Candice Wuehle on 'Monarch,' Ritual, and Rejecting Writing Rules

An Interview with Candice Wuehle
by Lisa Marie Basile

Lisa Marie Basile: Tell us all about your new work. I am a huge fan of your gorgeous poetry and prose, from your genre-shifting/blending to your exploration of the glittery and the gritty. Can you tell us about your newest work, Monarch?

Candice Wuehle: My most recent novel, MONARCH came out in March. The idea for it came from an actual conspiracy theory that claims MKUltra has a secret division called Project MONARCH that recruits children and teens from beauty pageants to become sleeper agents.

They specifically recruit beauty pageant contestants because of their natural (or studied!) charm, conventional attractiveness, physical aptitude and stamina, and their strong propensity for obedience. This theory asserts that MONARCH agents are programmed using trauma-based mind control techniques. I was just finishing up my dissertation on memory and trauma studies for my PhD and the MONARCH theory became a perfect metaphor for a lot of what I’d been thinking about regarding how much of consumer culture (especially culture aimed at women and body image in the ‘90s) is a kind of trauma-based social programming.

The first beauty pageant contestant I always think of—the one imprinted on my own psyche—is JonBenét Ramsey. A plot about a teen queen reminiscent of Ramsey, but who has lived, grown up, and is now seeking revenge captured my imagination.

The real quest of MONARCH, though, is the main character’s journey to figure out who she is—what part of her is really “her” when it seems so much of her personality has been programmed.

For me, the technology that delivers that answer comes through divinatory practices, so there are scenes of tarot and especially séance in MONARCH that are intended to get at the occulted side of the self. Not occulted as in spooky, but occulted as in: hidden even from yourself.

Currently, I’m working on a collection of short stories that’s a sort of Internet gothic—haunted apps, poltergeist algorithms, a GPS that leads to another dimension.

Lisa Marie Basile: What are some creations that light you up? How do they influence your work as a writer or creative?

Candice Wuehle: For the last few years, I’ve been really inspired by contemporary fiction (mostly written by women). For me, there was a bit of a shift in the literary landscape after Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh was published that made room for the kind of books I’ve really wanted to read all my life.

Many of my favorite books of all time have come out in the last ten years—books that are often marked as “unhinged” but that are irreverent, angry, hilarious, politically and culturally subversive, and deeply intelligent. I’m so inspired by creators who can dialogue with the current moment, or, more likely, who are willing to say something so out of the moment—out of any moment—that when it arrives it feels utterly new.

To name just a few, I love A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan, New Animal by Ella Baxter, Luster by Raven Leilani, Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Self Care by Leigh Stein, the novels of Lucy Ives and Melissa Broder and Mona Awad.

Reading very recent work that has an intentional disregard for certain craft conventions, that refuses to be totally “done” or to “make sense” gives me a sense of community and makes me feel more tethered in time than I normally am.

Poets write collections that include aporia, void, and contradiction and that’s understood, but it’s rarer to see that kind of insistence on the truth of personal expression—of a writer’s inherently complex and often incompatible belief systems—represented in the novel form.

“Poets write collections that include aporia, void, and contradiction and that’s understood, but it’s rarer to see that kind of insistence on the truth of personal expression—of a writer’s inherently complex and often incompatible belief systems—represented in the novel form. ”

— Candice Wuehle

Lisa Marie Basile: You shift between genres and seem to do it very naturally. I think a lot of writers feel they must select a lane and stick to it. 

And, as you said, "Poets write collections that include aporia, void, and contradiction and that’s understood, but it’s rarer to see that kind of insistence on the truth of personal expression—of a writer’s inherently complex and often incompatible belief systems—represented in the novel form."

Perhaps there are a few questions here, but how do you approach the concept of genre, and how do you approach giving the same permissions to the novel as poets might inherently have? (I say that as someone who has complex thoughts on what 'genre' means). 

Candice Wuehle: Thank you for this question. So, the truth is I write what I write, and then I see what genre it seems to look like after. The other truth (and I’m going to contradict myself immediately, but that’s part of my point) is I don’t write poetry and prose at the same time.

I haven’t written any lineated poetry since 2019. It doesn’t worry me. I never thought I’d write prose, then I tried to write a poem that showed up as a novel. I’m sure I’ll sit down one day with an expectation to write in one genre and end up doing something else. It seems like most people write to express themselves or to understand themselves. I understand that and I love that and I find kinship and solace and truth in writers who write from that place. But I write to surprise myself.

Since this is Luna Luna, I know readers will understand it when I say I write to see my shadow. That’s meaningful to me because I know others see my shadow and recognize it in themselves; that my work is shadow work for me and for others. What does that have to do with genre? I guess just that if you go into shadow work expecting to see shapes you already know, you aren’t prepared.

So I let the narrative shape arrive the way it presents itself and then I make choices on the second draft that might lend the shape to something more recognizable to a reader, but only if I think that serves the highest goal of the project.

“I write to see my shadow. That’s meaningful to me because I know others see my shadow and recognize it in themselves; that my work is shadow work for me and for others.”

— Candice Wuehle

Lisa Marie Basile: Can you tell us a bit about your general creative process? What sort of rituals or practices do you adopt? Or, you know, have you struggled with creativity at all as of late?

Candice Wuehle: The pandemic has been devastating for my ritual practice, to be honest. During my most creative periods, my ritual was a walk to the university library where I would sit with a cold brew in a jelly jar while listening to colored noise and write (or not write). Equally important to the ritual was the walk back home. I didn’t know that at the time—that the walk back home after writing was the same as Shavasana for me.

A period where what I had worked on integrated into me and began to braid into the next time I wrote. Now, my walk is simply to my home office, a space I love but that I haven’t fully imbued with the elements I think of as important to a sacred space.

I think it has a lot to do with buffering between acts of creation, which is hard to do when there are no imposed restrictions on how long I can write or when.

To put this in kind of crass sports terminology—I’m trying to figure out “how to get in the zone” but it’s tough because the zone is everywhere. Both my psychic and spiritual hygiene have been taxed by the upheaval of the world over the last few years, I suppose.

Lisa Marie Basile: It is clear that you're very interested in the liminal, the magical, the numinous — do you ever approach writing through a divinatory or occult lens/means?

Candice Wuehle: Yes, always, but my practice is very simple. I believe in the vibrations of a space, so light, sound, and the flow of air is important to me. Candles and incense create a sort of spiritual hygiene, while sounds help me to keep my mind flowing at an even pace. I usually listen to pink or white noise to try to stay engaged in flow state. The most significant aspect of my divinatory practice, however, is something I learned from the woman who taught my yoga teacher training, which is whenever you can’t figure something out just sit until it comes to you.

Once I started doing this, I noticed how important gazing is to me. I keep an obsidian egg and a quartz globe on my desk to look at. In other words, most of the time I spend writing looks like doing nothing. Which is, I guess, a sort of trance state.

Lisa Marie Basile: And how does how culture/identity/place/belief bleed into what you write?

Candice Wuehle: For the last few years, ideas of culture, identity, and belief have really consumed my work in the sense that I’ve been fixated on how we come to accept cultural beliefs as integral to our identities, especially in a late Capitalist culture that largely only presents beliefs intended to get us to buy stuff and conform to a dominant narrative that benefits…those already dominant. A lot of my sense of self and spirituality is born of trying to DIY ways to avoid these pervasive belief systems.

So, for example, I heard an interview with former The X-Files’ researcher and current paranormal investigator, John E.L. Tenney, where he said that beings or events we term supernatural (ghosts, UFOs, witchcraft) are actually ultra-natural in the sense that they’re more real than what we perceive to be real. He says, for this reason, they’re desperate to be seen and remembered; to inscribe themselves in space or narrative.

