and step back from our work, think about, like: okay, so if it's not me as the creator reading this work, but someone else, how would this work be read by them? So thinking about other people's reactions, other people's thoughts. So trying to just dissect and decode your own work from as many different angles as possible, right? So that it's like you have to think a lot about not just the surface level of your work, but also what's going on underneath, right, the unconscious of your work and the unconscious of yourself. So if you're aware of that, I think it's a different approach. So it's not just like, oh, my intention was good, but also looking at your work and thinking about, okay, is that intention actually translating to the page or not?

CELINA 16:25

I like that you brought up kind of thinking—because I feel like writing sometimes it gets so introspective. We don't really think about the way our work is going to be perceived or exactly think about why we're doing what we're doing. We're so focused on our own voice, and especially us—me and Emma, we're publishers, right? We read so much writing, and we have that power to uplift other people's voices. And you've worked for so many litmags. Uh, I'm probably biased. My favorite is, obviously, the Women Life Freedom column and Words Without Borders, for reasons that should go unsaid. But in this column, you publish a lot of works that are translations of people from Iran who are living through these protests, living through violence, through fear, but also through beauty, and also from works that are from the diaspora or just people who, around the world, are supporting these protests. So, I guess, kind of my question for you is: What was the goal with collecting and translating these works, curating them and putting them all in one column? And who do you think your audience is, and what do you want them to take away from reading it? Like, do you want the majority of your people to be reading this? People who are Iranian, people inside of Iran, people who are outside of the community. Uh, people who are protesting for the Masamini and the Zan, Zedeghi, Azadi movement. So, kind of what were your intentions? And what would you like us as an audience to take away from that?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 17:39

I guess the main audience, or the first primary audience, would be those outside Iran, right. And the idea was, again, to think about instead of the grand narrative, think about the smaller, fragmented narratives, right? A lot of these pieces were not commissioned. They were actually pieces that people were already writing on a daily basis while everything was happening. So it was just their own personal experiences. Or if they were written by people and sent to me for this column, it was also being written from more the personal lens, right. And I think that's something that we don't necessarily see in the work of, let's say, reporting or in media, right? The media, even if, um, they get personal stories, they use that as quotes or evidence for the larger story, right? But this is very much about what's happening on the ground, about personal emotions, about personal decisions, about everyday interactions. And that changes the way people receive the work. So, usually with my work, my intention is not just to deliver information. It's more about to deliver an experience. And that experience is both intellectual, physical, corporeal, and also psychological, right? And the choices for the column were really, like, trying to do all of these things at the same time. But one other part of the audience is—or not necessarily the audience, but another group that was important for me was the people in Iran, because I wanted them to know that other people also care, right? Or even like those of us in diaspora Iranians outside Iran care, right? And, uh, also we're hearing and listening to them, right? So even if they don't read the pieces or the pieces are not translated for them because they have access to the original language, right? The very fact that someone else wants to hear these stories and is going to be just a medium for delivering their voices, I think that is, um, some form of support that is meaningful.

CELINA 19:57

I think it's so refreshing to hear about a sociopolitical issue being personalized. We hear so much in school, especially when we're doing informational, argumentative writing, that we're trying to take as much of ourselves away from it as possible, remove all bias, remove all experience. So it feels good to hear that someone wants to make that almost bring back the human to it, right? And I think that was one of the most beautiful parts of the art that came from the protest is how personal all of them were. We had people and how human. We had people dancing in the streets. We had women in solidarity cutting their own hair, um, people placing their, uh, hijabs in the trees and on, um, stakes almost in this act of human defiance, people singing altogether. It's like this beautiful human aspect to it. And I think for so many young artists, they almost, outside of Iran, there's so much conflict in the world right now. And obviously, I think we're part of a generation where especially our generation can't ignore all of this. So there's so many young artists who want to say something and want to do something, but they struggle to find their place in almost that setting with so much going on. Do you have any advice that, uh, you'd want to give these young artists and writers who listen to this and want to create work centered around activism and protest and maybe some advice for them on how to find their space, their space in that community?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 21:16

Well, I want to start by saying that actually, in the past year, I personally, and I know many people in my generation, have learned so much from the younger generation. So I don't think the relationship should only be we giving advice to you. It needs to be more of a conversation, right.

But to think about platforms and what kind of work can be done, I think it's very important to remember that this kind of work doesn't need to immediately explode and have hundreds of followers or hundreds of listeners. It's even if you just have five people in your community who care about the work you're doing, that might be enough. And again, a reminder that we are not just doing this work to be received by others. The work that we are doing also changes us. And then that change when we are, uh, even living our lives outside of our artwork, is going to just impact the person we are, right. So then you would go out into the world because of your work as a different person, right. So it's like, the process is as important, right. So if you care about these issues going on in the world, it's not just like, okay, I'm just going to do the activism and put it out there and create this one piece, or just do this one performance, or write this one thing and then just go do my own thing. That doesn't really work, right? It all needs to be interconnected.

EMMA 22:51

Yeah, I definitely agree and resonate with that a lot. And I think that's really powerful to think about how art, and the way we think about art and the way we think about creating art shapes who we become as a person that grows up and is becoming more and more integrated into the world as a whole and into a world outside of them. And it also kind of makes me think of how you talk about the subconscious a lot, and trans(re)lating house one, because it's kind of like we focus so much on what's out there, we focus so much on everything having a purpose, on every piece of our writing, like making some sort of ripple in the larger world. Um, I wonder what the subconscious has to do with that. And the words “house one,” you have the cloud things of the words, um, and kind of like “house one” emerges out of that. And I think in another interview, you said that you think of house one as a home, or as in the first house, the house to return to. So does that have to do with the way the subconscious is the part of you that is the true manifestations of exactly how you feel and your values that you should need to tap into and connect with more—um, as you grow as a person, as you make art, and as you try to do things beyond yourself?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 24:08

I think that's a good way to put it, right? The house one is not just the physical house. It's also our own, like, the deep psyche that we carry inside ourselves, right. So the subconscious and the unconscious. And to return to it. Yes, I'm very much interested in constantly returning to it or trying to access it, but also leaving it, and then see how that translates into consciousness and into action. Yeah. What was the other part of your question?

EMMA 24:38

Well, this actually wasn't a scripted question. I had just thought of it, um.

POUPEH MISSAGHI 24:43

Oh, I wanted to ask something else. I guess this goes back to what Celina said and what you just said. Um, this idea of a house or a home or even thinking about the personal aspect of activism. One thing that in the past year, I talked a lot with my, um, undergrad students was, um, if we are having conversations about, let's say, the woman life freedom movement in Iran, it's not just for them to learn about the other side of the world, but to actually learn how the problems that the Iranian, um, girls and women and the larger population are protesting for and against are actually the very problems we are also protesting and having problems with here and in many other places in the world, right? So part of it is our rights to our bodies, right? The autonomy that we have as individuals, the freedom that we are asking for. And we see how that is also happening here in the US or elsewhere in the world. So one thing to think about is, what if we also have the same fierceness and don't wait for that moment of catastrophe in order to actually do something, right. If we are thinking about the powers that we have, especially as the young generation, right, and not just accept things, but actually think about, what can we do collectively? The power that we have collectively, both in our creative work and also as individuals and as groups in our daily lives, that's very important, right? So it's not just like, let's learn about this other thing happening on the other side of the world, but also let's see what kinds of conversations we can have with one another, right? So remember, the power of people, it's not about, oh, these questions are specific to that region or specific to a country. It's similar questions. It's also like environmental questions. It's the question of climate change. It's like lack of resources, right. It's hope for a better future. And, um, how many of those are similar for all young people around the world, right?

EMMA 26:59

Yeah, definitely. And I think we're always so much more connected than we think we are. And that's why art kind of works, because it's just one person channeling their stories and their emotions and their way of being the world, even if it is a collection of other people's stories. But the way that when we put our heart into something and someone else reads it, they can feel just as strongly, really shows that the things we actually feel and the things we fight for are extremely universal.

POUPEH MISSAGHI 27:25

Mhm.

EMMA 27:25

Yeah. And I think it's really beautiful that art can do that, because then, I guess, what is the difference between art and reporting in that sense? Like, in the stories we tell? How should we tell stories differently from an artistic perspective than from a reporting perspective? What about creativity and about our own stories and the personal values that we can put and we can shape in art and fiction and creating something where we collect so many different holes? Um, what about it makes it special? And how should we take advantage of it?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 27:57

If I want to say in a very short answer, I think the difference between the artistic endeavor and reporting work is—if you're doing reporting, you are trying to clarify a situation for your readers. You want to simplify the situation, right. But if you are doing artistic work, it's actually more important to complicate things, right? So it's not an easy answer. It's for you to enter that artwork and be able to experience all the different parts of what is going on, right. And again, to experience it or to access it from different parts of yourself as a person, right. So it's not just, like informational level, but it's also psychological level, emotional level, corporeal level, right. So even in that sense, it's more complicated.

EMMA 28:57

Yeah. And that also makes me think of the thoughts that you have dispersed throughout, um, trans(re)lating house one, how you're following her story, but you also have these constant page or two pages of thoughts about how you should be telling the story about, um, what all of these things mean and what it means for you as someone who's compiling and for someone that's communicating it. So how do you feel about the exploration of those thoughts as an artist while writing a piece? Um, is it our purpose to keep on reevaluating the means in which the ways we are telling our stories, the ways we are framing the art that we're creating? And should that be simultaneous to the stories we tell? Should that be a part of the stories we tell? And how do you feel about those questions now, um, like, years after you've written the book? Do you feel like you know the answers to them, or do you feel like the asking and the searching is forever part of the creating and something that makes it better and more insightful and more complicated?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 28:59

Mm. No, I don't have the answers, and that has never been the intention, because the answers keep changing, right. But the questions are still, like, one of the favorite aspects of the book for me. And I think one of the reasons is because they just keep reapplying themselves to so many different situations. So sometimes in readings, I only read the questions depending on what the, uh, setting of the reading is. So, for example, during the summer where the, um, Black Lives Matter protests were happening, I was doing an online reading, for example, and I could hear the sound of protests from the corner in my Brooklyn apartment. And I decided just to read the questions and not anything else from the book. And it felt as if those questions were just written for that moment in time. Um, so it's not about finding the answers once and for all. It's just revisiting those questions forever and then be able to just rethink them, right. Find new answers to them, or think about how our answers have changed, or if they have not changed, how much more complicated they are, or if we have new aspects of, uh, that answer that we are now thinking about. So the questions are important, and the answers are important, too, but not as a final, factual answer, but rather as an answer that keeps revisiting itself.

And one thing you mentioned, Emma, you said, should we do this or that? I don't think there should be any “shoulds,” especially if you're younger. You haven't yet figured out what your personal style is or what your hopes for your artistic life is. You need to just keep exploring and playing and just trying different things and not be like, oh, this is my style. And now I have found the answer that actually is going to be more detrimental than helpful. But adding to that, I wanted to say, for me personally, just like working with open ended text is very interesting in the sense of similar to the questions, right. I want the book or the work that I'm doing to just keep opening itself up rather than just closing itself and be like, okay, I read this once, and I know what this is. I'm not really interested in that. I'm more interested in, how can I write so that my reader wants to come back to that text, or even I want to go back to that text, and just like, that text just opens new layers for me every time I read it. And every text does this. But I think it's different if you're intentionally working towards open endedness.

EMMA 32:56

Yeah. And I think trans(re)lating house one definitely does do that. And when you're talking, I kind of realized it was so interesting that you could take the questions, um, which is, like, one part of the book, and kind of apply them to so many different aspects, just like how you were talking before about how the problems that we face here or the problems that we also face there are the problems we face within ourselves. And I think it's interesting how this book is kind of this giant puzzle of, like, yes, it's, um, the protests that you're talking about, but it's also a way to look at the protests, a way to tell stories around the protests, the questions that we keep asking ourselves and the audience and the readers. And, um, you can kind of almost arrange them in so many different ways and come up with a different answer. Like, our theme right now for our issue is Lacuna, which is a gap or a missing piece that can't be translated.

