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SELFIE INTERVIEW | Charles Brown

Charles is an emerging writer with a poem appearing in Anima Poetry Press, and now with this as his first fiction publication at Eckleburg. He’s currently enrolled in the Creative Writing BA program at ASU, and will have received his degree by the end of 2017.

Eckleburg: What drives, inspires, and feeds your artistic work?

Charles: This is a difficult question to answer, because I’m not entirely sure that I know. I’ve always had a yearning for understanding, I think. My artistic work is most often done in that spirit, manifesting as an attempt to understand some deeply rooted emotional strain or part of myself at that current point in time. The aim for me is really individual growth so that I can be a better father to my children, a better lover to my fiancé, a better human to everyone else, and the best me that I can be for me. As far as inspiration, I really draw most of my inspiration from nature and from love. I’m still learning though, and I have a lot of growing yet to do.

Eckleburg: If you had to arm wrestle a famous writer, poet or artist, either living or dead, who would it be? Why? What would you say to distract your opponent and go for the win?

Charles: After much thought, and a few deleted sentences, I’ve decided that I would arm wrestle Donald Barthelme. I want to thank him for inspiring me, for opening my mind to the capabilities of literary (and even experimental) writing. I’d also love to ask him what many of his stories are about. If not him, than Steinbeck for sure. I’m not sure I could distract Barthelme either, but I think I might try yelling, “Lion!”

Eckleburg: What would you like the world to remember about you and your work?

Charles: Another tough one. I haven’t sat with or thought about this much. My first reaction is to say that I want people to remember all the good things about me, that I was honest, true, that I wrote with passion and loved people. Another part of me says no. That part of me doesn’t want them to remember anything necessarily. My work will do that for them. They need only read it as it aides in their personal growth and development. I suppose, after writing all that, my best (perhaps unsatisfactory) answer would be that I want the world to remember whatever it wants to remember.

 

Eckleburg thanks Charles Brown. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.

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SELFIE INTERVIEW | Christine Stoddard

Christine Stoddard is a writer and artist originally from Arlington, Virginia. She also is the founding editor of Quail Bell Magazine, an online and occasional print publication for real and unreal stories from around the world. Christine’s work has appeared everywhere from Cosmopolitan to the New York Transit Museum to the Tulane Review and beyond.

In 2015, Bustle picked her story, “One Year After Rolling Stone’s Disastrous ‘A Rape On Campus,’ Here’s How University Of Virginia Classrooms Have Changed,” as one of the site’s best of the year. That same year, Christine won a scholarship to attend BinderCon NYC and was selected for Yale University’s THREAD storytelling seminar. Christine’s work also has been recognized by the Newseum Institute, the Puffin Foundation, the Smithsonian Latino Center, The Southeast Review, the Poetry Society of Virginia, the Catholic Press Association, and other organizations. In 2011, Style Weekly chose her as one of the Top 40 Under 40 in Richmond, Virginia, her college town and her home of five years. Three years later, Folio Magazine named Christine as one of the nation’s top 20 media visionaries in their 20s.

Christine also is the founding editor of Comicality Magazine, the co-director of the documentary, “The Persistence of Poe,” the co-author of the book, Images of America: Richmond Cemeteries, and the co-editor of the books, Airborne: An Anthology of The Real by Quail Bell Magazine and The Nest: An Anthology of The Unreal by Quail Bell Magazine. Her book, Hispanic and Latino Heritage in Virginia, will be out later this year.

Eckleburg: What drives, inspires, and feeds your artistic work?

Christine Stoddard: Fairy punk magic, a passion for social justice, and the drive that comes with being the child of an immigrant.

Eckleburg: If you had to arm wrestle a famous writer, poet or artist, either living or dead, who would it be? Why? What would you say to distract your opponent and go for the win?

Christine Stoddard: I’d arm wrestle collagist Romare Bearden because he’s been such an influence on my approach to making art—and even the way I write. I’d distract him with, “Look! The library and the fabric store just dumped their entire inventories over there and everything’s free for the taking!”

 

Eckleburg: What would you like the world to remember about you and your work?

Christine Stoddard: I don’t want to be remembered. I want my work to be remembered. I want it to change people, or at least nudge them toward change. As for me? I’d rather maintain my privacy even in death.

Eckleburg thanks Christine Stoddard. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.

 

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SELFIE INTERVIEW | Jeannine Ouellette

Jeannine Ouellette’s writing has appeared widely in magazines and journals and she has worked as a writer and editor at regional and national magazines. She has published four books, including the children’s picture book, Mama Moon, and she is a 2015 recipient of a Curt Johnson Award in fiction for her short story “Tumbleweeds” selected by Joyce Carol Oates and the editors of december magazine as well as a 2015 Pushcart nominee for her prose poem “Wingless Bodies.” Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Eckleburg Review, december magazine, The Rake, On the Issues, and others. Her essays have appeared in several anthologies including Feminist Parenting and Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. She is the recipient of two First Place Awards of Excellence from Medill, one for her editorial columns in Minnesota Parent and one for her work at that magazine as editor in chief, and a Page One Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her essay on the history of bees and the healing potential of propolis. Jeannine is the founder and director of Elephant Rock, a creative writing program based in Minneapolis. She is working on her first novel.

Eckleburg: What drives, inspires, and feeds your artistic work?

Jeannine Ouellette: The belief that it matters—that poetry and stories actually create the possibility of change in a world badly in need of it. I’m sure every generation of writers and artists feels some sense of that same call to action, some sense of that same belief in the unfailing power of story.

Eckleburg: If you had to arm wrestle a famous writer, poet or artist, either living or dead, who would it be? Why? What would you say to distract your opponent and go for the win?

Jeannine Ouellette: I’d have to say Mary Oliver, because she’s such a brilliant badass. To distract her, I would jerk my head toward the window and say, “Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful…?”

Eckleburg: What would you like the world to remember about you and your work?

Jeannine Ouellette: Honestly, I would want the world to remember how deeply I cared, how honest I was, and how utterly entranced I was with language, how much joy I found in its boundless possibilities.