I think the threads of my work — and especially of MONARCH — pull together out of a desire to reflect a more ultra-natural world. A lot of MONARCH is about how our bodies remember what we don’t and how “the body keeps the score” as the trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk would say.

In this sense, messages from the body that come out as anxiety or physical ailments might feel like they come from nowhere when in fact, they’re realer than what we’ve told ourselves is real in the sense that these messages are coming from an experience we haven’t yet processed.

I think a lot of cultural messaging also works in this way—folklore and fairy tales as examples of commonly held, deeply integrated beliefs about familial and romantic relationships that have a blatant falseness to them: Eternal sleep, love at first sight, talking animals. We accept those elements as fantastic, but weirdly not the messaging behind them.

So, this is a little bit of a backward answer to your question in the sense that I’m saying belief systems and culture influence my work in a sort of inverse way; that I’m really more invested in unraveling and questioning than I am in determining any kind of personal or cultural or spiritual Truth.

Who are the writers making an impact on you right now?

Candice Wuehle: Currently, I’m really inspired by Jessica DeFino, a beauty culture critic and author of the newsletter “The Unpublishable.” Her ability to deconstruct the beauty and wellness industry in order to point to its colonialist, patriarchal, and capitalist roots/motivations is just so precise and breathtaking.

Much of what she argues about how denatured our ideas of beauty are—how, for example, makeup is often an erasure similar to the death drive—resonates so deeply with what I was thinking through in MONARCH.

Another Jessica—tarot reader/social worker Jessica Dore. Her wonderful book Tarot for Change and her Instagram account are such a gift. She integrates philosophy, clinical psychology, and myth in order to interpret Pamela Coleman Smith’s deck with such fresh, mind-bendingly deep interpretations.

A friend gave me one of her classes for my birthday last year. In the class, she said something about the intersection of social work and tarot reading that I’ve applied to my own life in a radical way: “you should never be working harder than the client.” Which I took as a mantra while I was teaching creative writing—as in, you can’t do someone else’s creative or emotional work. You can only listen and try your best to hear what they’re trying to express.

Finally, I want to mention Beth Morgan and her novel A Touch of Jen again! There’s a list of things I think about all the time, but I don’t know why (a Buzzfeed “Who Said It” quiz that listed quotes from Don Draper and Sylvia Plath that I failed; Britney Spear’s thousand sit-ups a day; the time my high school English teacher wore a veil to teach Hawthorne).

Anyway, A Touch of Jen is on the list of things that I think of every day. This book is so compelling, so funny and smart, yet it refuses to adhere to a single genre convention while obviously being aware of every genre convention. It’s a book that makes perfect effectual sense, and very little logical sense. Like life!

“When I finally stopped trying to write what I thought a poem or a novel was supposed to look like and wrote what I’d really want to read—which for me meant beauty culture, witchcraft, rage, trash, unlikable emotions, and philosophy presented in a way that some people find pretentious—I felt like I had touched the source.”

— Candice Wuehle

Lisa Marie Basile: Finally, what is one piece of writing advice you live by and would give others?

Candice Wuehle: This is so simple that it doesn’t feel like advice to me, but I notice students and lots of other writers don’t seem to follow this philosophy, so here it is: only write what you really want to read. I come from the most traditional possible writing environment and I became a writer with the idea that only the “major themes” are worthy of “serious literature.”

When I finally stopped trying to write what I thought a poem or a novel was supposed to look like and wrote what I’d really want to read—which for me meant beauty culture, witchcraft, rage, trash, unlikable emotions, and philosophy presented in a way that some people find pretentious—I felt like I had touched the source. I become obsessed with returning to my creative work and it took on a devotional quality.

Candice Wuehle is the author of the novel MONARCH (Soft Skull, 2022) as well as the poetry collections Fidelitoria: Fixed or Fluxed (11:11, 2021); 2020 Believer Magazine Book Award finalist, Death Industrial Complex (Action Books, 2020); and BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, The Iowa Review, Joyland, Black Warrior Review, Tarpaulin Sky, The Volta, The Bennington Review, and The New Delta Review. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas.

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine. She’s also the author of a few books of poetry and nonfiction, including Light Magic for Dark Times, The Magical Writing Grimoire, Nympholepsy, Andalucía, and more. She’s a health journalist and chronic illness advocate by day. By night, she’s working on an auto-fictional novella for Clash Books.

Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Best American Poetry, and Best American Experimental Writing. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Atlas Review, Spork, Entropy, Narratively, and more. She has an MFA from The New School.

Jonny Black on Writing What Feels Right To *You*

An Interview with Jonny Black
by Lisa Marie Basile

This interview is part of our new Creator Series, a series of Q&As designed to help you get to know people who are writing, making, and doing beautiful things.

I discovered Jonny Black’s poetry in an issue of Ghost Bible — a truly gorgeous literary journal — and was immediately struck by her lush language and her bio’s mention of poltergeists (yes, please, always poltergeists). I was lured in!

Jonny Black is currently working on a novel (I secretly think poets make the best novelists, shh), and can be found at @jonnyblackwrites. In this chat, we discuss her influences, inspirations, and writing the kind of work that truly matters to you, despite what might be popular or expected of you.

I know you write in a few genres, so what are you working on at the moment?

I've got this novella/novelette that I've been working on for what seems like a third of my life at this point! I've been calling it Death and The Necromancer for lack of a better title. It's about Death seeking out a Necromancer to resurrect a cat. I wanted to write something that didn't take itself too seriously, something that was silly even, and it ended up being too real, especially during the pandemic.

I've only just come back to it after about a year. I'm also working on a poetry collection called The Apocalypse Journals. I have about four in the collection and they all happened to be written while listening to Daft Punk's Random Access Memories. I was sad to hear about the dissolution of the band earlier this year. I realized that I'd unintentionally written odes to many of their songs, so I want to keep writing a few more and dedicate it to the band. Each poem is an entry in the various journals of those who have survived the apocalypse and are wandering about the deadened earth and its empty cities.

I am always interested in learning about how writers approach their craft. I think we all get caught up in these ideas of a perfect writing ritual, sharing only when we’re prolific—but I’ve been asking writers to share even the messy parts. What’s your creative process?

Well, I used to write every day in college in my black notebook and I miss doing that. When I was working at a beauty store, I used to eat breakfast in the Del Taco across the street.

I would sit there for an hour or two sometimes, because I had to share a car with my mother, so I arrived very early.

I'd order their chorizo breakfast wrap, cheddar potato poppers (God, please bring those back soon!) and the huge 1-dollar iced tea. Then I'd write until my shift started.

Usually, I had my earphones in and either Kiasmos, Daft Punk, or Rhye blasting away. Now, I try to just write down thoughts I have whenever I get something good. Sometimes I'm able to make the time to write, but working remotely has made it hard for me to compartmentalize my time—I'm often distracted by other things I think I should be doing, and other ways I think I should be productive. I hope that I can get the courage again to go out, sit somewhere way too early in the morning, order some greasy breakfast food, and write.

Who are some of your influences?

Well, Daft Punk is definitely in my top ten, if not top five! Blade Runner, Tron and Tron: Legacy are also huge aesthetic inspirations. I've also been heavily influenced by Sonya Vatomsky's work: Salt is For Curing was my first real poetry book that I dove into and tried to understand.

My insta feed is also a huge inspiration: @brookedidonato, @KylejThompson and Madeline Garner are big ones. I'm also inspired by the cinema and art installations in general. One of the big things I've tried to do with my poetry is make choices like I would if I were directing a film: I think about aesthetic and drama and movement. I try to create a 3D experience with my work.

How does your culture or identity shape your work?

I got the impression that if I didn't write about my brown pain, I wasn't... representing myself, or that I wasn't enough as a writer.

OH BOY, do I have some thoughts. During my education — both high school and college — I got the impression that if I didn't write about my brown pain, I wasn't... representing myself, or that I wasn't enough as a writer.