And Celina and I were talking about this earlier, and we were talking about blackout poetry, and poetry where you can rearrange stuff and rearrange words and get a different meaning. And maybe the crossing out of words or the spaces in between says things in and of themselves. So I kind of view trans(re)lating house one, uh, in a similar sense, where it's like, even if you remove some part of it, you take one part of it. It's the words and the way the relationships they have to each other. The questions that they ask and the ways they stand have so many different meanings and have so many different interpretations. Um, and that's also another thing I really appreciate about the questions, how, depending on what you ask, if you read one part of the text and then you ask the question, it means something else. If you have the question by itself, it means something else. If you have a question in this political sense, it means something else. If you're asking it to a writer as they're writing a book, it means something else. So I just find that really fascinating, how there's so many aspects and so many different collisions of, um, the philosophical ethics kind of side of things, and also the more concrete actual activism and, um, portrayal and media and news. So I just thought, I don't know, it was so interesting to see how it's a whole jigsaw, but it keeps reinventing itself depending on who we are and how we're reading it.

POUPEH MISSAGHI 35:00

Mhm. That's true. Yeah. And one other aspect of it is one other draw of that kind of work for me, is to move away from the hierarchical position of, like, I, as the author, am going to tell you what the story is or how to think about my story instead. It's like, you need to actually figure out what the story is for you. Yeah. So that also goes back to that open-endedness. I have actually, a friend, a visual artist, who told me that this should not actually be a book. So she actually ripped the cover up and started rearranging all the pieces. So, in that sense, the order doesn't matter, right. And even when I first finished the book, the order and the arrangement was completely different from what it is now. So I can see so many different ways of arranging this book, right? So again, in that sense, it's like you should discover what works for you best and how you make the connections in your mind and tell the story for yourself.

CELINA 36:04

I actually did what your friend did with the book. After I read the entire thing, I didn't rip it up, but I did kind of segment it out where I would read all the dreamscapes, and then I'd read all the corpses, and then I would read the actual story, and then I read your reflections. And as I did that, I would write notes to myself. After reading that certain dreamscape, was there anything I thought of or did it relate to a dream I had earlier? And then when I would go back and then I read the entire book together again, it was interesting to go back and see how reading those things separate kind of, ah, changed your perception of the book, or just that page as a whole, which I think goes back to, again, our theme, Lacuna. We were talking about last week, the gaps that we see, uh, and translation, and then how we also see these gaps between generations or just different perspectives within a household. And it's kind of like when you take something away, the new light that you see, which I think is what this book and a lot of the poetry you translate, kind of demonstrates, like, yes, we don't have that original translation of experience or language, but we are getting a new perspective and new form of language just from getting a new viewer perspective on it.

POUPEH MISSAGHI 37:15

Mhm. I just love, um, you describing that process, Celina—um, the very first arrangement for the book, all those sections were separate, actually. But I, um, had thoughts about, if I keep them separate, what are the impacts of that choice versus if I mingle everything up, how would that affect, um, the reader's experience? So in the end, I went with the interwoven, but that's how in my mind, I was going back and forth between these sections, right. So it wasn't like I wrote one section and then I was done and wrote another section. I was working on them simultaneously, but I was arranging them in my final folder as like, this is the section about corpses, this is the section about dreams. This is the section about the city. But because there is so much conversation about, um, between those layers, it's also inherently interwoven, right. But as you said, it changes what you feel and how you receive, um, the content based on what choices you make.

EMMA 38:27

Yeah, definitely. And thinking about it, I don't know, if you just had each section by itself, I would kind of read it as like, oh, this is the section. We're done. Moving on to the next section.

But the way that everything is so intermingled and it creates this entropy and this chaos, it really makes you have to reevaluate what it means to put together a story for yourself. And it makes you realize that things really aren't linear. Like no story is linear. Um, we get media, we get news and little bursts. We hear stories in little bursts. Part of creating a story is maybe coming up with, um, the ways we order them, the ways we make sense of the whole from the parts. And it's cool how you don't do that for us, but you force us to do that by ourselves because we see, wow, we have so many parts, they're vaguely connected. There's this theme that might have to do with this theme, but it's our job to make sense of it and what it means to us. It's our job to write that story for ourselves.

And it was interesting because I think part of the original plan, I, um, was going to kind of ask about, um, your journey, kind of figuring out what it means to tell a story, figuring out through the questions, through the fragments, what the role of a story was, what it means to combine these parts. But now I realize there probably isn't an answer, and it probably is just part of the searching and part of the ways that we have to rearrange things as we go on. We see different angles all the time, and we have to think of different ways to arrange them and different ways to tell stories to ourselves and to others. And I also think of the last page a lot. Um, the second to last page, um, when we kind of have the girl, it's like at the end, um, after all the dreams, the houses, they've kind of exploded and whatever, and we've got into the house one. And I think you ask, uh, what will happen to her when she turns the page and faces what she has known all along, has been living all along, but has struggled to keep a distance. What will happen when she becomes the reader of the pages she's been a part of all along? What will become of her, of me, of us, of them, um, of you? And it's so interesting because it combines everything. It combines her, it combines you, it combines the reader, it combines the person trying, it combines all these people trying to make their own stories. Like you're trying to make the story of all these pieces, the treescapes of her, of the questions. We're trying to make the stories as readers. Like, what does this book mean? And she's trying to figure out the bodies. She's trying to figure out the maps, the cities. So where does that leave us? Um, what does that make of all of us? And what does it mean to be on both sides of things as the discoverer and the creator? Maybe at the very same time, because maybe those things are the same thing. So at the end, what does that make of us? Any thoughts?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 41:17

I'm just going to say, um, two words. One is a detective, but not in the traditional sense of a detective who's looking for answers, but more a detective who's looking for answers, but also already knows that there is no answer. And then the other word is the story, for me, is always a labyrinth. I don't really want to get out of the labyrinth. I just want to spend more time in the labyrinth.

EMMA 41:45

It is a labyrinth. You have to go back to it. You have to make sense of it in so many different m ways.

CELINA 41:54

Thank you so much for talking to us today. Really, we're so appreciative that you came on Ad Aster and were able to speak to our audience. I feel like a lot of the discussions today were about the author's conversation with the audience or the viewer viewing the artwork. So if you could say anything to our audience, which is a collective of A, the magazine’s readers, the asterisks, but also so many young authors and artists around the globe, is there anything you'd want to say to them? Uh, whether that regard, like the gaps in translation or your book or advocacy, anything you could say to them? What would it be?

POUPEH MISSAGHI 42:26

First, I want to say thank you for inviting me to your podcast. It's lovely to see you both and talk to you in this new format. And then I guess what I would emphasize again, is just to explore, to try and not be worried about whether this is the right way to do things, whether this is the wrong way to write a story. It's like maybe the way you write a story is different from the way your friend writes a story or the way your craft book tells you to tell a story, but maybe you're the first person who's going to actually make that a way to tell the story. So just explore experiments and just read and educate yourself, but also believe in, um, creativity and just, again, discovery.

EMMA 43:15

Yeah, that's a very great message, and I think it's one that I need to hear as well as probably everyone around us and our audience. Uh, once again, just thank you so much for being here. It was really nice because just like, I don't know, a year, um, and then just kind of revisiting everything, even me looking through the book and seeing the parts that I marked from when I read it a year ago and trying to make a new story for me now and trying to see what's important to me now.

Um, it's been a really cool journey, just kind of re-exploring everything and realizing that there isn't really answers and the way we search and the way we construct and the way we choose to create in and of itself as, ah, a way of defiance is maybe the answer or the process we're looking for all along.

And also, thank you, all the asterisks. Thank you, um, everyone who's listening right now, we're super grateful. And this podcast would not be made possible without you guys. Lastly, Issue Ten is open for submissions. Lacuna, a gap, something untranslatable. Like we mentioned so many times in this podcast, uh, we're really looking forward to reading your submissions. And if you have any questions, feel free to visit afterlit.org, uh, with all the relevant links. And you can DM us on Instagram or email us at any time. Once again, thank you so much for being here. It's always a pleasure talking, and it's always a pleasure sharing the constellations with all of you guys. Thank you.

POUPEH MISSAGHI 44:41

Thank you.

CELINA 44:42

Thank you.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

[Intro Music]

DAISY 0:08

​Hey, ​Asterisks. ​Welcome ​back ​to ​another ​episode ​of ​Ad ​Aster. ​For ​those ​that ​are ​just ​tuning ​in, ​Ad ​Aster is ​the ​youth ​led ​podcast ​of ​the ​literary ​magazine ​Aster Lit, ​focused ​on ​cross ​cultural ​connection ​within ​the ​writing ​world. ​I'm Daisy, ​and ​today ​I'm ​here ​with ​Ari ​and Emma. ​Today ​we'll ​be ​talking ​about ​ways ​to ​find ​writing ​opportunities, ​as ​well ​as ​some ​writing ​competitions ​outside ​the ​US, ​a ​part ​two ​of ​sorts ​to ​our ​last ​episode. ​

[Transition Music]

EMMA 0:33

Yeah. ​Hi, ​I'm Emma. ​I ​guess ​I ​really ​wanted ​to ​talk ​about ​ways ​we ​can ​all ​find ​writing ​competitions ​and ​opportunities ​together. ​Because ​I ​think ​writing ​is ​at ​first, ​it's ​just ​something ​that ​you ​do ​alone ​in ​your ​room, ​not ​really ​knowing ​exactly ​how ​to ​get ​your ​work ​out ​there. ​But ​once ​you ​dig ​a ​little ​bit ​deeper, ​you ​can ​find ​this ​really ​vast ​and ​beautiful ​community ​full ​of ​so ​many ​opportunities. ​So, Ari ​and Daisy, ​how ​have ​you ​found ​writing ​opportunities ​or ​found ​ways ​to ​connect ​with ​the ​writing ​world?

ARI 1:02

Well, ​I ​normally ​find ​my ​writer ​opportunities ​through ​social ​media, ​so, ​like, ​following ​people ​in ​Instagram ​and ​stuff. ​And ​sometimes ​there ​are ​writer ​communities ​in ​discord. ​Like, ​for ​example, ​the ​Teen Young ​Writers ​Initiative, ​which ​was ​my ​real ​introduction ​to ​the ​teen ​writer ​world.

DAISY 1:25

Yeah, ​I ​think ​for ​me ​something ​that ​I ​do ​is ​I ​actually ​look ​at ​what ​other ​people ​are ​doing, ​uh, ​similarly ​to ​the ​social ​media ​side ​of ​things. I ​will ​look ​at ​the ​different ​literary ​magazines ​that ​people ​have ​submitted ​to ​or ​the ​different ​prompts ​that ​people ​post ​on ​Instagram ​and ​stuff, ​and ​what ​other ​people ​are ​doing ​that ​I ​know, ​and ​through ​kind ​of ​a ​web, ​figure ​out ​from ​there ​what ​I'm ​interested ​in ​and ​see ​if ​there's ​anything ​that ​interests ​me.

EMMA 1:53

Yeah, ​I ​kind ​of ​do ​the ​same. We ​were ​kind ​of ​joking ​about ​how ​it's ​like ​stalking, ​but ​better. ​But ​basically, ​just ​like ​I ​find ​one ​literary ​magazine—​for ​example, ​you ​could ​take ​Aster Lit, ​you ​could ​take ​any ​of ​the ​other ​amazing ​literary ​magazines ​out ​there. ​And ​I ​just ​look ​at ​either ​the ​masthead ​or ​I ​read ​a ​few ​pieces, ​and ​if ​I ​see ​a ​piece ​that ​matches ​my ​writing ​style, ​then ​I'll ​go ​into ​the ​author ​bio ​and ​I'd ​be ​like, ​ooh, ​this ​author ​did ​this ​program. ​This ​author ​submitted ​to ​this ​magazine. ​Let's ​go ​to ​the ​magazine. ​Let's ​read ​some ​of ​their ​pieces, ​let's ​look ​at ​their ​bios. ​And ​you ​just ​keep ​on ​going ​until ​you ​find ​a ​good ​list ​that ​you ​think ​could ​be ​good ​for ​you.

ARI 2:28

It's ​like ​a Wikipedia ​rabbit ​hole, ​but ​of ​the ​lit ​mag ​world, ​kind ​of.

