About the Editors
Editor-in-Chief
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster and The Same.
Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships Anthology of New Mexican Poetry. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.
Fickle Muses Blog
March 25, 2007
I was delighted when Sari asked me to take on the role of fiction editor. I hope that my background will add to the texture of Fickle Muses. Although I have a basic knowledge of classic mythology, my interests lie most profoundly in third world legend and storytelling (that includes the Southwest.) As a child in Costa Rica and Guatemala, I heard tales with both indigenous and African origination. I read The Arabian Nights, Robin Hood, Zorro, Bible stories and Grimm’s fairy tales with equal relish. I’ve studied Native American writing, Southern, African American and 18th Century Gothic and “Oriental” novels, as well as post-colonial fictions from India, Korea, Japan, New Zealand and the Caribbean. In my fiction, I lean toward the mythic with a hint of magic realism and a propensity toward symbolism. As far as submissions go, what I will look for is good story telling. I want to be swept away by voice and character into another world, whether contemporary, historical or fantastic. As a grad student, I taught three semesters of creative writing. I gained more from those classes than from all of the workshops I’ve attended combined. I know that reading your submissions and deciding which stories should be published will be an extension of this learning process for me and I’m honored to be trusted in that capacity.
– Leslie Fox
March 15, 2007
The submissions process here at Fickle Muses is an experiment.
Before starting FM, I was on staff at a few magazines that selected work through committees. The process was, in a sense, objective – while our tastes might not always agree, we could generally agree on how skillfully a piece was written, how adept its technique.
But something is lost in this objectivity. For me, the most important thing writing can do is evoke feeling and thought – not exactly the best measures for impartial deliberation. In those cases where one or two committee members felt strongly about accepting a piece that others rejected because it needed a bit of polish, I think we may have lost something truly valuable, even if I happened to be one of the naysayers.
So in starting Fickle Muses, I decided on an intentionally subjective selection process. Though objective quality of writing is still a factor, I’m more apt to accept a moving piece with a few loose threads than a highly skilled piece that doesn’t touch me.
(In other words, a rejection from FM is as likely to mean the submission doesn’t suit my tastes as my standards. Good work, I hope, will find a good home with the right editor.)
Back to the experiment: If an editor creates a magazine that s/he wants to read, will other readers enjoy it too? The conclusion, dear reader, is up to you.
– Sari
March 4, 2007
It’s funny how, as wide spread as the printed word is, it’s often the oral traditions that persist most strongly. I’ve been going through my periodic rereading of the Tanakh. It’s been a few years since I read it beginning to end, so it’s not all quite fresh in my mind. For example, I had forgotten that the reason given for the confounding of speech is “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach” (Genesis 11.6). No, I remembered the Sunday school version, that language was fractured because men were building the tower of Babel to reach heaven and G-d.
The version of the story I learned in childhood suggested that men were making a direct challenge to G-d, believing that they reached for his seat of power to be nearer to him, but in effect attempting to usurp him. It doesn’t contradict the version in Genesis, but it is a matter of interpretation.
In rereading the original (or at any rate, the earliest version available), the tower seems to me a decidedly earth-bound endeavor. The reason men give for building it is “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world” (Genesis 11.4). (There’s a bit of irony for you.) It sounds to me that though the top of the tower is meant to be in the sky, its purpose is earthly – to act as a beacon which men can find and return to from all corners of the earth. In that interpretation, the confounding of speech seems more like petulant jealousy than defense of the heavenly throne.
Of course, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with interpretations that stray from the earliest versions of stories – if I did, I should hardly publish a magazine of them. Interpretation can be a way of creating dialogue between past and present, of pursuing new layers of truth. But when interpretation becomes a basis for condemnation, there comes the problem.
I am thinking of the story of Tamar and Judah’s sons, commonly interpreted as a condemnation of masturbation. Here’s what actually happens, in the biblical version:
After the eldest son, to whom Tamar was first married, died, “Judah said to Onan, ‘Join with your brother’s wife and do your duty by her as a brother-in-law, and provide offspring for your brother.’ But Onan, knowing that the seed would not count as his, let it go to waste [literally, ‘spoil on the ground’] whenever he joined with his brother’s wife, so as not to provide offspring for his brother. What he did was displeasing to the Lord, and He took his life also.” (Genesis 38.8-10)
It should be fairly obvious that the transgression here has nothing to do with masturbation – Onan’s misdeed is his failure to do his duty as a brother.
Not that it’s any better when literal, rather than interpretive readings are used to justify condemning others, but we might at least be honest with ourselves about the sources of modern Western repression, no?
– Sari