I struggle with connecting to my own culture and identity because I'm what my sister (and many chicana/o's) calls a "coconut" — brown on the outside, white on the inside. And I'm not very interested in writing about that. I want to write about apocalypse worlds and vampires and gods that live in backyard ponds!

But I'm all too familiar with the concept of poetry as therapy, so I'm sure I'll get there someday. Most of the stories I write do have indigenous main characters, though. It's important to me that I write about characters like myself. And if I can't do it in poetry, I can at least do it in fiction, vicariously, through a character — you know?

With regards to faith, I like to think of myself as a combination of Jane Eyre and Emily Dickinson. She wrote a poem about how her church was out in nature. That really resonated with me. I have a small collection of poetry that is something of a...mary sue fan-fiction take on a chapter in the bible. It's very small, and it was written a very long time ago, but I'll revisit it someday.

Who are some of your mentors or contemporaries?

Reading Salt is For Curing was like a revelation, and I knew that if Sonya could write like this, with this much gothic drama and color, then so could I. I didn't have to write "contemporary" poetry that I'd seen in journals. I could write mine.

I've already mentioned Sonya Vatomsky! I just really just adore their work. Reading Salt is For Curing was like a revelation, and I knew that if Sonya could write like this, with this much gothic drama and color, then so could I. I didn't have to write "contemporary" poetry that I'd seen in journals. I could write mine.

A huge mentor for me has been Nalo Hopkinson because she was my professor at UCR! I wrote my thesis (also includes an apocalypse, ha!) under her guidance and took both a class on comics and class on fantasy fiction with her. she's such a wealth of knowledge and truly a joy to learn from.

I had another professor — I don't know if I should list her name — at a community college, my first poetry professor. I wrote my first real poems in her class. She gave us such a welcoming and warm environment to learn and write in and I learned so much about what could be done with the form in her class. I feel like I was born there. No, I came into my own there and found my voice.

I have very fond memories from that class, including looking out the dark windows into the near-empty parking lot, espresso chocolate cookies, writing my first chapbook, and very lovely classmates.

Jonny Black is a writer living and working in SoCal. She’s been published in Ghostbible Zine, The Roadrunner Review, and The Spectre Review. When she isn’t working on her novel, she’s usually curled up with a good crochet project watching Vincent Price movies. More of her work can be found on Instagram, @jonnyblackwrites.

S. Elizabeth on The Art of Darkness, Publishing, and Taurean Delights

An interview with S. Elizabeth
by Lisa Marie Basile

This interview is part of our new Creator Series, a series of Q&Aa designed to help you get to know people who are writing, making, and doing beautiful things.

I first discovered S. Elizabeth’s brilliance years ago, when stumbling onto their radiantly macabre, meticulously curated blog, Unquiet Things — a space that I consider a sort of post-graduate education in darkness. The author of two books, The Art of Darkness: A Treasury of the Morbid, Melancholic and Macabre and The Art of the Occult: A Visual Sourcebook for the Modern Mystic, I wanted to ask S. Elizabeth about their influences and inspirations. I hope you’ll enjoy this delightfully detailed, magical, and delicious conversation. I have to say, this is one of my favorite interviews ever done.

Sit by the window, grab a cup of berry-flavored tea or an elderberry spritz and dive in.

Lisa Marie Basile: I’d love to hear more about your book, The Art of Darkness: A Treasury of the Morbid, Melancholic and Macabre. I adored your first book, The Art of the Occult: A Visual Sourcebook for the Modern Mystic (and it’s a cool bonus that we’re press siblings!). What inspired this one? As a self-professed darkling, I want to hear every luscious detail — and I think our Luna Luna readers do, too. I can’t think of a better person to have created this compendium for us.

So the short answer is that The Art of Darkness: A Treasury of the Morbid, Melancholic and Macabre is a beautiful book densely packed with visual arts of the haunting, harrowing, and horrifying variety, and which asks the question "what comfort can be found in facing these demons?" It is inspired by a lifetime's worth of obsession with the dark and what can be found seething in the shadows when we stop being too frightened to peek. Or when we embrace these fears and anxieties, and we peer into the void, anyway!

When I was a child, I loved things all fairy and "flowerdy" (my 5 year old term for heaps of blossoms and blooms). think I was a cottage core early adopter, hee hee! I was terrified of ugly, scary, angry, wild things: Lou Ferrigno as the Incredible Hulk; the feral alien otherworldly vibe of my cousin's freaky KISS posters, and honestly, as silly as it sounds, George Hamilton as some vampire guy in a film called Love at First Bite scared the shit out of me! And I think that was meant to be a comedy! And Scooby Doo? Man, that gave me nightmares.

But somewhere along the way, that panic and fright regarding the bloodsuckers and monsters from outer space began to give way to fascination, and whereas I would once hide my face behind a pillow when something scary was happening, I now began to feel the itchy urge to peek. As I grew older, the fascination with fearsome things slowly turned into an obsession, and, much like a nerdy vampire creep myself, I began to gobble up and devour every bit of frightening or creepy media that came my way.

From literature and film, to music and art, from that time forward, I was hungry for all things unearthly and strange, ghastly and ghostly, gruesome and grotesque. I also grew up in a household with a mother who was an astrologer, who had tarot cards tucked into every nook and cranny, and mysterious artworks hung on every wall. All of her relationships, whether friends or romantic entanglements, were with bohemian weirdos and heavily tinged with magic and mysticism.

My former stepfather for a long time ran a small rare occult book business; I worked with him for a spell many years ago, and it was an incredible experience. Just me and these beautiful old books full of magic and witchcraft and demonology all day long! For a bookworm introvert with a penchant for the esoteric and obscure, that was as close to paradise that I will ever get! These interests and inclinations festered and blossomed and grew alongside me, inside me, over the years and are now what inform and inspire my writing, most of which can be found at my blog Unquiet Things, where I ramble about art, music, fashion, perfume, anxiety, and grief–particularly as these subjects intersect with horror, the supernatural, and death.

There's A LOT of art there. Art is another longtime fascination of mine. These two obsessions—art and darkness—became so deeply entwined for me over time that to celebrate them in a book seemed like the most obvious thing in the world.

“I’ve always felt like such an invisible nothing...and I know that I give away of myself more than I will ever get back in return...it’s the sharing of these little pieces of myself in all of these different places that somehow, paradoxically, builds me back up.”

— S. Elizabeth

Lisa Marie Basile: With such a brilliant mind, your trail of inspiration must run deep. Can you tell us what sets you ablaze?

It's funny—this is a question I love to ask artists and creatives when I am the one doing the interviewing, but it turns out that it's not easy to put into words! Or rather, while I can definitely list some inspirations, I'm hesitant to say as to whether or not they are even apparent in my own writing. Dracula by Bram Stoker and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca were two books that I read when I was 11 years old or so, and I was thrilled to read the intense gloominess and atmosphere of excessive dread and mystery that each of these stories conjured for me.

By that age, I had also read and re-read Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy a dozen times and while I knew even then that Harriet was a pretty flawed character, I loved her and wanted to BE her with her notebook and nosiness and creeping into people's houses just to see what sort of boring things that they get up to. In college, I discovered Sei Shōnagon. This Heian-era mean girl and OG blogger sorta felt like an adult, more polished Harriet who moved up in the world. I have long loved the writings of this Japanese author, poet, and a court lady : her elegant lists, her acerbic observations, her beautifully intimate and wonderfully catty diaries–all of her anecdotes and opinions and inner dialogue, from the excruciating minutiae of everyday life, to the exquisite poetry she composed connecting and expanding these trifling, fragmented instances to the broader aspects of lived human experience; these strangely random and tangential stories have informed and inspired my own writings for many, many years now.