EMMA 2:33

Yeah, ​it's ​actually ​really ​helpful. ​And ​I ​think ​it's ​really ​interesting, ​too, ​because ​it's ​like ​the ​six ​degrees ​of ​separation ​thing—the ​idea ​that ​everyone ​in ​the ​world ​is ​connected ​by ​six ​degrees. ​Maybe ​every ​opportunity ​in ​the ​world ​is ​connected ​by ​six ​people. ​I ​don't ​know. ​But ​I've ​messaged ​random ​people ​on ​Instagram ​before ​because ​we ​were ​published ​in ​the ​same ​issue ​of ​a ​magazine, ​or ​we ​did ​the ​same ​program ​together. ​And ​then ​they ​also ​would ​have ​a ​bunch ​of ​opportunities.

DAISY 3:03

I ​think, ​also ​adding ​on ​to ​that. ​I ​absolutely ​agree. ​If ​you ​need ​to ​find ​a ​way ​to ​get ​to ​that ​crack, ​I ​am ​such ​a ​firm ​believer ​in ​talking ​to ​your ​teachers. ​Your ​English ​teacher ​probably ​has ​different ​opportunities ​that ​they ​know ​about ​and ​that ​they ​haven't ​necessarily ​publicized ​in ​class, ​but ​they ​have ​in ​the ​back ​of ​their ​head. ​Ask ​your ​English ​teachers ​or ​other ​I ​guess, ​teachers ​that ​are ​involved ​with ​writing, ​depending ​on ​the ​writing ​you're ​doing, ​I ​guess. ​But ​teachers ​usually ​have ​opportunities ​up ​their ​sleeve.

EMMA 3:34

Yeah. And there's also this really great website out there called Chill Subs, which is really great for—it's like, a really easy-to-use platform. You can search magazines by their submission, what genres they take, or what themes, or there's vibes, like, send us your best, but less intimidating. And it's just pretty great and easy to navigate. Can also use Duotrope, but I think you might have to pay for that. Or you can just honestly use Google. Just search up “writing competition for high school.” Or you can search up a lot of college names. A lot of colleges have their own contests. Like, I know Princeton has a lot that we've talked about a bit, but you never really know how much you can find just by searching on various platforms.

ARI 4:17

Yeah. Also talking about colleges and schools, like most of the time, high schools also have their own writing contest. I know, for example, in my school, we have a week where it was everything literature related. And so it was through participating in those writing contests that I found the little bits of confidence to get more into an international audience and things like that.

EMMA 4:45

Yeah, definitely. Also, if you live in the US. There's this cool thing called the National Youth Poet Laureate Program. And I know not every single place has it, but if you live in a pretty big city or a city with a sizable population, there might be, um, a youth poet laureate program. As a youth poet laureate, you would be in charge of—kind of being a poetry ambassador in your community. And maybe you would read at some events, you would read at some more official parts of your county or your city, or, if you go to an upper level, your state. And once you're a youth poet laureate for your specific region, you can apply to be a youth poet laureate for, like, a fourth of the United States. Aster Lit alumni, I think, Liz was chosen as one of the four, and so she got to perform at the Kennedy Center, which is super cool. And it's also just a great way to not only find writing opportunities, but also create opportunities and connect with your community a lot more. Through writing.

DAISY 5:42

That's so cool.

ARI 5:43

Also, a thing that I discovered while I was researching contests outside of the US is that if you live in Mexico there are a lot of contests and convocatorias that the Instituto Nacional de Belles Artes publishes around the year. But they aren't as well known as—so, yeah, I will invite every person that lives in Mexico or in the whole of Latin America to look into the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in the literature part of the Channel so they can find a lot of opportunities there also.

EMMA 6:24

Like the UK has. Like the UK Poetry Society, and they have a lot of contests that we're going to talk about later on in this episode, but also search really local as well. Your city probably has their own small citywide literary publication. I know San Jose has a couple. If you live in California, we have EASTSIDE, which is specific to East Side, but also most of San Jose. And usually with smaller contests, you can write about issues or feelings or emotions that are really rooted in where you are right now. And I think it's also good to mention that when we think of writing opportunities, a lot of times we care a lot about prestige or how it'll look or how many other opportunities it can lead to. But there are so many types out there. Opportunities doesn't have to be publications or contests. There are so many ways out there to explore writing. There's a lot of other open mics, there's a lot of slam poetry events and stuff. And there are also great ways to get your voice out and connect with other poets. Think it's just like a cycle. You want to engage as much as you can with the writing world and the writing world will engage as much as they can with you as well.

DAISY 7:30

Absolutely. I want to reemphasize: don't ask what you can do for social media, but what social media can do for you. There are so many accounts that are like writing prompt, accounts that you don't submit anything to necessarily. You don't have to get approval to participate in the prompts. They're just great ways to get the creative ideas flowing. And that's something that I really like to do. I like to go onto these Instagram accounts or whatever and look at the different writing prompts. I'll just scroll and tap one randomly and then just write about it. And that, I think, is a very underrated writing opportunity, is the opportunity to, on your own, kind of refine that craft. The point I'm trying to emphasize is that there are extremely, extremely low stakes to participating just broadly in some of these opportunities.

EMMA 8:22

Yeah, I think that there's also this thing called Escapril, but it's kind of like Inktober, but for writing and for poetry. And it's April, it's like Savannah Brown or something who hosts and she posts a list of prompts. You can follow the prompt. You can not follow the prompt. And people just post it online and people make discord servers. It's just really fun. There's also a lot of contests where it's not publication, but they just display your word in a public place, which is cool. I know that there's this one haiku contest. It's called Golden Triangle or something. And if you win, your haiku is on these giant poster things in Washington, DC. And it's so cool. Yeah. I know that Sundress Publications also had this thing where it's like, if you submit poems, they print it on large boards or something. I don't know. But there's such a big world out there.

DAISY 9:15

And if you're having trouble finding that community elsewhere, like if you're in a small town somewhere, for example, don't be afraid to make that community yourself. If you want to create, like, a school poetry journal, for example, go for it. It seems like it's a very big task, and there's absolutely a lot that goes into it. But it's also very straightforward if you find people that also love what you love and then come together and work on stuff that you love.

EMMA 9:41

Yeah, I feel like a lot of things in this world are so much more exponential than we think they are. You never know. And that's really beautiful. And I think that also really addresses something that I've kind of realized about competitions. Yes, it's cool to win things, but overall, I think the way competitions help me the most is that they give me more motivation to explore other parts of the writing world and to create work and work of a lot of different types. I think it's really cool that there's a lot of competitions that are, like, ghazal-specific, or this one-region-specific, or this one-strange-form-specific. And even if we don't win, just having that deadline, having a community that's all working towards something together is a really great way to build up your writing motivation. And like Daisy and I talked about in the previous episode, even if you win these competitions, it's all about the craft in the end. So it's all about finding your own voice through writing and trying so many different things until you write pieces that you're really, really proud of. And contests are just like little nudges in different directions to try to do that.

DAISY 10:44

On the topic of writing competitions, do we want to talk about any strategies for submission to competitions in general, or maybe even advice that could extend beyond that to some of these opportunities?

EMMA 10:56

Yeah, I think for a lot of writing competitions, a lot of people just have a body of work that they create, usually during summer or something that they're really happy with, and then just kind of submit them to a lot of different contests. Because I feel like there is kind of a contest season—it's kind of around now—and so if you have that body of work ready during spring and summer, you can just kind of submit it with minor edits to fit the different requirements. And you might just be able to hit a lot of birds with one stone, but you shouldn't kill birds because that's sad.

DAISY 11:28

Don't do that, that's sad.

EMMA 11:30

Yeah. And I think it's also interesting, to think about joining lit mags and stuff. I've been thinking a lot whether it's good to do a lot of things kind of sporadically, or to really, really focus on one contest or one lit mag. And honestly, I'm not really sure what my final verdict is. So, do you guys have any thoughts on focusing all your attention on one contest? Reading all their past winners, et cetera, or dabbling in a lot of different ones?

ARI 11:56

Well, for me, it's very interesting what you said about doing a bunch of work during the summer and then see where it fits, because normally I use competitions and literary work submissions that are looking for a specific type of theme as prompts that push me to do different works. So, for me, I will say that I'm very focused on exactly getting to this contest or getting to this literary magazine. But, for example, I will write a piece of work that is and then maybe the piece gets rejected, and I'm like, okay, well, but now I have that piece, and now I can find other contests where to fit that work. So, yeah, it's very interesting because I have never had this idea of, like "It's summer, time to work and then see where it fits." I need the motivation first, and then I can work.

DAISY 12:54

I'm in a very similar boat. I actually, this past spring, there were a few different magazine prompts that I wrote for and then completely did not submit to because I missed the deadline in my free time. I was like, “Ooh, I'll respond to this prompt,” and then by the time I responded to the prompt, the deadline had already passed. But just the act of responding to that prompt was really fun and very fulfilling for me. And so, it's a little silly in that way that I write for things and then I don't even apply sometimes. But I would say if you are applying to competitions for the, I guess, practice, it's not necessarily a bad thing if you're just writing and using them as these different competitions, as opportunities to explore prompts.

EMMA 13:37

That's really interesting. I wish I did more of that. I kind of just opened the tab on my computer and look at it every once in a while and think about it, and then usually just end up submitting old work anyways, because that's the only work that I feel like is polished enough to submit.

DAISY 13:50

I get it. Sometimes there are moments where when I have to submit something, I'm like, “Oh, is it actually worth it to submit this? Or should I just find something else to revamp? Because this is terrible.”

EMMA 13:59

Yeah, no, pieces that I submitted this year, I've been literally working on for like, eight months because I write creative nonfiction, so I can't submit things until I feel like they're really good. But yeah, I think that's a really great way to explore, too, also, because when you write for a specific prompt or specific contest, you kind of subconsciously go into their past archives or go into past winners or other ways that this theme has been explored. And so you also get a lot of exposure in this one. It's really insightful into what this contest or contests in general look for and what other types of writing there are out there.

ARI 14:35

Yeah. Also just going back to submission. I find it very funny because for me, whenever I submit a piece, the idea that this piece is going to be rejected is actually a relief that lets me go with the piece and submit it because I'm like, well, if it's bad, they are not going to accept it, obviously. So I will only have this very bad poem that I did for years going around in the Internet forever.

EMMA 15:00

I think it's such a refreshing way to look at rejection. To be like, “If it's not good, well, at least I don't have to worry about it” gives you the freedom to just kind of do whatever, make whatever and throw it out there. Because it's ultimately the magazine's job to create a really good cohesive issue. You're just helping them by giving them possibilities. Also, be mindful of what you submit. Read it over again. Maybe let it sit for at least a week. I think having that drive to generate a lot of things and then taking time and looking at it is just a really good way of writing.

DAISY 15:33

We said this last episode, too. Don't wait until the last minute to submit. Don't do it. It's not good. It's not fun for anyone. It's not fun for you, it's not fun for the magazine. Just give yourself the time to sit with your work for at least 24 hours. Don't submit the day of in case something goes wrong.

EMMA 15:50

Yeah. And also with opportunities, you can have a finding opportunities time and pursuing opportunities time as well. Definitely give yourself the time to explore, but then also decide what you think fits you the best and kind of just go down that route.

ARI 16:05

So, talking about exploring opportunities, we are also going to give you guys these different contests that we found out that are less US-centric and more the rest-of-the-world-centric, if you're not from the US. Or if you want to explore a more international kind of audience, you can have a look at it.

EMMA 16:33

Our first contest is the CBC Short Story Prize and it's open from September 1 to November 1. So coming up really soon, you can submit any original unpublished fiction that is up to 2500 words. There's no minimum word requirement and it's open to everyone that lives in Canada, including permanent residents of Canada. While it costs a fee of $25, you can win up to $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have your work published on CBC Books and win a two week residency at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will also receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have work published in CBC Books. You can also submit this not only in English but also in French.

ARI 17:21

The next context that we have for you is called Premio Primavera de Novela 2024 The Premio Primavera de Novela will be accepting submissions until December 15, 2023. So what do they want from you? They want an unpublished original novel in the Spanish language and there are no simultaneous submissions. So who can participate? Writers of any nationality that are 18 or over. So no minors allowed. How will you submit? You submit the work in a digital format, word or PDF file to be sent via email to the following address premios@espasa.es indicating in the subject line Premio Primavera de Novela 2024. The file must contain the author's name, national identity card or passport, address, email and contact telephone number. There are a lot of other details that we will link in the description of the episode. What can you win? You can win €100,000 to the work that is unanimously—or failing that, by the majority of the votes of the jury—is considered to be the most meritorious. The jury decisions will be final. The aforementioned economic endowment, the €100,000 will be considered as an advance payment on account of the exploitation rights of the winning work. The price may not be declared void, nor may the price be distributed among two or one competing works. So who will be judging your novel? The jury will be made of personalities from the world of literature, a representative of Ambito Cultural El Corte Ingles and a representative of the jury. Now, who won last year? Las Brujas y el Inquisidor, The Witches and Inquisition by Elvira Roca Barea, so yeah, go write your novels if you know Spanish or go see if you have any novel that might win these 100,000 euros.