Also, I’d probably be remiss in leaving out that frustrating old H.P. Lovecraft. His stories are dense with florid description and also packed with racism and xenophobia but he is a part of my past self and I can’t pretend I never read his writings or that his concepts of madness-inducing cosmic horrors haven’t inspired some of my favorite contemporary authors–writers who have taken these ideas and improved upon them immeasurably.

Also, I won’t lie. When I am writing a review for a particularly odious perfume, I may employ the use of a internet Lovecraftian adjective generator for my purposes. Cinematically, I love the works of Jean Rollin and Dario Argento–the former, visual poetry of sensual horror, uncanny beauty and perverse, morbid delights, (read: swoony lesbian vampires) and the latter a creator of gorgeously lurid giallo films. All of these movies are equally absurd and nonsensical, but dang are they pretty. If it’s got exquisite humans wearing breathtaking fashion and swanning about castles or stately manors or even glittering discos or murky alleyways–I am all-in.

Conversely, I do love the gentle, heartwarming charm of a beautifully animated Studio Ghibli film. I love both King Diamond and Weird Al. Lana del Rey and Anna von Hausswolff. Golden age illustrations of elegantly levitating fairies in a lush vibrant summer garden and the gothic charcoal rendering of melancholy moth singed by a candle’s flame. My own writing is probably some strange patchwork of all of these things, the sentimental, the spooky, the silly.

Sometimes I can even channel a less-talented, dopier Mary Oliver:

7am garden poem
Burying elderberry seeds
in the fog of last night’s rain,
mosquito bit, caterpillar cursed,
a spider looked at me sideways—
I know my business, bugs!
Tend to your own!

Lisa Marie Basile: How does the muse inhabit you? Give us a peek at your creative process — the good and the challenging.

For a very long time my process involved being too terrified and paralyzed with the thought of failure to begin a project, making myself miserable for a number of days/weeks/months dreading doing anything about it while not doing anything about it, and then zipping it all together at the last minute because the only thing worse than failing is not coming through with a thing you had promised to do.

The ONLY thing that lit a fire under me and made me write the thing was that I didn’t want someone upset with me for not having written it. Nowadays I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate the feeling of that dread—it takes up so much space and energy and it sucks all of the life out of everything else you’re doing in the meantime!—more than I fear the failure.

I do whatever it takes to get myself in front of my computer and work on the thing every single day, even if it’s just a few minutes. It always turns out to be longer than that, but the trick is, I was able to get myself there because I promised myself “you only have to do the bare minimum today.”

Somehow, that makes it not so scary for me, and as cheesy as it sounds, those snippets add up over time and by the time your deadline rears its head you’re like “oh, I only need to make a few tweaks, everything I need is all already here!”

Another trick (yes, I have to trick myself a lot) is something I read in an interview with one of the big deal writers for The Simpsons. He said something along the lines of just sit down and get it all out on paper or the computer monitor or whatever, no matter how bad it is, just write it and come back to it again later. The next day, it’s already there. Like a crappy little elf wrote it for you overnight. It’s turned the process of doing something that feels impossible (beginning a thing from nothing) into something that feels more bearable (re-writing/editing a thing that’s already there.)

Something else I’ve learned is that if I am stuck, just walk away. Banging my head against the wall and agonizing about it never helps? But you know what does? For me, anyway? Going on a walk. There is something deeply meditative about placing one foot in front of the other and carrying yourself forward. You don’t have to think about anything else about making it to the next mailbox or the next block or around the neighborhood or whatever.

The funny thing is…that’s when all of the thoughts sneak in! I’ve read a few articles on how walking engages some sort of cognitive function in your brain that just isn’t activated from sitting at our desks. Our sensory systems work at their best when they’re moving about the world. So for me, taking a walk helps. I end up planing my day, I compose poems and emails and silly tweets for Twitter. I daydream and let my imagination run away with me.

Sometimes, in the mindlessness of steps walked becoming miles traveled, the inner paths my ruminations take will lead me to interesting places with new ideas or present solutions to problems I was subconsciously working out. I come up with my best interview questions, my favorite article titles, and my most intriguing lines of inquiry during these strolls. For other people that might mean stepping away from their project to work on a puzzle or do some gardening or make a quiche or whatever. Do anything for an hour or so that is NOT the writing that is stressing you out.

Lisa Marie Basile: Do you have any creative rituals? Do tell.

I always have to have my hair tied back. I have some weird sensory issues and if I get overstimulated from a stray hair tickling my nose, I get to the point where I want to sweep everything off my desk in a fit of melodrama and lay on the floor and sob.

Perfume is a must! If I’m trying to get serious about a piece I am writing, I will wear something with a bit of gravitas, like Serge Lutens Gris Clair, a sort of somber, sedate lavender. Or, for example, right now I am writing a book about fantasy art and I am wearing Celestial Gala from Scent Trunk, all milky gossamer wings stardust’s effervescent chill. I keep close at hand a notebook full of scribblings…words or turns of phrase from the books I’ve been reading, passages that are beautiful or strange or that I want to look into further. This is a precious little book of inspiration that sometimes sparks an idea for a whole new thing or that can maybe just serve to fill in a blank or two.

Lisa Marie Basile: Whenever I read your words, your descriptions (especially in your fragrance series, Midnight Stinks), or even these responses, I think, ‘damn, you are SO Taurean!’ Please indulge me — how does Taurus move through your life?

Taurus sun/Capricorn rising/Libra moon, here. When I was a child, my chief obsessions were flowers, glittering jewelry, pretty dresses, and watching my grandmother cook. Before the age that others begin to make an impression on me; before I learned to read and discovered other interests through the characters inhabiting the worlds of those pages; before I realize my mother is an astrologer who has apparently charted my every move well in advance—before all of those things, I was a kid who liked to be by myself, who was quiet and reserved and slow to warm to others.

I loved to help my grandmother roll pie crusts, and form doughy dumplings to drop into broth from the tip of a spoon; I liked to crawl into my mother's garden and play with the snapdragons and marigolds (although I really hated getting dirty!) and I loved—LOVED—playing "dress up" and planning fancy tea parties.

As an adult, all of those things remain true. Of course, my selective absorption of all of my mother's Linda Goodman books (I really only ever read about my own zodiac sign, ha!) probably solidified much it at an impressionable age. I continue to move through the world in the most Taurean of ways, I think. I love my solitude and I am still quite reticent and aloof when it comes to being in groups of people.

I'm not unfriendly, it's just...I can't handle more than one person at a time! So I'm afraid I retreat into myself on those occasions. And the memes are painfully true—I do have stupidly expensive taste. No matter what it is, I mean I could be walking into Petsmart for cat food or at the hardware store (even though I hate the hardware store!) and somehow zero in on the most expensive cat treats or toilet seat or whatever. It's not a helpful superpower!

I love both luxury and comfort; I have got a cabinet full of probably thousands of dollars worth of perfume, and yet I sleep in a ratty old tee shirt that's got holes in the armpits because it's so beautifully, perfectly worn-in, and cozy. I love to cook and I love to eat, and you can see that in my soft, round body. But you can also see that in the way I enjoy feeding people something delicious, that makes them feel good. I still love flowers and I still hate getting dirty, so while you may see me in my garden, gingerly digging in the dirt to plant something small, or harvest a tomato or two, generally my thumb is not particularly green and you'll never see me camping. I am not "outdoorsy!"

I'm in my head a lot—I am a pro-daydreamer, but it's not especially high-brow or cerebral up in there. I don't have scholarly, academic, or philosophical leanings. Although certainly lots of pre-writing work and fleeting bits of poetry and wordplay swirl around in there. Still, I have to coax all of that out onto a computer screen or a notepad and get it all tangibly in front of me to make sense of it.

I don't know if that's particularly Taurean, but I imagine my Capricorn rising gives me a weird ambitious/competitive streak that is probably a good and necessary contrast in order to motivate me to do anything with any nonsense that does make it out of my brain.

TLDR; because in typical, plodding, make-a-long-story-longer Taurean fashion, I am taking a long time to get to the point: I love food and beauty and luxury and comfort; I'm reserved and in my head a lot and I didn't mention it above but yes I can absolutely hold a grudge forever but if I love you, I am probably going to love you forever, too.

Oh. And I am absolutely OBSESSED with Scorpios. While I don’t mean to generalize, I can say that in my experience, there are two types of Scorpios: the one that is Very A Lot, they don’t hold back, you always know what they are thinking and they practically flay themselves open for you. They want you to have all of them, even and especially the ugly and scary bits. They wear their shadow side on their sleeve and their shadows aren’t very subtle, either.

The other kind of Scorpio is not exactly the secretive, silent-type, but their shadows are shrewd and sharp and you might not get to see them right away; you always recognize they are there and you are inexplicably drawn to them like a moth to flame.

I am the furthest thing from a Scorpio, but I am also a secret Scorpio.

“Before the age that others begin to make an impression on me; before I learned to read and discovered other interests through the characters inhabiting the worlds of those pages; before I realize my mother is an astrologer who has apparently charted my every move well in advance—before all of those things, I was a kid who liked to be by myself, who was quiet and reserved and slow to warm to others. ”

— S. Elizabeth

Lisa Marie Basile: I am always curious as to how someone’s background, culture, identity, or belief system shapes their work. Can you share a bit about this?

I think my work is hugely informed by my identity in terms of invisibility. It’s a strange/scary thing to talk about because I don’t want anyone to ever think I am somehow mocking their experience as being a nonbinary person, for example, but I was having a conversation with a friend a few months ago after they had come out as nonbinary. I admitted to them that I have never felt like a woman/girl, like a she/her — but that he/him and they/them feel wrong too. I had previously said this to my sister, who responded with “so…do we call you IT?” She was only half serious, but I almost started weeping.

This is going to sound weird and probably very wrong because who wants to be referred to as “it”? Me. I do. That felt perfect to me after a lifetime of living as me, as one who doesn’t feel like a “someone.” I don’t even feel like a person, much less a man or a woman.

I don’t feel like this thing or that thing, because most of the time I don’t even feel here, as a thing that exists. I think my writing and what I put of myself out into the world is very reflective of these feelings of impalpability and unreality, even though I’ve never any of this out loud, in these words.

Lisa Marie Basile: Who do you look up to? I’m so curious about contemporary writers and artists who inspire you.

Three writers and friends who continuously inspire me are Sonya Vatomsky (@coolniceghost ) whose poetry is swoony and sharp and sly and whose essays and other writings are so, so fucking smart; Maika (@liquidnight ) whose words are always so compassionate and thoughtful and perceptive–even when writing about their own experiences, you, the reader feel so breathtakingly, heartbreaking seen; and Nuri McBride (@deathandscent ) a perfumer, writer, and curator whose work centers on olfactive cultural education, and anything she creates is going to be an astonishingly researched, illuminating, insightful journey. Sonya, Maika, and Nuri have all bolstered, supported, and encouraged me in the most gentle and relentless of ways, and they are each deeply special, wondrous humans.

Lisa Marie Basile: I am curious about your thoughts on publishing, promoting, and merging the professional with your, well essence — of creativity and beauty and exploration. I have truly struggled with it all.

In fact, I feel changed — perhaps not always positively — by the experience of publishing. It has taken time to rebuild my Artist self, to step back from going and doing and making and simply rest or take stock. I think once you (or I) share with the world, something dies a little (#scorpio) and you have to work to resurrect it. What are your thoughts on it all?

I thought I would feel more changed by the process of publishing, to be honest. I thought having a book I had written out in the world, on people's shelves, in their hands, would somehow...I don't know...make me feel less sad about having a complicated relationship with my dead mom? Less traumatized by a past relationship full of abuse and gaslighting and manipulation where my identity and self-esteem were ground into the dirt, into nothing? Less shitty about having a less-than-ideal-looking human body that I've been shamed for ever since I can remember? Less scared of everything, all of it, all the time?

Turns out: nope. Having published a book, having published—two books—by this time next month, just means I am all of those things still, but also with some publications out in the world. I still work the same day job I've had for the past 17 years; I don't love it, but in typical Taurean fashion I like my stability and I don't feel comfortable with the idea of just quitting my job and trying to write full-time.

I don't want to "hustle," I don't want to have to agree to write about things I am not interested in so that I can afford to pay my bills. I am just not into any of that. While I am doing as much promoting of my books as I can, I'm not doing anything that feels disingenuous, that doesn't feel like me: you'll never see me doing book tours or speaking on panels or even live-AMAs or anything like that. I promoted them by interviewing the artists in them. I worked them into perfume reviews or little fashion ensemble collages that I then share on social media, or sharing playlists of music inspired by them. These are all things I enjoy doing, and would do anyway, and it was actually a treat to include my book and writings in them. And along with that, I guess I haven't felt anything inside me die because—except for the writing of the book—I don't think I gave *every* piece of myself to the process.

And that's not me patting myself on the back. It's me being boring and practical. I have a job to fall back on. If this book or that book flops, it's not going to kill me. Maybe my ego. But not financially. I'm not rich, I don't have a lot of money. And the money I have made from these books is negligible (that's another thing people need to know about writing books, I think.

There's just...not a lot of money in it.) I know that's not a very exciting or beautiful answer but I do think it is a genuine, practical, Taurus answer. I did exactly what was required of me for these books, in exactly the way I wanted to do it, and no more. Although...I did at one point say that I was NEVER going to be on a podcast (too scary!) but then over the course of the next six months I was interviewed on four podcasts, so ...so much for that, I guess.

I don't know if I adequately answered that question. I've been burnt out, sure. Since 2019 I have written three books (well, I am working on my third) I continue to blog and write for other platforms when it interests me, I post regularly on social media, I started a Patreon that I try to write for once a week, I started and grew a TikTok account where I share perfume reviews almost every day, I put together a press kit, I am in the midst of developing a newsletter and while all of these things sound like professional tools, to me, it's just a lot of fun.

I love doing stuff like this, it's all a beautiful exploration to me. It's A LOT and I need a break every once in a while but I'd probably be doing all of that even if I never published a book! As crappy as social media makes me feel sometimes, the comparison aspect of it, that is, I LOVE it. I really do.

As shy and squirrely as I am, this is how I share and connect with people. I love all of the like-minded souls and kindred spirits that I have encountered through all of these platforms. I've always felt like such an invisible nothing...and I know that I give away of myself more than I will ever get back in return...it's the sharing of these little pieces of myself in all of these different places that somehow, paradoxically, builds me back up.

S.Elizabeth is a writer, curator, and frill-seeker. Her essays and interviews focusing on esoteric art have appeared in Haute Macabre, Coilhouse, Dirge Magazine, Death & The Maiden, and her occulture blog Unquiet Things, which intersects music, fashion, horror, perfume, and grief. She is the cocreator of The Occult Activity Book Vol. 1 and 2 and the author of The Art of the Occult (2020), The Art of Darkness (2022), and The Art of Fantasy (2023)

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine. She’s also the author of a few books of poetry and nonfiction, including Light Magic for Dark Times, The Magical Writing Grimoire, Nympholepsy, Andalucia, and more. She’s a health journalist and chronic illness advocate by day. By night, she’s working on an autofictional novella for Clash Books.

Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Best American Poetry, and Best American Experimental Writing. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Atlas Review, Spork, Entropy, Narratively, and more. She has an MFA from The New School.

Gustavo Barahona-Lopez: On Poetry, Masculinity, and Heritage

An interview with Gustavo Barahona-Lopez
by Lisa Marie Basile

This interview is part of our new Creator Series, a series of Q&As designed to help you get to know people who are writing, making, and doing beautiful things.