DAISY 19:43

The next competition that we are talking about is the Edinburgh Short Story Award. So the Edinburgh Short Story Award applications are open from December 1 to February 28, 23:59 UK time. You can submit stories on any topic up to 2000 words. And by you I mean any writer worldwide. How to submit? All stories must be submitted via the online entry form. Stories that are sent in hard copy will not be accepted. Writers may submit as many stories as they like, as long as they pay ten pounds per story. In terms of prizes, the first prize is 3000 pounds. Second, prize is 500 pounds. Third prize is 250 pounds. Open to writers worldwide. Publication is offered to authors of the top 20 stories or more in their next anthology. Who is judging for the 2024 competition? Ian Rankin is going to be judging. As for previous winners, the story Hot Wind by Mandy Wheeler won last year. Language, is English, and if you want to learn more, you could head to their website, scottisharttrust.org/shortstory. That is Scottish S-C-OT-T-I-S-H-A-R-T-S trust. T-R-U-S-T S-H-O-R-T-S-T-O-R-Y.

EMMA 21:06

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is also open until November 1, 2023. You should submit your best published short fiction 2000 to 5000 words. The prize is free to enter and open to any citizen of a Commonwealth country or stateless. People living in a Commonwealth country aged 18 and over, there's an online entry form and winners receive 2500 pounds and the overall winner receives 5000 pounds. Winning stories are published online by Granta and in a special print collection by Paper + Ink. The shortlisted stories are also published in adda, the online literary magazine of the Commonwealth Foundation. Many languages are accepted, such as Bengali, Chinese, Creole, English, French, Greek, Malay, Maltese, Portuguese, uh, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil and Turkish. Stories that have been translated to English from any language are also accepted, and the translator of any story also wins additional money prize.

DAISY 22:09

The next competition we are going to be talking about is the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry. This takes place October 1 through November 1. Manuscripts of ten poems, no more, no less, are accepted annually during this time. Poems must be the original work of the entrant and be no longer than 40 lines each. Poems may have been previously published or won previous awards. People who have entered previously for the prize can resubmit but are advised to share new poems. The prize is open to African writers. An African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, who is a national or resident of an African country, or whose parents are African. The prize is open to African poets who have not yet had a full length poetry book published at the time of submission. Self-published poetry books, chapbooks and pamphlets are exempt from this stipulation. No past or present paid employees of the University of Nebraska Press, Akashic Books or Amalion Press, or current faculty, students or employees at the University of Nebraska are eligible for the prizes. African poets who have published a chapbook in a New Generation African Poets Chapbooks Box Set series remain eligible for the Evaristo African Poetry prize if they have not published a full length book of poems. How you can submit: all entries must be submitted via Submittable. Poems must be submitted in a single document without any identifying information included. Alterations cannot be made to poems once entered, the Submittable cover letter which will be concealed to screeners and judges should include the entrance name, nationality, country of birth, full address including country of permanent residence, personal email address and telephone number. In terms of what you can win the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry, is an annual prize of 1500 USD awarded to ten poems written by an African poet who is judging. The APBF will convene a judging panel every year in 2022 to 2023. The judging panel included Gabeba Baderoon, Tjawangwa TEE JWANA Dema and Tsitsi CICI Jaji. The APBF reserves the right to not award the prize if, in the judge's opinion, such an action is justified. APBF also reserves the right to split the prize if they decide that more than one poet is worthy of winning it. The language for this competition is English. However, translation of poems into English are also accepted. If you would like to learn more, you can head to their website. africanpoetrybf.unl.edu. That is Africanpoetrybfunl.edu.

ARI 24:41

Now, we have these other contests for poetry. It's called Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. The Sillerman Prize is awarded annually with submissions open between September 15 and December 1. So what do they want from you? They want a manuscript. Poetry manuscript shall be at least 50 pages long. The author's name shall not appear on the manuscript and eligible writers may submit more than one manuscript. But wait a minute. Who is an eligible writer? Well, an African poet who has not yet published a collection of poetry. This includes self published books if they were sold online, in stores or at readings. Writers who have edited and published an anthology or similar collections of other writers' work remain eligible. Now, for the purposes of the contest, an African writer is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, who is a national or resident of an African country or whose parents are African. So how can you submit? The Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets accepts electronic submissions only. We will link in the description the link to submit via Submittable. What can you win? The winner receives 1000 US dollars and the book publication through the University of Nebraska Press and Amalion in Senegal. And finally, who will be the judges? The Sillerman editorial team, including Kwame Dawes, Chris Abani, Matthew Shenoda, John Keene, Gabeba Baderoon, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Aracelis Girmay, and Mahtem Shiferraw.

EMMA 26:34

The New York Times Learning Network also hosts a wide variety of contests, spanning journalism and memoir writing and review writing, including their 100-word personal memoir contest that ends November 1st. Anyone aged 13 or older in the United States or the United Kingdom can submit and also anyone that’s 16 years or older anyone else in the world. They host so many different types of contests; you should definitely check out their Learning Network to learn more.

DAISY 27:15

The Foyle Young Writers Network is a competition that takes place annually. For 2023, submissions were due by midnight, July 31, 2023. And so the 2024 deadline is likely going to be around then. In terms of what you're submitting, the Foyle Young Writers Network is a competition where you submit poetry; must be its first publication written in English, but you can include phrases in your mother tongue or another language. For any poet aged eleven through 17, you must submit by midnight of July 31 of the year, and you can submit on their official website, which is foyleyoungpoets.org, which is foyleyoungpoets.org. In terms of what you can win, there are 100 winners, 85 commendations, and 15 top winners. The top 15 winning authors often attend a weeklong intensive residential Arvon course, where they develop their creative writing skills alongside fellow poets, or benefit from alternative sustained mentoring. Who won last year? You can actually read last year's top 15 winning poems in the competition's anthology titled Lullabies of Distant Traffic.

ANNA 28:17

My name is Anna and I'm a writer from San Diego, California, and a current freshman at Harvard University studying economics and English. And I just wanted to hop on here really quickly and talk about my experience submitting to international writing competitions, and specifically the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, which I submitted to last year and was lucky enough to be recognized by. So starting off a little bit with my writing process, I started writing the piece that I submitted entitled “Liminal Space” earlier that summer at a writing workshop where I was able to get some really important feedback and critique and kind of choose a handful of works that I thought were the best to submit to Foyle. And “Liminal Space” really centered around my own personal reckoning with poetry as something that I wanted to pursue, and how that rationale didn't necessarily translate the easiest across cultures or languages. And just general advice that I would give is to look on the website of the poetry competition that you're looking to submit to and look at the past winning works and kind of just try to identify some of the strengths or the memorable moments, because I think, you can learn and grow a lot from that and also draw inspiration from a lot of that. And also, I think it's always beneficial to put a lot of emphasis on the revision process, even for a competition like Foyle with no submission fees and unlimited submissions. I think you always want to be putting your best foot forward, right? I know it can be really stressful during this time of submitting to writing competitions, but always stay true to yourself, be authentic, and I wish you the best of luck.

DAISY 29:51

Thank you so much for listening. This episode couldn't have been possible without you. For more, follow us on Instagram at aster.lit: A-S-T-E-R DOT L-I- T, and check out our website asterlit.org for transcriptions and more. Subs for issue ten are open until November 15. Thank you.

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[Intro Music]

EMMA 0:13

Hey Asterix, welcome back to another episode of Ad Aster. For those that are just tuning in, we are the youth led podcast of literary magazine, AsterLit, which is focused on cross cultural connections within the writing world. I'm Emma and today I'm here with Daisy, a new editor and podcast team member. We're super excited to have you join us. Daisy, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself?

DAISY 0:33

Yeah! Hi, I'm Daisy. I am currently a college student. My favorite animals are octopuses. And I'm very excited for today's episode.

EMMA 0:42

Yay! We're super excited for you to be here. And I love that so much. Today, we'll be talking about US based writing competitions: Scholastic, Benington, and YoungArts. And before that, I just want to give a quick spiel because it's competition season. It's stressful, it's horrible. Everyone, of course, wants to win, and everyone should deserve to win. But writing is so much more about just competing. And I've known that, personally, I was super super into competing, I just felt like I read every single winning piece out there to try to, like make my writing fit that style. But ultimately, I learned that it's so much more meaningful to write what you actually want to say. And then even when you do win, the message that you put out there is the message that you really want to put into the world. So don't let competition culture define you too much. It's there to uplift people. So make your writing as you as possible. And if competitions don't like that, then competitions can go cry in a corner, because you'll still have your really cool writing. And that's way better than any prize could ever give you.

DAISY 1:52

Absolutely. I have another quick disclaimer, which is that we know our audience is international, and the majority of the competitions we're going to talk about today are based in the United States. But don't worry, we are already planning another episode where we are covering competitions that aren't based in the US. So stay tuned.

EMMA 2:12

The first competition we're covering today is Benington Young Writers Awards. And what's actually really cool, and this kind of exception to our previous comment, is that Bennington actually does accept international submissions. The first place winner in each category is awarded $1,000. The second place is awarded $500. And the third place winners receive $250. There's no entry fee. All entries must be original work, though, and you must get approved by a high school teacher. The categories we can submit in are poetry, fiction, nonfiction. And aside from just the monetary prizes, there's also scholarships if you want to enroll in Bennington. The description will have more details on that. Now let's hear from Joanna about her experience at Bennington.

JOANNA 2:58

Hello, my name is Joanna Liu. You can call me Anna or Joanna, and I was a 2022 to 23 winner in the Bennington Young Writers Awards for creative nonfiction. So the piece I wrote was called "Diagnosis of Spinal Lateral Curvatures," it discusses a medical condition I have, which is called scoliosis. And it's based on the premise of how I used my scoliosis as a method of kind of questioning and then unearthing my family's history. Because in the very beginning, I was told that it was, although it's often genetically caused, I was like the first one to have it, only to find out when I digged back that there was a sort of unearthed history of spinal conditions in my family. I wrote this piece, I think, in October or September, like– like a month or two before it was due, I finished– I finished drafting at like 11 beforehand. So maybe don't do that. But overall, it was a pretty fluid experience. Actually, I started writing it as a poem. But once I found a form that kind of fit it better, which was creative nonfiction, and then specifically using the structure of a spinal curve to kind of center a piece of round the idea of a spiral curve and the five components of one, it helped me like right and generate my ideas a lot faster. And I submitted the night before and I got an email in March or so.

As for my advice. So I think I spoke on this briefly just now. But one of the things that was most informative to my writing experience was experimentation. When I was reading through Bennington's past pieces I noticed they had a focus on students' works or writers' who works, who would go beyond the structure of a traditional story. And see to tell, perhaps a story with themes that we have seen before, but that is subverted or presented in a new way. And my biggest advice for that is to not simply put structure in for the sake of structure, but find a structure that suits the function of the piece, it is not an additional component, it is a integral part of the piece, and furthermore, an additive one. So to give an example, for my piece, I chose the structure of a spinal curve, it took a couple of tries. But eventually I settled on this idea of splitting it up into the different components of a spine, and then moving down different moments in my family's history until we reach this muddled bottom of sorts, which has no location is centered around no character, and is kind of supposed to represent this collective consciousness as a lot of ways to interpret the final section, which is like a sentence. But.

With that being said, like TLDR, I'd say my greatest advice is to really have fun with form, make sure it's not just something you're adding in to, like, "oh, they see them playing with form," you only should be like working with form if you feel like it's aiding your piece. If it's making it more confusing, or it's not adding to the thematic end, per se of the piece, then you might need to experiment with a different structure. And of course, previous winners are always a great reference as to how have people done this in the past. I've seen hermit crab essays on there, which are basically pieces written in the form of a multiple choice test or recipe or some similar thing. So I would definitely check that out if you need a starting point.