Gustavo Barahona-López is a writer and educator from Richmond, California. He is the author of the poetry chapbook, "Loss and Other Rivers That Devour,” and in 2023 his debut full-length collection will be published by FlowerSong Press. I wanted to chat with him about his work and influences.

Lisa Marie Basile: Tell us a bit about what you’ve written — and what we can expect from you going ahead.

My chapbook, “Loss and Other Rivers that Devour” centers on my mourning my father’s death and how my identity and sense of self shifted along with the process of grieving. I wanted to write about the complexity of our relationship and my grief. Just as there is love so too is there hurt and actively pulling away from my father’s example.

I never felt that I fit my father’s narrow view of masculinity and part of my journey of grieving included forging my own sense of manhood.

In 2023 I will also publish my debut full-length collection with FlowerSong Press. It centers on themes of language, heritage, colonial erasures, trauma, and some speculative imaginings of the future.

Lisa Marie Basile: Can you tell us a little more about how identity or culture plays into your work?

I am the son of Mexican immigrants to the United States and that has a huge influence on my writing. This is in terms of language (in my case Spanish), cultural references, and experiences. Growing up as part of this community has also inspired me to write about the many abuses perpetrated against migrants to the United States.

For instance, I wrote a microchap centered on migrant children dying on the U.S.-Mexico border. Additionally, I write a lot about masculinity and how I have sought to undo a lot of the gendered socialization that my parents impacted upon me.

Lisa Marie Basile: Looking back to your point about gendered socialization, you said, "I never felt that I fit my father’s narrow view of masculinity, and part of my journey of grieving included forging my own sense of manhood."

I'm wondering, as a poet, does writing about the complexity of family, grief, and gender (re)open these wounds, or does it help you confront, synthesize, or articulate the nuances of it all? I know some poets find writing about traumatic issues cathartic while others find it tricky — a sort of Pandora's box, if you will.

It’s a mixture of both for me. Writing poetry has been key for me to process my feelings around my father’s death and my relationship to his teachings on gender. Since part of my socialization was to repress my feelings to the point that I have trouble recognizing them, expressing myself in my poetry led me to realizations about my own emotions.

While in some ways it is cathartic to write about past trauma there have been multiple times where I have cried after writing a line or a poem because I touched a particularly tender part of my past.

“Since part of my socialization was to repress my feelings to the point that I have trouble recognizing them, expressing myself in my poetry led me to realizations about my own emotions. ”

— Gustavo Barahona-Lopez

Lisa Marie Basile: Are there other authors who you enjoy and who also handle masculinity in a way that resonates with you?

The author that comes to mind when thinking about complicating masculinity is the work of Tomas Moniz and his book “Big Familia.”

Lisa Marie Basile: And what does your writing process look like? I’m always curious to hear how other writers tend to their craft.

I write best when I have an extended period of time to myself. Preferably this would be outside of my home like a local coffee shop. Since my wife and I’d baby, Issa, was born a year ago though time to myself has been scarce so I usually write late night after the kids have gone to bed these days.

Lisa Marie Basile: Can you share some of your general inspirations and influences with us?

My literary influences include Martin Esparza, Tomas Rivera, Sandra Cisneros, Eduardo Corral, Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, Jose Olivares, Marcelo Castillo Hernandez, Alan Chazaro, Muriel Leung, Lupe Mendez, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Gloria Anzaldua.

Lisa Marie Basile: And who are some contemporary creators, writers, or peers that you look up to on the regular?

Muriel Leung, Alan Chazaro, and Gustavo Hernandez.

Gustavo Barahona-López is a writer and educator from Richmond, California. In his writing, Barahona-López draws from his experience growing up as the son of Mexican immigrants. His poetry chapbook, "Loss and Other Rivers That Devour," was published by Nomadic Press in February 2022. Barahona-López was a finalist for the 2021 Quarterly West poetry prize and was awarded a Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) residency fellowship. A member of the Writer's Grotto and a VONA alum, Barahona-López's work can be found or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Iron Horse Literary Review, Puerto del Sol, The Acentos Review, Apogee Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other publications.

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine. She’s also the author of a few books of poetry and nonfiction, including Light Magic for Dark Times, The Magical Writing Grimoire, Nympholepsy, Andalucía, and more. She’s a health journalist and chronic illness advocate by day. By night, she’s working on an autofictional novella for Clash Books.

Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Best American Poetry, and Best American Experimental Writing. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Atlas Review, Spork, Entropy, Narratively, and more. She has an MFA from The New School.

Andi Talarico on Magic, Writing, and Italian Inspiration

An Interview with Andi Talarico
by Lisa Marie Basile

This interview is part of our new Creator Series, a series of q&as that are designed to help you get to know people who are writing, making, and doing beautiful things.

Andi Talarico (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based writer, poet, and self-proclaimed witchy poo (astrology, tarot, ritual work). She’s the co-founder of Writing The Cosmos (which I have the great fortune of running with her). As an endlessly fascinating human with a great deal of knowledge about all things literary, magical, and mystical, I wanted to chat with her about her creative inspirations and her upcoming workshop Luna Le Vag, a holistic spa in Brooklyn, NY.

In this interview, we discuss her workshop, influencers, inspiration, and how her culture shapes her work.

Lisa Marie: Tell us a bit about your recent creative project, the Full Moon Ritual workshop you’re holding in Brooklyn this month.

The idea for this workshop came from my frequenting of this lovely Brooklyn business called Luna Le Vag, a holistic spa in Brooklyn that’s run by two inspiring young women, Jordan and Naomi. Their spa does a lot of work with natural care (and pampering!) for the vagina (hence their name) but there’s more to it than that - I could tell that they cared about community-building, networking with other businesses run by women and people of color, and I started to think about a way that I could possibly contribute. I noticed that Luna Le Vag was already offering classes in workshops in areas of interest to me: healing arts, reiki, energy readings, intentional cannabis use, and more.

Because my hobbies revolve around things like the study of astrology, tarot, and ritual, I thought it could be useful - and hopefully fun! - to offer a workshop based around the Full Moon and ways to harness its energy for use in reflection, self-care, and intentionality. All of these practices are beneficial, but I find it especially important to have conversations around and engage with these rituals as part of building community. The more we practice intentionality, the more we participate in our lives fully and authentically. The idea for the workshop is twofold:

First, we’ll be performing ritual as a group, which is its own healing and community-building modality, but Second, I’ll be sharing ways in which all of these practices can be personalized to benefit each person, so they can take these skills and apply them authentically in their own lives, whether alone or with others.

All of this is done in tandem with the good people of Luna Le Vag who will be there to participate, contribute, host, and share their beautiful space with us, as well as their food and refreshments, as this workshop will run all evening, in order to give us time to relax into things in a more organic way. To sum that all up, I’m running a Full Moon Ritual workshop on Thursday, August 11th, from 5-9pm, at Lune Le Vag at 1096 Broadway in Brooklyn. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own tarot deck but we will have extras on hand. No prior knowledge of tarot, astrology, or spirituality is needed to participate.

Lisa Marie Basile: Who are some of your creative favorites? Who lights you up?

Oh wow, what an enormous (and great) question! As it relates to my ritual-craft, I find a lot of inspiration in the words and writing of people like Patti Smith, Maggie Nelson, Anne Carson, Sappho, Jeanette Winterson, Kim Addonizio, Diane di Prima, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Isabelle Allende - people who suffuse their work with a type of magic and openness, who use language as a way to get to truths both known and not. The reading of tarot is a narrative structure; the joy of Astrology comes from mining its depths for meaning; a guided meditation is a way to marry language and imagination. At the bedrock of all of these things is language, incantation, possibility — my love of writing directly feeds my study of the esoteric and magical, and vice versa.