Anything else and I'll just leave with this small story. I don't know where else I'd tell this. But basically, my first year submitting I was probably a freshman or sophomore. I was writing about Elon Musk– my writing in freshman and sophomore year wasn't very good– I was writing about Elon Musk for some reason pre Elon-Musk-is-cancelled-slash-his-crazy-Twitter-takeover. So I guess something that I found out about myself when I went to look at these old pieces is that I think I used to be a stem kid slash I used to really stand Elon Musk. Both of those are really horrible things to do. And I would highly advise against doing them. Being a stem kid and liking Elon Musk. Anyways, good luck submitting to Bennington, don't let the competition define you. There's so many other ways to excel in the writing world beyond this one specific competition. There's other competitions. There's publication to journals, and there's so much more you just submit to Aster Lit by the way.

DAISY 8:12

Well, that was delightful.

EMMA 8:14

Yeah, it was. Thank you so much. I will definitely take the advice to heart, I also. Yeah, I actually read Joanna's piece. It's really interesting. We love you, Joanna. And I do both notice that Bennington plays with form a lot. I think kind of so does YoungArts? Scholastic feels a lot more straightforward. But we'll talk about that later. But that was a very, very interesting intro to our personal thoughts from winners. Any thoughts? Daisy?

DAISY 8:45

Yeah, I thought it was really neat. I really enjoyed listening to it. I took away two things. One was the form that you were talking about, especially the not just playing with form for the sake of it, but actually integrating it into the piece in a way that's meaningful. And also, I want to point out in that same vein of like, competitions don't define you that Joanna was talking about how she's submitted multiple times. And so she didn't win, it sounds like, on her first time submitting. So keep that in mind if you're submitting to competitions.

EMMA 9:19

Yeah, I didn't win my first time doing Scholastic either, so. Which we'll talk about later, but definitely, and I have heard of like the poem that she was talking about that's multiple choice, that's a multiple choice test. It was like Li Bai, which is like a Chinese person that like, Duan Wu Jie is about which is like the like Dragon Boat Festival, and how he like jumped into the river and it was like, four different scenarios and you've had to pick one and it was really cool. I'll probably also link that.

DAISY 9:47

I want to read that now.

EMMA 9:48

Yes.

DAISY 9:50

Awesome. So the second competition we're talking about today is the YoungArts Writing Competition. This is unfortunately not open to international students. In order to apply, you must either be a US citizen, a permanent resident/green card recipient, or have the ability to demonstrate that you are legally able to receive taxable income in the United States. Applicants must also be in grades 10 through 12, or 15 to 18 years of age by December 1 of the year that you're applying. If you're selected as winner, this also must be your first time attending National Young Arts Week– I will elaborate on in a moment– but YoungArts actually has ten artistic disciplines that they accept submissions from, but today we're focusing on the writing discipline, surprise, surprise. And within the writing discipline, there are six submission categories. There's creative nonfiction, novel, play or script, poetry, short story, and spoken word. In terms of awards, "YoungArts Award winners have ongoing access to the YoungArts Post, a private online portal that allows artists to connect, share their work and discover fellowships, residencies, wellness resources, microgrants, and additional financial support," that was quoted directly from their website. And there are two variants of the awards. There's the YoungArts Award in which winners receive a monetary award of $250.

EMMA 11:14

There's like three tiers for something and merit honorable mention. And then the finalists, which I think Daisy is going to talk about a bit later, but yeah, they have like increasing levels of money, awards.

DAISY 11:27

Awesome. Yeah. And then there's the YoungArts Award with distinction, also known as YoungArts finalists. So another quote from the website, "winners at this level are invited to participate in National YoungArts Week and will have their work further evaluated for cash awards of up to $10,000. Award winners with distinction who attend National YoungArts Week and meet the eligibility requirements are also considered for nomination to the US Presidential Scholars Program." So the 2024 YoungArts application closes October 13, 2023, at 11:59pm Eastern Time. If you want to learn more from the website about these requirements, you can head to the website at https://young arts.org/competition.

So now you're going to hear from Emily, Kate, and David on their experiences with YoungArts.

EMILY 12:16

Hi, I'm Emily Pickering and I was a 2023 YoungArts national finalist in creative nonfiction. For this category YoungArts wanted a portfolio of two pieces and the piece of mine that they chose to display at YoungArts Week was called "Speak" a story about growing up with a sister with special needs and about language and identity. The applying process was very difficult, but also just really introspective for me. Both of my pieces were very personal and I put together that portfolio, I submitted in both creative nonfiction and poetry actually and they ended up picking my creative nonfiction. I sent them the portfolio and I heard back from them within a month and no matter how much you think you prepare, still getting the phone call officially confirming I was a finalist was a really special moment for me. Just because the application process is so rigorous and requires you to send in your very best work which can be really hard to judge by yourself. I had many people read my writing and ultimately the piece that they picked I was really proud of, I think it represented myself and a unique viewpoint that I had.

For younger people applying my biggest advice would be to not get discouraged. This was my second year applying to YoungArts and I applied in two categories and only heard back in one. Literary competitions are really difficult. It's hard to know exactly what YoungArts is looking for. But my advice would be to submit the work that you feel best represents you. YoungArts does tend to lean more towards identity based work. But that can also just include work that has a unique perspective; work that couldn't possibly have been written by anyone else. I was worried my pieces were too personal or too raw and not polished enough. But YoungArts ended up loving them. I really think if you drop your writing on the floor, someone should pick it up and be able to identify that voice as yours. And that will be my biggest tip for the creative nonfiction category for writing in general, I would just send the work that you love, send the work that is your favorite piece, because honestly your passion for it will shine through.

YoungArts Week was so special. There were about 20 national finalists in writing, and 150 national finalists overall. And we were all spending a week together in Miami. It started off with everyone getting to meet each other and I got to explore so many disciplines in different artistic mediums that I really just didn't know that much about. Overall, the writing aspect of YoungArts Week was the most exciting. We got to take different master classes and get some artists like Richard Blanco, a former US Poet Laureate. Overall, I would say that the week was focused a little less than workshopping and more on master classes exploring creativity and speaking to guest artists about professional careers in the arts and life after YoungArts. There really is no other words to describe YoungArts Week other than life changing– everyone says, that it's on the website– but it truly was such an amazing experience, especially every night when we would take a bus to the New World Center and watch disciplines from dance to voice to jazz perform, it was... it was incredible seeing the best artists in the country just show why they love their craft. That was the best part of YoungArts Week. I love all of the people I met there. And I think even if you don't think you have a chance, you should still apply. I really wasn't sure what the outcome was going to be for me, but I applied and I didn't know what your next week was going to be like, but I went and it ended up really changing my life. So I would recommend this competition to anyone. It's my favorite of all the literary competitions I've taken part in and I've taken part in many. And I'm really looking forward to 2024 and 2025 and seeing what the next class of YoungArts Winners looks like.

KATE 15:47

Hi, my name is Kate Choi and I was a 2021 national finalist for YoungArts in playwriting. YoungArts national finalists are all invited to a one week workshop called the YoungArts Week. And this usually takes place in Miami at the headquarters. But because I won during 2021, during COVID, I actually had my week online over Zoom. And that was still really cool because we were all mailed fun YoungArts packages with merch, notebooks, books from our teachers and our guest speakers, and we also got some high tech audio recording equipment since we were going to be recording on pieces for the final showcase. So that was cool, because we also got to keep everything after YoungArts. There are about 20 of us there for different genres and teachers for each genre. So we'd have whole group exercises and workshops led by the teachers. And then we'd also have smaller genre specific workshops. And we also had guests come on, like Edwidge Danticat, who came and spoke to us on Zoom, and a few others. Everyone wrote new work that week. We workshopped it all together, it was so fun and supportive. Everybody was really excited to each other's work and after, outside of workshop hours, are also opportunities to socialize with each other over Zoom and virtual spaces. So that was really cool and such a gratifying experience. I still see people from my YoungArts cohort all the time. In talking to the people who participated in the years coming after me, who were actually there in person for you last week in Miami, I know that they also formed close and amazing bonds with artists across all kinds of disciplines. One of the really exciting and unique things about YoungArts as a writing competition is that it also supports other disciplines of art, like dance and music. So you just get to interact with such a range of talents, YoungArts Week and similar YoungArts events across the country. So that is just so exciting. And I really highly encourage you to take part in it. My number one piece of advice is definitely submit, even if you don't think you'll get it, you truly never know what the judge is going to find beautiful or surprising or interesting in a work that you've written. And sometimes we get so lost in our own words that we can't see the forest for the trees. So take a chance on your writing, have others read it if you want that extra feedback. And that's definitely super valuable. Submit, no matter what you think your chances are, because even if you don't get the result you're hoping for, you learn a lot from the process of really applying in the first place, taking that piece seriously from the beginning, really workshopping it and revising it and working through it with a goal like YoungArts in mind. That is a process that will help you when you're submitting to anything later on, even something like college applications or other writing competitions, my second piece of advice is don't cater to what you think judges will want to read. Because I don't think there is a certain type of piece that will be appreciated in YoungArts over another. There is just so much diversity in the subject matter and the form of the pieces that won in my year. My advice is just write good work, because judges will appreciate good work.

Also, please don't wait to press submit, because I did. And that is a fun, but stressful story. The day of my application, I was in such a panic, because I waited until the very, very last day of the deadline to submit. And that was really terrible. Because YoungArts knows, and they will tell you on their website, don't submit right before the deadline because everybody is rushing to the website on that time. Your website will stop working. And it did stop working for me. And it ended up taking at least two days maybe even more to process my submission even though I clicked submit before the deadline. And so I had been so stressed about that. I thought that maybe I would just give up altogether because at a point I was looking at the loading bar inching forward or completely frozen and thinking, "I don't know if this is worth it" because I truly thought I didn't have a shot. But that just goes to show again, submit your piece no matter what you think your chances are and also don't wait to press Submit. My second story is just that, because it was over Zoom and is based in the US; I was in Seoul at the time and another person in the cohort was in Taiwan. So we were both struggling with a time difference a little bit. It was kind of funny, because there we were, in the wee hours of dawn. And one time I did oversleep, and miss the workshop happening at two in the morning. It was a little bit difficult at the time, to be honest, but looking back, it's just such a beautiful memory because we were just there writing in the twilight blue hours of dawn. And that was just so, so wonderful in such a hazy but lovely memory to look back on.

DAVID 20:40

Hello, my name is David Chen. And I was a 2022 YoungArts merit winner in creative nonfiction and a 2023 YoungArts honorable mention winner in creative nonfiction. So all of my pieces dealt a lot with relationships, specifically relationships to my parents, my mother and my father, and specifically how my experiences and identities have influenced my relationships, and how I've played a role in altering the relationships that I have. But I was only able to apply three times. And the first year I submitted two things and you know, didn't win anything. The second year, I submitted two more creative nonfiction pieces, not really– not really believing that I would win. But then I did get an email saying that I was a merit winner, and I was super duper excited. And then the third year was definitely the most stressful year, because I knew was my last year I was a senior, and I had gotten merit the year before. So there was a lot of expectations for me on myself, and my parents on me, just because writing hasn't been something that they've always encouraged. So I was very nervous about my senior year submission. I didn't end up getting finalist, but I did get an honorable mention. And the way I've kind of improved, according to YoungArts is kind of what ended up making the most difference to me, although I was of course disappointed in the moment. Yeah. Participating, of course, it's always stressful just because it is, you know, a literary competition. And just like, you know, Scholastic, or any of the other writing competitions, you know that they're selective, and it always feels good to be recognized. And people have always called YoungArts, the organization, like especially the young arts winners, they always said that YoungArts was the organization that made them realize that they could do art for a living. And, you know, I wish that was also what it did for me. Of course, YoungArts did encourage me to continue pursuing creative writing. But it definitely didn't have that kind of same effect. I'm also just like, in general, really grateful for, like what YoungArts has given me because it does, it has given me a lot of opportunities already. And I know that it will continue to give me opportunities as long as I seek them going forward in the future. So I do really appreciate that. And I know that YoungArts was life changing for a lot of people, and it was life changing for me as well, in the sense that it convinced me to continue pursuing the arts, even though it didn't necessarily convince me to, you know, do art for a living, for example. In terms of advice, I would definitely say that this is a great opportunity, and that you should because an application sent is better than an application unsent I would say Be true to yourself and be true to your craft. And that YoungArts, at least in my experience, does truthfully recognize a unique style. The reason I'm saying this is because in my experience submitting to literary journals, for example, typically, I find that magazines for creative nonfiction really, really prefer flowery language. And I tend to do that less in my writing. So definitely don't be afraid to apply. Yeah. Anything else? Fun stories? I would say that when they asked for my anthology piece, they actually asked for one– a piece that I had submitted in my first year. So I thought that was kind of funny, just because it was a piece that I, you know, literally thought they thought wasn't good, but apparently they liked it.

DAISY 24:36

That was delightful. I loved hearing from everyone. A few things that really stuck out to me with, Emily when she was talking about how other people read her writing before she submitted it. I think that's really neat because it shows there's a level of editing process and getting other people's opinions to figure out which pieces of work you want to submit. But especially when she was saying like the most important part is to send in the work you love. I think that's a general theme that we've been seeing is that the process of writing should be the important part, not the result you send to competitions.

EMMA 25:09

Yeah, I agree. And I really liked the bit about if you pick up your piece off the floor, you should be able to know that– someone should be able to know that it's yours. Yeah. And definitely don't wait until the last minute. I've done that on way too many things and it's incredibly stressful. Especially–

DAISY 25:24

Yeah

EMMA 25:24

–like, my computer like, randomly starts like hissing and it gets like, really, really warm. And then all the tops are freezing, like one by one. And it's the most stressful thing ever, which probably says something about how chaotic my brain is. But also, just don't, don't do that. Be organized. Yeah.

DAISY 25:42

I will say this applies beyond literary competitions. As someone who is applied to college, don't wait until the day of. Set your deadline a few days before, like, just for everything, not just literary competitions.

EMILY 25:55

Yeah. And it's so cool hearing about what you guys chose to write about. It's like, a lot of it's very inspirational. And I think a lot of it does explore what David was kind of talking about, like your interactions between other people what like those interactions and connections really mean, which is kind of like all of human experience. So that works out well. And I wish luck to everyone that's going to submit to YoungArts.

DAISY 26:19

Yeah. Good luck, everyone. It's gonna be great.

EMMA 26:24

And next, we'll talk a bit a bit about Scholastic. So the requirements, unlike Bennington, everyone must reside within the US or US territories, military bases or Canada. There's a lot of different sections. There's critical essay, dramatic script, flash fiction, journalism, humor, novel writing, personal essay and memoir, which is my genre, poetry, science fiction and fantasy, short story, writing portfolio, which is only for graduated seniors. And Scholastic has like a whole different catalog of awards. On the regional level, you can win gold key, silver keys, honorable mentions, you can be nominated for American Voice Nominee and a American Visions Nominee. And on the national level, you can get a gold medal, a silver medal, and American Voices and Visions Award, Best in Grade, or Portfolio, there's a lot of different scholarships. And there's a lot of other benefits and programs like they have the National Student Poets program. If you when you buy also be able to apply for a scholarship either to your college, if they're like in partners, or to a lot of like, summer creative programs. And there's also a lot of publications and exhibitions. And if you win on a national level, or like a National Distinction level, you also get to go to New York. And it's not like the expenses are fully paid. But there are a lot of discounts on things. And you get to go to a ceremony at Carnegie Hall, where there's a lot of really cool guest speakers and attend workshops. And it's just a really fun experience, especially because it's in New York. And unlike the other contests, it doesn't really have a formal deadline and varies based on your region. But it's usually early December-ish. So keep your eyes out for that when it's early December.

You guys already know me. But I'm Emma again, and I was a 2022 Scholastic Best in Grade, and Gold Medal Winner in personal essay and memoir. So my piece was about– it was a series of letters all kind of functioning under one letter as like, writing to the terrified versions of myself, because it stemmed from this quote by Ocean Vuong; something along the lines of "I often find myself writing to the terrified versions of myself." And it started from just, like, one piece and then I kind of just like, did so many before and after that, and it kind of talked about what a story really means, like the act of writing is kind of writing your story again and again. But what does it mean when you want your story to be more vibrant? When you want your story to be more impactful? What does it mean for a story to be authentic, and this is layered with, like events that have been very, very influential in my life and have really like became my kind of coming of age story. So it's like coming of age story versus how to tell the coming of age story, written through letters to myself.

And participating. New York was really cool. And it was really fun. And it wasn't really– it wasn't super planned. YoungArts is a whole week. Scholastic is like two, three-ish days. There's like random workshops that you can go to, you'll just like see people like hanging around the hotel. It's not super organized, but if you know people that are going or if you run into someone definitely ask if they have friends that are also going to be there. And that's kind of what I did. So we formed like a kind of group-ish, and we call each other like "The Golden Girls" which is kind of cute because we had like golden medals. So it was Yeah, and I also–

DAISY 29:48

That's really cute.

EMMA 29:49

Thank you. And I also met Liz there which is Aster Lit alum. If listeners listening we love you, Liz. And my– one of my favorite memories was we had to go to the like breakfast reception for like the scholarship winners, and there was like these little tiny jams they were like– the like, length of like half your finger, like tiny little jams. And we like stole a bunch of them and just like ran around New York like holding our jams. And it was kind of fun. And overall, it was just pretty cool because it was New York and it was my first time, and meeting just a lot of really cool people. Like I still see them on my Instagram. And I'm just like, "oh my god, you're so amazing. I actually can't believe we were in the same room at one point in time." But definitely, as for advice, also, I think Scholastic really likes really, really raw pieces. So don't be afraid to like, literally cry onto a Google Doc and then submit it. They really really care about authenticity and cultural stories, etc. But very, very identity and emotion based. So definitely throw out emotion And like everyone said, just embrace who you are the stories you want to tell and I really do think it'll work out for you.

DAISY 31:04

That's so cool.

EMMA 31:08

Some other quick contests that we also want to mention because they're really cool are the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest. I think the deadline is October 31. Princeton Lewis Center also has the Leonard L. Milberg 59' High School Poetry Prize, and also the 10 Minute Play Contest. That's for high school juniors only, and it will open early 2024. Columbia College Chicago has their young writers competition. And, at least in 2021, the deadline was January 31, so expect around that, and the Adroit Prizes also happens around spring.

DAISY 31:50

We wish you the best of luck with applying to these competitions!

EMMA 31:54

Yes, me too! And like we've been saying like the entire episode: write what you want to write, submit because you love it and you just want to share your work. It's really just a way to– I think the best part is just getting to know other writers. The best part of going to these programs is just realizing there's so many people that care about craft that care about everyone's voices. And just having these like fun little moments. It really characterizes the whole writing journey, because most of the time, we're just alone in our rooms writing on our laptops at 3 am. So the flip side of that.

DAISY 32:29

Exactly, and don't stop writing either. Re– regardless of whether or not you get into these different competitions, no matter what, the outcome can still be to continue to write, like. If you don't get into a competition, still continue to write because if you do get into a competition, it's not one and done. We see with YoungArts weekend Scholastic, that there are more workshops and more people to talk to and more things. It's all a way to develop the craft. It's just– not it's not just winning an award and being done with it. So it's all about writing.

EMMA 32:59

Yeah, definitely. And for Scholastic I actually had like a whole crisis after I won, because I felt like I didn't want to keep submitting for the sake of submitting, I wanted to focus more on my craft, which is really hard because the teen writing world is very, very fast paced. And I kind of felt like if I was being too emotional, in like pieces that I was submitting for contests, then it was like exploiting part of myself for a contest. But really, we just need to step back sometimes. We just need to like go into our mental cabin in the woods, and just sit alone and write what we really want to write. And ultimately, that is what makes us us because our writing stems from our experiences from our thoughts. And every– and even if a contest doesn't recognize your work, it has made you who you are, and it's part of who you are. And I think that's a really beautiful thing to be able to reflect and make really cool things out of that. So yay.

[Transition Music]

Thank you so much, Asterix, for listening to this episode. It really couldn't have been possible without you. For more follow us on Instagram @aster.lit, and check out our website, asterlit.org, for transcripts and more. Subs for issue 10, lacuna, are open until November 15. Thank you so much for listening once again and all the relevant links and descriptions are going to be in the description. So feel free to check down there for any more information. Lastly, feel free to DM us or contact us with any information. We'd be super happy to talk to you and we're really looking forward to hearing your voices and continuing our journey into the stars.

[Outro Music]

[Theme Music: Electric Pop Introduction]

0:11 EMMA:

Hey Asterisks, welcome to another episode of Ad Aster. We're super happy to be here today. And this is…

0:16 CELINA:

I'm Selena.

0:20 EMMA:

And today we're gonna be talking about some reflections, thoughts and poems of our

issue ten theme: Lacuna.

So, Selena, would you like to get started and start talking about the history and meaning of Lacuna?

0:35 CELINA:

Yeah. So Lacuna is a super cool interesting word that is defined by an unfilled space or interval or a gap and it's often used to describe writing with missing pieces. Now, what's really interesting is that it descends from the Latin word meaning lake.

And what's really beautiful about bodies of water and lakes in general is we often don't know what they're hiding or what's under the surface, which I think relates to a lot of unknown pieces in writing.

1:02 EMMA:

Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think just the image of a lake is so interesting because there's the water and then there's the space that it fills, which is a gap in and of itself and it kind of, I feel like it kind of curves with the word lacuna too.

So I think that's just a really interesting background of the word.

1:20 CELINA:

I definitely agree. And I like what you said about how the space that it takes up like this body of water or the lake.

Because where I'm from, we have this lake, we're actually beneath it is a town that the government basically paid all these minority people to leave so that they could fill with water.

So it's like this entire piece of history that's removed, which reminds me of a lot of like texts that we now try to translate or discover when we're doing archaeological exhibits, we're studying ancient texts.

There's so much we don't know.

And all we get is these like big translations into English if even that.

So I just think it's beautiful that it comes from a word that means lake.

2:00 EMMA:

Yeah, I definitely agree. And that's so purposeful of them. Like they chose to do that, the government chose to do that.

And I think a lot of people in translation and in writing we choose to like.. even writing in and of itself. we're trying to express something that we're feeling or isn't really put into words.

So I feel like even in the process of putting down words maybe there's always going to be a missing piece so you can't fully write it down.

So I think it's interesting, like the way we try to conceptualize our experience. But knowing we can't fully conceptualize anything because the way we experience it and the way we express it is always going to be different or have a gap.

2:39 CELINA:

Like when, when people describe writing, my favorite is when they always bring up translation, even if you're not going from one language to another because like there's always something lost and you're turning something, like, abstract into something concrete.

Like the act of putting words on paper to me is a very concrete action.

But just like memory or experience is so like out there, it's like we're always going to lose a piece of something no matter how hard we try.

3:06 EMMA:

Yeah, especially with the context.

Like you can't… I was thinking about history and monuments lately and like, you can have the same monument that you have like 300 years ago, but it wouldn't mean the same thing because of the context now.

And so we often see monuments or statues as not very ethical in today's era when they're perfectly fine, like 300 years ago. And that's because the context around the thing has changed.

So maybe it's not even the physicality of it, it's not even the physical thing, but also what's around it that creates something that's missing. Like the idea of something throughout history, even if the idea, it doesn't change the way we perceive it does.

Even if it's not maybe about ethics but just how we interpret what an author was trying to say.

Like, there's so many authors who died and then it was like a family member who published their work. And we can't really ask that author, what were you trying to say?

What were you feeling? And we're almost left to interpret it or translate their words to our own minds. And from that, I feel like we almost lost a piece of it too.

4:06

Yeah, I definitely agree.

4:08

But the thing is everything is kind of perception, like, even if we're not actively trying to translate or actively trying to read or interpret just the way we view the world is from our lens.

4:18

And so maybe we can't ever unlock some like objective truth or some objective way of seeing the world.

4:24

It's just tinted by how we see it and maybe that naturally blocks out a piece of whatever we're trying to look at.

4:30

And I guess what leads me to think is like, can you have have gaps in what you know about something and still like, feel like it's something you can understand.

4:38

Like, how much do you need to know about something or how unbiased do you need to perceive it to understand it fully or can you even understand it fully?

4:47

I kind of feel like you can't understand it fully.

4:49

Like I feel like no one can understand it fully.