“The reading of tarot is a narrative structure; the joy of Astrology comes from mining its depths for meaning; a guided meditation is a way to marry language and imagination. At the bedrock of all of these things is language, incantation, possibility — my love of writing directly feeds my study of the esoteric and magical, and vice versa.”

— Andi Talarico

Lisa Marie Basile: I’d love to hear about your writing process, struggles, or any rituals you turn to when creating. How are things going?

It definitely depends. There are days when all I need is to take my laptop to a coffeehouse and immerse myself in the din of the city to feel inspired. Other days, it’s much more introverted: I need every single detail of my home to be in order before I’m able to sit down, light some incense, turn on some beautiful, wordless music, make myself the perfect cup of coffee, and then sidle up to the page. Some days I need to write by hand.

Other days I feel the need to type. I try to listen to my needs and balance them with what I’m trying to get done. I do think I write more now, in these past few years, than I used to, likely because I started practicing better life habits more intentionally and tracking them.

It also became easier when I (mostly) shut off the constant inner critic and understood that Prolific usually beats the hell out of Perfection. If I don’t consider every word precious, I can let them all spill out onto the page and then parse them later. You can’t edit from nothing, but you can always edit from an imperfect something.

Lisa Marie Basile: Tell us a bit about how culture, identity, place, or belief inspires or influences your work?

I believe my heritage deeply informs my work - and by work, I mean writing as well as magic-making as well as the way in which I move through the world. While I’m proudly of mixed ethnicity and heritage, I was raised Catholic with a strong emphasis on our Italian-American side of the family, and though I’ve loooong been lapsed in the practice of the Catholic religion, I do still carry an abiding love for ritual, ambience, the mysteries of the spirit, even prayer as it corresponds to incantation. And incense. That one definitely stuck, haha. There’s a certain type of bloody passion that exists at the heart of Catholicism that still speaks to me and through me.

Though my craft has many influences and forms, the majority of the rituals that I practice come from the folk magic traditions of southern Italy. I’ve always felt more attached to the folk magic that took places in kitchens and gardens and bedrooms than the high magic traditions, especially those which exist within a hierarchy. And frankly, if I wanted some man wearing fancy robes to tell me how to live my life, I would have just stayed in the church. I respect the freedom, feminism, and resourcefulness of folk traditions and that love informs much of how I live and work.

Lisa Marie Basile: Who are some contemporary creators, writers, or peers that you look up to on the regular?

I think we’re in a really interesting time in history as far as witchcraft and ritual are concerned and I find a lot of inspiration from the people sort of heading up that public discourse. The work of Pamela Grossman comes to mind, as does Mary-Grace Fahrun, the astrological writings of Chani Nicholas and Gala Mukomolova. I deeply appreciate the life work and educational offerings from Marybeth Bonfiglio at Radici Siciliani, Herban Cura, and Mallorie Vaudoise.

Andi Talarico (Cancer sun/Pisces moon/Sagittarius rising, she/her) is a Brooklyn-based writer, poet, and general witchy poo (astrology, tarot, ritual work.) She’s taught and coached poetry/performance in classrooms as a rostered artist, as well as tarot and astrology workshops through WORD Bookstore and more. In 2003, Paperkite Press published her chapbook, Spinning with the Tornado, and Swandive Publishing included her in the 2014 anthology, Everyday Escape Poems. She also penned a literary arts column for Electric City magazine, and curated the NYC-branch of the international reading series, At the Inkwell, from 2016-2019. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Project, Luna Luna Magazine, Brokelyn, Yes, Poetry, amongst others.

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine. She’s also the author of a few books of poetry and nonfiction, including Light Magic for Dark Times, The Magical Writing Grimoire, Nympholepsy, Andalucia, and more. She’s a health journalist and chronic illness advocate by day. By night, she’s working on an autofictional novella for Clash Books.

Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Best American Poetry, and Best American Experimental Writing. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Atlas Review, Spork, Entropy, Narratively, and more. She has an MFA from The New School.

A Playlist for Spring

BY JOANNA C. VALENTE

We can ring in spring through using music as a spiritual, meditative, and reflective tool.

Illustrations by Joanna C. Valente for Fox Henry Frazier's 'Raven King'

Below are three illustrations (with one above as well) created by our editor Joanna C. Valente for Fox Henry Frazier’s forthcoming book, Raven King (out from Yes Poetry in November 2021). You can preorder the book bundle here (which includes music, the book, and more).

Read an excerpt of the book here and here.

Joanna C. Valente

Joanna C. Valente

Joanna C. Valente

Avian Protectors: Honoring and Celebrating Their Messages

By Christina Rosso

My father, born in the fall of 1951, has always loved the haunting, mind-bending stories found in Alfred Hitchcock’s films and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. I remember spending New Years Eve and Day snuggled on the couch watching a marathon of the television sensation. Of spending sick days with Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart on the French Riveria or in a crowded New York apartment complex. I can’t recall the first time I saw Hitchcock’s 1963 The Birds, a loose adaptation of the 1952 Daphne Du Maurier short story with the same name, however, I remember carrying a sense of avian dread. A feeling in my bones that birds could declare war on the human faction whenever they grew tired of our antics.

Birds fly through mythology and folklore. Some are omens of death, while others have regenerative abilities. Some are half-human, half-bird, often femme-bodied, who lure men to their untimely deaths. In Egyptian mythology, Ra, a falcon-headed deity, is the Sun God. As of May 2021, there are an estimated 50 billion to 430 billion birds on Planet Earth. These avian creatures are an integral part of our ecosystem, yet how often do we pause to acknowledge their chirping or cawing presence? For me, it took a part-time job at a very famous abandoned prison.

For nine months, I worked as a historic tour guide at Eastern State Penitentiary in North Philadelphia. Some posit it to be one of the most haunted places in America, with stories of nefarious and heckling ghouls throughout the eleven-acre grounds. In my experience, the abandoned prison is haunted by a terrible history of racism and mass incarceration. Much lore surrounds Eastern State, as does superstition. One superstition of sorts is this: one employee will find all of the dead and dying birds on site (of which there are a considerable amount). When that person leaves, a new person will begin to discover the birds. In the Spring and Summer of 2016, I was the bird finder at the penitentiary.

Often baby birds would fall from their nests onto the dusty slabs of pavement. The first time I found one, I had to give a ten-minute tour of the punishment cells, an earlier form of solitary confinement that continues to plague our prison system today. When I resurfaced from the underground space, the bird had been trampled by inobservant tourists. I promised that bird I wouldn’t let that happen again. After that, each time I found a dying bird on-site, I made sure these animals died with dignity. Sometimes that meant sitting with them, shielding them from being stepped on by visitors, or taking leaves and moving them off the path to a more peaceful place.

I learned quickly that it was worse when they were still alive, their tiny lungs laboring for breath. Long red gashes quivering across their pink, featherless bodies until the wheezing stopped, silence and death ringing in my ears. That year, it seemed that dead and dying birds surrounded me. Everywhere I looked, they were splattered on the sidewalk of my South Philadelphia neighborhood or in the grass at the nearby park. I always stopped to tell them how sorry I was, and if I was able, I collected their bodies, putting them to rest.

Around this time I started drafting a short story collection about magic, identity, and power. Set in New Orleans, I took inspiration from my favorite city and my favorite stories, real and imagined, about witches and goddesses and monsters in the shadows. I shaped a character in part after the Greek Goddess Demeter and in part after myself. A woman whose purpose was to travel to the plane in-between life and death and help the recently departed find peace. I had this character find dead and dying creatures as a child—cats, alligators, and birds. I told myself even if it weren’t possible for me to become this character, perhaps I could still help the animals that sought me out find peace.

I often tell my husband that to some I must appear unhinged the way I walk around Philadelphia and now its suburbs talking to birds as though I’m Snow White. I wish them good morning. I ask how they slept. I thank them for their saccharine chirping and the pleasant joy of watching them fly from one tree to the next. I always feel a swell of gratitude when these birds come to me alive, with the possibility of flying anywhere and seeing anything. And when I find them at the end of their journey, I hope they had a wonderful life.