4:51

It's just you understand, I don't know, but there's so many ways of understanding things, you can understand them really sharply.

4:57

Like one point it really deeply or have a really large survey of things.

5:01

But I think ultimately we're still trying to approach, trying to understand it fully, but it's not something we never get to.

5:09

So then maybe should we start trying to understand things just for like pieces or should we keep trying to understand things from like their like entirety or is like, really the only way, the only way that we're going to try to remove those gaps is from just trying to get pieces of it.

5:24

I guess it's like what we want from the thing we're trying to look at, right?

5:28

Because I'm a philosopher, I think he has this way of writing where he writes under a lot of different like pseudonyms and he was kind of talking about how he has to write under the pseudonyms because the only way to really interpret his message is to piece together all the missing pieces and to piece together all the different parts and to try to figure out their correlations.

5:52

And that's so much more an effective way of teaching philosophy than just telling someone straight up.

5:56

So maybe it is in the and the gaps and the way we interpret them or try to connect them where we actually learn how to truly understand something.

6:05

And I guess I'm wondering like like you said, Kierkegaard, he purposefully broke up his writing, right?

6:10

So you would understand it better.

6:11

It reminds me of how some writers purposefully do not include information or they remove information to make the reader understand the message better.

6:19

Like, you know, eras your poetry, blackout, poetry, poetry with purposeful gaps.

6:23

You're even just not telling your reader everything outside of the form, but just the content.

6:28

I think there's something really important and beautiful to that.

6:32

Yeah, I definitely agree.

6:33

That reminds me of Daniel Liu's poem.

6:37

Someday.

6:37

I love redacted where it's after Ocean Wong.

6:41

Someday.

6:41

I love Ocean Wong.

6:42

But he chooses to not say his name or he chooses to say like bracket redacted instead of his name.

6:48

And in the author's note, he says he wants to separate like himself, the speaker and the person being spoken to because talking about yourself or talking about your body is a very, very different task and it needs that kind of distance to see it more clearly.

7:04

I think this is a very, like beautiful way to like, look at a racial poetry because this isn't technically erasure poetry, but it's like the act of the poet erasing himself from a poem about himself.

7:14

But it's interesting because most of the lines have some form of first person or something to do with his body.

7:21

Like there's this really beautiful or just the beginning adapted.

7:25

I am only here to hear your last breath, running water, running lungs, racing like oblivion.

7:31

Each gun face is just an escape.

7:33

So already we have one eye identifying himself and three different parts of his body.

7:40

So I guess it's like, how important was his name to this poem?

7:43

I almost feel like the message comes across better because we don't have that information.

7:47

Yeah, I feel like it like, like he wants to do it kind of abstract, abstract, it, abstract it in a way where it's almost easier to understand because instead of focusing on the name, instead of focusing on who it's to, you're focusing on how he feels about the all of the different parts and how they come together.

8:06

And I actually think that it's really interesting that you mentioned point of view because I've often heard that like second person, you sometimes write in second person to like avoid pain or you write a second person to like not something to yourself, which is really interesting to look at because it's like you create a gap between who you are and the person you're describing to try to understand it better or to try to like express them more honestly.

8:30

And the way we choose to direct things in our writing is also a way we choose to not direct things at other people or in other ways.

8:39

And it's interesting to think about how who we're talking to has to do with so much of what we see, I, I love the idea of like, you use second person to like, not feel pain or because, you know, you think about when you write second person poetry, you and like second person is often used as a command.

8:57

But it's almost like, even when you're writing you, which is supposed to be directed at your audience, most of the time you're actually writing directed back at yourself.

9:05

So it's almost like the second person become a mirror of all the gaps that you don't want to admit to yourself.

9:10

Like all the lacuna of your own like words or your own messages or your own mind are those like reflected back into your second person writing?

9:17

I agree.

9:18

Yeah, that's so interesting.

9:19

And also the saying that like what you see in others is also what you see in yourself.

9:24

Like talking about like, if someone always praises others for something, it's a quality that they also admire and probably possess or vice versa if it's a negative trait.

9:32

And it's interesting because the way we see the world is so much of a reflection of who we are.

9:36

So and any and in any way, no matter who it's directed to, as long as it's our expression, it has our faults and it has the way we see the world.

9:46

So maybe distance is just getting a sharper perspective on how we see things and just like, we'll never like, understand like writing or reading or like any of those things that we said earlier fully, we're always gonna understand a piece of them.

10:02

That's what I think.

10:03

Like, just like it's a spectrum and I don't think you can be on one end or the other.

10:07

I think you're always caught in the middle of understanding maybe a peace and you're never going to understand none of it, but you're always gonna understand some of it.

10:15

Yeah.

10:15

And maybe that's all that matters.

10:17

Like, maybe we don't really need anything more because we're kind of just pieces of everything as well.

10:22

We're a peace in our lives.

10:24

We're a peace in other people's lives.

10:25

We're a peace in society and maybe it's ok that we don't know everything as long as we know something and we have our view of way of seeing world, it can mean something to us and maybe someone looking or knowing so many people can summarize lacuna or we can have philosophy, we can have psychology or social science to just describe how so many different pieces work together.

10:46

But ultimately, we're still pieces and those systems can never encapsulate like the specific quirks of each one of us.

10:53

So there's beauty in being just a piece and not being the whole in and of itself.

10:57

Yeah.

10:57

And I think that goes back to like the beauty of writing that doesn't give you anything like as you were saying about erasure poetry.

11:04

I think that it's like a type of poetry that we don't see as often because I think it's something we do a lot in school as an introduction of poetry.

11:11

You know, your teacher has you read about a page of a book and then you just sort of like, erase some lines and you're like, oh, I did a poem but I think it's something that, like has so much depth and intent.

11:19

Like, if you've ever read that essay, erasure in three acts by Leon, and she discusses how she teaches a workshop of a, of a, her poetry and she refers to erasure poetry as the ghost of the original writing.

11:35

And when I hear a ghost, I think of like only the pieces that matter are left over.

11:40

Like any time you hear about a ghost in literature or movie, they're always either carrying around like the one thing they could never complete or the one ultra hardship in their life or something that was the most crucial piece of them, which is I think an interesting perspective to look at erasure poetry through.

11:58

Yeah, I definitely agree.

11:59

Sorry, I was, I thought it was cool and I wanted to search up who was by, but I didn't find it, but it's OK.

12:05

But i it was, it was something along the lines of it's not ghosts that haunt us, it's us, we can't let them go.

12:12

And I think it's really interesting in this in this circumstance as well.

12:16

Because ghosts are the things that we prefer the lacuna, the things we left behind and those gaps that their absences do haunt us in a way.

12:25

And it does say so much, but maybe it's us that needs the absences and it's us that can find the meaning more inside the absences.

12:35

And so we create them deliberately because we want to hold on to something.

12:40

Yeah, exactly.

12:41

It's like, let's see, in the same essay she says in a workshop on a racial poetry, I described erasure as a subversion of the belief that is poetry strap to reveal.

12:50

And I think that's interesting and kind of beautiful because it's like when you write something, you become so attached to your words and you become attached to the way your reader is going to interpret them and what you're revealing to your reader.

13:03

But I think it also goes to say that as a writer, there are some things you can keep to yourself.

13:08

And sometimes it's good to make your reader question what you're saying.

13:11

Like entertain like when you do eras your poetry, why did you choose to not black out those certain words?

13:17

They'll never know the words you blacked out, but they will know the ones you left behind.

13:21

And why are those the ones you wanted to reveal to your reader and why not others?

13:25

Why are those the ghosts that haunt your writing?

13:27

And why are you the only one that gets to know the other words that's actually really interesting to think about the way that they can see that the other words are blocked out but they don't know what they are.

13:36

But you, as the author can know what you blocked out.

13:40

I think it's just a really interesting duality because I feel like, would it be different if the words weren't there?

13:45

Like, and, , imagine, like, block poetry and imagine poetry where you just remove the words and you smash them together as if there were no gaps, maybe like the gaps will still be obvious because like the sentences wouldn't down, right?

13:57

Or the sentences wouldn't like flow as well as they did in complete sentences in the first draft?

14:02

But is there a fundamental difference in knowing the gaps and in knowing that the author purposely, I guess there's like three stages, maybe one stage should be blackout poetry.

14:11

Like a lot of words, you actually take a pen and you block some about the second stage could be, you take the words and maybe there's the gaps between them, but there's just spaces, but you don't see that there's words that have been blocked out and the third would be you block them out.

14:24

You remove the spaces, you just mush them together.

14:27

I wonder how the way we perceive the gaps influences the message?

14:31

I definitely think like the act of like using like black ink over other inks almost makes it appear more final.

14:36

Like, yes, these words are not coming back.

14:39

And as a reader, I want you to know that because obviously, I think if an author really didn't want to see the blank faces, they could definitely publish a work where they're like, this was this piece of writing.

14:50

But I cut away these pieces and you could probably maybe find it.

14:53

But I think there is an importance too.

14:55

And I think it changes the reader's mindset when they are reading a blackout poem because there's also like, there's like ways to read blackout poetry.

15:02

Like I would argue, it's kind of more difficult than other forms of poetry.

15:06

And just like reading that poem takes more work work than reading, maybe a poem that isn't blacked out.

15:12

You also have to work for the information because you're not given all of it.

15:16

Like, I think one of the most beautiful lessons I ever got was you.

15:19

It's OK to punish your reader and by punish, I mean, it's OK to not give them everything like they're smart competent human beings, but also like make them use their own, like mind, make them imagine what those gaps would say.

15:32

So I don't think it would be the same if you didn't have those black marks there.

15:36

Oh my God.

15:37

OK.

15:37

I agree.

15:38

Because in normal editing, you do erase a lot of things you do delete a lot of things and the finished product is almost always a put together version with things left out and things added.

15:49

But the reader never even gets to see the first draft and never gets to see what's deleted.

15:53

And I think it's interesting.

15:55

I don't know if you've heard of like the Project Skins by Tangerine.

15:59

You have.

16:00

Oh Yeah.

16:01

Oh yeah.

16:02

It's part of like their curriculum.

16:03

I think so.

16:04

Basically for Skins, it shows a bunch of writers in their poems.

16:08

The first draft compared to the second draft, compare to the third draft with the author's commentary on the poems.

16:13

And it's always interesting because the poems move closer and closer to themselves, every draft and it's like things are deleted, things were rewritten, but things had to be rewritten in order for the final message to be more punchy and more the heart of the poem or the heart of the message they're trying to get at.

16:30

And it's just so interesting because reading Skins reveal to me that oftentimes what you don't say is what needs to be explored even more.

16:39

And oftentimes the things you delete are the things that can be said even better in what is now a gap.

16:46

But maybe one day or in the final draft, it will be something, it will be other words, it will be words that mean more, that is more aligned with exactly what you're trying to say in the poem.

16:56

So blackout versus revision, like purposefully showing that you edited, purposely, showing that you block things out versus just letting the poem morph into something and then showing the world the final version.

17:09

I think it's very different and interesting to look at one of the most beautiful things to me about the eraser and three essay is the fact that it does kind of show you that edit, like it starts as an essay, right?

17:21

It starts as an essay describing the act of teaching erase your poetry.

17:25

And then as soon as you scroll down, you get how she turned her essay into a blackout poem.

17:30

And then I think from there, she turns it into another blackout poem.

17:34

She creates two blackout poems from her essay.

17:37

And I think that goes to show like the things that you take away, like what you were saying, those edits like blackout poetry is so versatile and you can do it so many different ways and you can take away something different each time and just play with that idea of OK, what does it say now that I've taken away this, which is almost to me more important that didn't you take away?

17:57

Like why did you take away that?

17:59

Why was that edit made and scrolling through it?

18:02

I see the line sometimes what emerges from the eraser's refrain.

18:05

And I think that goes back to what we're saying sometimes what is in the missing pieces or in the missing Lacuna is us refraining from saying more or us refraining from going deeper.

18:16

And so we need to create the gaps in order to have room to get something else out of it.

18:21

I agree.

18:22

And I like that idea of refrain because it's like that poem, poem for Brad who wants me to write about the pyramids?

18:28

This poem though, I'm not sure they're taking away, they didn't cut away anything from their actual writing.

18:33

But this poem is a square and in the center, there's this giant space that's been taken out, that is a square.

18:40

So it's like a square within a square kind of.

18:42

And this poem is about the writer who is Egyptian.

18:46

And so whoever Brad is, informs them that they need to write about these parents because he thinks that's what Egyptian culture is.

18:53

And it's almost like this act of putting this giant square in.

18:56

I see the square as like what Brad wanted Egyptian culture to be.

19:01

And then the author surrounds it with everything that it is and everything that it means to them.

19:06

And so it's like leaving this gap of not saying what Brad wants the author to say is so power is so much more powerful than maybe if they did write a poem, criticizing Brad or criticizing this idea.

19:18

But just having this space to me is so powerful.

19:22

I definitely agree.

19:23

I really like this poem and especially the square, how it's like almost in the shape of a pyramid.

19:29

I think it just says so much and also the way that you have to ride around the space or she writes around the space, like once we remove or around this thing that I'm trying to emphasize that I'm purposely not including is how I actually feel about it.

19:48

I think it's also interesting to mention that she didn't take out words like you said, but rather chose to write around it, which means she started out with the idea of creating a gap of sorts.

20:01

So that intention kind of feels the piece even more.

20:05

And in the front note, it says the first thing a falsifier or a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is to have a surfeit of Camels, a caravan of Camels on every page.

20:18

But Muhammad as an Arab was unconcerned, he knew he could be an Arab without the the Camels.

20:24

So he could, he knew he could have his culture without having the pyramids, without having the Camels, without having what is so often represented as the culture.

20:33

And then that maybe that's the only way we can actually get to authentic culture by removing these false band aids of culture or the false band aids over the gap and just leaving the gap to shine and how much it holds in and of itself.

20:48

Yeah.

20:48

And I think this poem has a lot to say of like the expectations of what society puts on us as like whether as writers or even as our culture, like, I think everyone has like a cultural stereotype.

21:00

Like there are some that like outwardly we reject and there are some that almost feel like expectations like us of a certain culture should have.

21:07

Like I'm Iranian American.

21:09

So it's like there's this expectation that not only should I speak FARSI but should I, I should be familiar with every piece of the country.

21:16

I should have these strong opinions.

21:18

It's like, but that's not part of me.

21:21

So why would I write about that?

21:22

And I love that.

21:23

In the footnote, they say people who are outside of the culture, like they say a tourist, a falsifier, but they also say an Arab nationalist, which means someone who is intensely proud of their culture.

21:35

And I think it's almost like when you're so proud of your culture and you love your culture so much.

21:40

I think you're almost more susceptible to what society thinks about it and who society thinks you should be like, maybe because you love your country so much, you should embrace these stereotypes because that's how the world sees your country.

21:55

But I don't think that's important.

21:57

I think that Paul says this so nicely.

21:59

I agree.

22:00

It's like when you're drunk on pride of any kind, it kind of blinds you and you just want to indulge in saying I am this saying that this is this thing like having the period, they're making that statement and not really looking at the cracks, which is really hard to define anything, is to define what it's not like.

22:19

I think I mentioned in my editor reflections who are we, but the people we are not and making anything a statement and being proud of anything, really, we're carving a space for it and in carving a space for it, we're leaving something out.

22:33

I think it's also really interesting how we can also see like you're talking about this poem as opposed to like the societal expectations.

22:42

It's interesting to see how people choose to have gaps of the societal expectations, for example, in China, like a year ago, the lying flat movement of people who decided that I, I don't want to compete in this like, really unfair corporate capitalistic like society.

22:58

I just want to like, not do anything because and just live for myself and live like a very like, not exactly on the go but just like not a life where you really have to strive for.

23:08

And you can also see this in like the I don't dream of labor movement and like other movements and just and every movement, basically, everything we advocate for is a protest is some sort of gap and our current like society system and these gaps can we actually get new voices and can we realize that maybe our previous system was flawed or there are ways to improve and we can hear more voices in the gap.

23:32

I love this idea of like flawed system and like how you, you keep saying like we are the people that we are not.

23:38

And I was thinking like, as you said that, like, maybe the person, maybe the reason that we sometimes follow these stereotypes that stick to our culture is because they are positive stereotypes compared to negative ones.

23:50

Like this was written by a Middle Eastern person.

23:52

And obviously, when you're, you say you're Middle Eastern, there's all is like in the back of a lot of people's minds, like terrorist fundamentalist, all these negative stereotypes, sometimes it's easier.

24:02

It's like the way a lot of Iranians now say they're Persian instead of saying they're Iranian because it's like they're forming a gap between this like fundamentalism.

24:10

Like if I say I'm Persian, people think of the cats and carpets.

24:13

I say I'm Iranian, I'm not separating myself from this idea of like terror or anger or confusion.

24:20

So and I like that idea of like protest, like filling in what society doesn't know because we've talked a lot about the importance of like gaps and not always saying everything.

24:31

But I also think there is a reason why we should also strive to fill these gaps, especially when it comes to communication and how we perceive others and the lives we want to live.

24:41

But I guess that also if everything we do or everything we protest is kind of creating gap in the system.

24:48

Can gaps really be filled?

24:49

Should they be filled or should we just keep creating more and more gaps and everything that we think is concrete, the more concrete it is the more gaps it probably has lurking underneath.

24:59

Should we just constantly think that and constantly create these gaps is well, is protest like creating more gaps or is it filling them?

25:06

Because I think it kind of does both.

25:08

I think it creates a gap in between like how you don't want to be perceived or what you don't want from your society.

25:14

But it may also fill in like confusion can be a very good thing, but it also can be one that leads to like violence, hatred, all these terrible things because to me, sometimes confusion can like breed ignorance, right?

25:27

So I think there's goes something to say about both.

25:29

I think it's good to create gaps that like distance yourself from these ideals like we were talking about statues earlier, right?

25:36

And how so many monuments are being torn down?

25:38

Maybe it's good that we're creating a gap between the way we used to think and the way we used to talk about others and the way we used to perceive others and the principles that we used to care about.

25:48

And when we create that gap between principles, we no longer agree with, maybe we're filling in a new gap of saying these are the principles we would like to have now and maybe in the future people will create a gap in those principles.

26:01

But I think there is beauty to filling in confusion with new ideas.

26:06

Yeah, I definitely think so.

26:08

And I really like the last point of how sometimes we create gaps to fill them in and in that way, creating a gap is not inherently just to make an empty space.

26:18

It's to, it's basically an attempt at a new beginning.

26:21

It's saying, look, we can create this gap, but now we have this gap.

26:25

It's an opportunity to start again.

26:27

It's an opportunity to replace it with whatever we want.

26:30

And that's really beautiful because oftentimes we view gaps as emptiness, but not as potential.

26:35

Or we, we view the things that we lose or the things that we've moved on from or the ways that we've changed society as something that we've lost forever.

26:44

But in reality, it only feels the next generation, it only feels the next train of thought.

26:49

And we can see this in science and all the ways that maybe Christianity or maybe our conceptions of God kind of, we decided that there's more scientific ideas or there's other scientific ideas that can also explain things.

27:01

And then we decided to divorce from science and say that like religion is scientific as opposed to being opposed to science.

27:08

And we keep on advancing, we keep on believing things and we keep on advancing in science like the Isaac Newton, I think, quote, if I've gone far, it only because I've stood on the shoulder of giants.

27:19

So to create gaps in existing systems and is to create more opportunities to stand again and again on the shoulders of giants and add yourself to the giants or add yourself to the human tower of things that are ever evolving.

27:32

When you said generations, it reminded me of David David Chen, our editor in chief, he wrote a theme reflection and in it, he brings up this gap between him and his parents when it comes to language.

27:44

And he talks about how there is always going to be words that he can't translate.

27:48

But also there's gaps between generations, upbringings and time.

27:52

And you know, I feel like we talk so much about how we lose parts of our culture, parts of our identity between like we lose fluency in like our parents' native tongue or we detach ourselves from like the countries that our heritage is from.

28:05

But I also think there's something good from like standing on the shoulders of your parents and maybe having new ideals than what they did.

28:13

Like my family before me.

28:15

I love them so much.

28:16

But they're also very like everyone else can protest.

28:19

But us like they have this immigrant mentality of we don't rock the boat like when everyone else is testing for the Zanzi a moment, they were like, that's not going to be we support them, but that's not us.

28:29

And that's just like, not an ideal that I agree with.

28:32

So I think that's like a gap that I form, whereas there are other gaps that I wish I hadn't formed.

28:36

Like I kind of wish I could speak with my family in Iran by speaking for.

28:40

But where there are gaps that we formed that we may spend our entire lives trying to fill, there may be gaps that we also spend our entire lives trying to dig deeper.

28:49

Yeah, I really, I really understand that and I feel that as well.

28:54

especially like the gaps we have with our parents and other generations.

28:59

And it's interesting because I feel like there's a lot of like diaspora cliches or like cliches of like, especially in the teen writing community or just writing in general.

29:07

I feel like this is talked about a lot but like cut fruit.

29:11

And I think in the image of cut fruit, it, it says so much because maybe they can't communicate otherwise.

29:19

Maybe the daughter doesn't understand all the Chinese or all the whatever language the other the parent says, maybe the parent doesn't understand the things that the child wants to do.

29:28

But in very small things leaving the door jar saying good night going on, walks, visiting places, listening to music giving the child cut through when they're studying.

29:38

It just shows that even without language, even with these gaps in our understandings and in the ways we communicate, we can still show that we care about each other.

29:47

And I think that's what makes those little things matter so much because there's always going to be gaps everywhere.

29:52

There's always going to be gaps in the way we perceive versus how other people perceive versus how they perceive us.

29:58

And the only way we can fill that is by little bits of love and little ways to show, yes, we're very different.

30:04

But here is something we can both take pleasure in.

30:07

I love that you brought up the team, theora writing community because as team I think is pretty much part of it.

30:14

And I feel like when just in general, when anyone writes about diaspora, it always seems like it's coming from a place of like loss or like longing.

30:23

But I think there's something to be proud of, of like being from a diaspora, right?

30:27

Like you're making your own new culture, like you're never gonna have your parents' culture.

30:32

And I think that's a good thing.

30:34

You are your own person and you have your own perspective.

30:37

And yes, you, there will be gaps.

30:39

You'll probably never know your culture the way your parents do, but they're never gonna know it the way you do, the way you perceive it and the way you see it is so beautiful and unique.

30:47

I think maybe as Dior writers, we should try maybe to stop writing so much about the loss of culture and maybe start writing about the beauty of the culture, culture that we're creating within the gaps that our parents left behind.

31:00

For us.

31:00

Anything that can be viewed as a gap from another perspective, it's an off of the gap, a hill, I don't know.

31:08

And like everything we left behind everything that you say that we view as grief also grown so much because of it.

31:16

And I think growth is perhaps the single most emotional or more emotional generating thing in writing.

31:23

At least for me, I feel like when I read a piece, it's not really about loss, it's not really about love.

31:28

It's always about growth.

31:29

It's always about this person was someone and they broke out of that.

31:32

They became someone new.

31:33

They, they learned to love their past self, they learned to love those around them.

31:37

They learned to love, they learned to grow and they learned to approach things slightly differently to see the previous gaps in their lives as opportunities and through the opportunities that they take throughout the course of the story or the poem, they become someone different and someone they can equally be proud of through it.

31:53

And I think that is the most heartwarming thing to me that like to show that after losing so much after changing so much, you're still you, despite all the gaps, despite all the things you don't understand and you understand now and what you filled and then what you created, you've become so much more than what you left behind.

32:11

That's such a beautiful idea of regarding like growth.

32:14

And, you know, I've like, kind of realized a gap in my own writing.

32:17

Like I was thinking about the other day because someone like, I was going, there's like all these questions that you can find online that like is like, oh, if you could ask your writing, if you could have a conversation with your writing, what would it be or like, do you write in relation to things or do you write like next to them?

32:33

And I realized, like, I feel like I'm always like, writing from a place of memory, like something very separate.

32:38

Like I've almost like given myself as a writer.

32:41

So many, like, I feel like a lot of writers do.

32:43

We're always writing about something from the past or a memory or something that happened months ago.

32:48

So I think it, it's, there's also something to be said about writing from like in the moment, like you're saying, like, maybe if we wrote more about things that were happening to us, now, we would notice more growth and what we're doing and how our writing evolves and how our experience evolves from just writing from memory where we're given all these missing pieces.