Since that summer at Eastern State Penitentiary, I have considered birds to be one of my familiars. In European and American folklore, familiars were believed to be supernatural entities that assisted witches with their magical practices. I choose to use this term instead of spirit animal or power animal, as I do not want to further appropriate or cause harm to Indigenous cultures and their language. For me, a familiar is any animal I feel a deep connection with. One in which I feel a mutual understanding and respect. I believe these animals have found me and chosen me. This is especially true with birds.

When we came back to tour our home a second time, my husband and I were allowed to roam the property by ourselves. Alex went through the house, registering every detail of it while I explored outside. In the front yard, a robin landed before me. At that moment, I knew this was our house. I have always been someone who gets “feelings” about a place and takes messages from the universe seriously. This was my message. A robin means new beginnings, hope, and good things to come. We submitted an offer on the house the following day.

Since moving into this home, I have worked on becoming acquainted with all of my bird friends, or avian protectors, as I like to call them. The robin returns daily, as does a crow, several catbirds and mourning doves. On the morning I cleansed our home of negative energy, I found a catbird feather on the side porch. Catbirds, as particularly vocal birds, offer lessons in communication, by asking us to both practice listening and singing our own songs. Their energy is rejuvenating, optimistic, and inspiring. Perhaps this catbird is reminding me that my voice matters and that this new home is the perfect space to manifest the projects I’ve long been putting off. I brought this feather inside and have now collected several more offerings from my various avian protectors. I plan to meditate on these creatures’ symbolism and messages.

Now that I’m settling into life at the new house, I want to continue to deepen my relationship with the birds that frequent the trees and plant life in my yard. I plan to build a birdfeeder for my familiars to offer them nourishment. I plan to decorate my altar with their feathers and to call their messages and energy before spellwork. Now that I have a yard, I plan to collect and bury any dead birds I find in the neighborhood. I plan to incorporate them into the stories I write. And I plan to talk and listen and sing alongside these incredibly delightful creatures.

In The Birds, Mrs. Bundy, an elderly ornithologist, says to our heroine, Melanie Daniels, “Birds are not aggressive creatures, Miss. They bring beauty into the world. It is mankind, rather... It is mankind, rather, who insists upon making it difficult for life to exist on this planet.” I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot lately, and how I feared birds for so long without ever really knowing them. About how humans bring suffering and destruction to the earth and its creatures. How our culture allows fear to drive us to ignorance. My eyes and ears are open, ready to learn and relearn, to accept any messages offered to me, and for that I am grateful.

---

Christina Rosso (she/her) is a writer and bookstore owner living outside of Philadelphia with her bearded husband and rescue pup. She is the author of CREOLE CONJURE (Maudlin House, 2021) and SHE IS A BEAST (APEP Publications, 2020). Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. For more information, visit http://christina-rosso.com or find her on Twitter @Rosso_Christina.

Poetry by Fox Henry Frazier

The Fox-Haired Seer Makes A Pilgrimage to Devil’s Elbow, NY, Where in 1932 A Steam-Shovel Operator Discovered the Skull of an Axe-Murdered Young Woman; and Listens

Not unlike the Vestals in their forced 

walks across Rome to prove their bodies

unviolated by men, I conduct my promenade

these nights: my body both water and sieve, 

both returned to the earth and ignited

by rage. I pause, lift my skirt to avoid

stepping on it, extend my hand to passing cars. The luckiest

among them will keep driving. Those less fortunate

will deliver me, hot tongue spreading

to all-consuming inferno, the offering of their

human hearts still beating, skulls spiderwebbed

apart by force of impact. Smiling, I’ll thumb

their eyes shut as they rest like unborn

calves against the steering wheel: milky, still. 

A precious few will stop for me in rain, open

the door as though to a carriage, their exposed

hearts pure as a distilled spirit, as violent white powder. 

I can’t take them. They’ll blink & find my voice 

was merely certain tones of wind, curves and visage

a mistake in the brain—hallucinatory 

patterns made by wind in a blizzard, or their own 

rich somnambulant vision. They’ll scurry

home to their dark houses, light a room, wrap themselves

in blankets, and dream of a paper doll transforming

into smoke, set alight by a brutal boy after he’d made her

scraps with his blade. My last moments illuminate like Leda’s 

smothered convulsions against downy breast

and the cleaved immortality that comes

After.    And so I take you, beloved, the men used 

to say to the young girls they chose to serve Vesta.

Sometimes, I change my clothes, as bored

girls are wont to do: sequins and tulle, late for prom; car

trouble in a taffeta ball gown; or wandering in my own 

true Victorian garb, corseted, each breath controlled, abject

in all but my appetites. I stare

into myself—this fury I ignite, what

gift to my daughters who walk 

home alone at night: gibbous 

reds and yellows eradicating 

each other   within  let tongues    

consume the lamb  

flickering   ravenous     silent

save the sporadic, inveterate     

ferocious          susserate     I am

---

Fox Henry Frazier is a poet and essayist whose first book, The Hydromantic Histories, was selected by Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord as recipient of the 2014 Bright Hill Poetry Award. Her second, Like Ash in the Air After Something Has Burned (2017), was nominated for an Elgin Award. She edited the anthologies Among Margins: Critical and Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics and Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity.

Fox was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Binghamton University, and was honored with fellowships at Columbia University, where she received her MFA. She was Provost’s Fellow at the University of Southern California, where she earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing, and served as Poetry Editor of Gold Line Press and a Founding & Managing Editor of Ricochet Editions. 

Fox created the small literary press Agape Editions, which she currently manages with the poet Jasmine An. She lives in upstate New York with her daughter, her dogs, her gardens, and her ghosts.

Homespun Haints Is Your New Fave Ghost Story Podcast

BY ALEXANDRA COHL & BECKY KILIMNIK

Becky Kilimnik is the co-host and producer of the podcast Homespun Haints, an interview-style and storytelling podcast that celebrates the oral tradition of storytelling as an art form—with ghosts. Throughout its inception, Becky has also pulled from her other expertise as an artist and musician; she composes and plays all of the original music on the podcast and creates original artwork to accompany each episode. Now in their third season and with over 25,000 downloads, Becky and her co-host Diana Doty have cultivated a space where people can feel comfortable sharing and processing the paranormal experiences they have had.

Listen to: Korean Folklore, Death Days, and the Haunted Queens Apartment, or Quarantined With A Ghost

And, as someone who grew up in an Appalachian town and who has deep ties to the art of storytelling, Becky applies both her personal history and her Anthropology degree from Northwestern University to these interviews and in the pre- and post-production stages to really capture just how personal and unique these ghost stories can be. The podcast delights listeners in both expected and unexpected ways: fulfilling the desire for a creepy tale while also inviting laughter, self-reflection—and sometimes tears—with the stories that are told. 

You’ve said before on your podcast (specifically the episode with professional storyteller Dr. Hannah Harvey) that “The tradition of storytelling as a celebrated art form is so uniquely Appalachian” and that “It doesn’t seem to have the same weight given to it culturally in other parts of the country.” I’d love to start there: What was the moment (or moments) where you really began to realize this and what were those major differences? 

Becky Kilimnik

I spent the first part of my life in northeast Tennessee with only limited exposure to other parts of the world. When I turned seventeen, however, I moved to Chicago to go to college. My first year there, I slowly began to realize there were no storytelling festivals to attend, and no one talked about “storytelling” as a fun pastime. Of course, people there tell stories, just like people all over the world tell stories. And Chicago itself is an amazing hub for two very unique types of storytelling: improv comedy and jazz music. But, the cultural emphasis (which evolved from the combined traditions of Scottish, Irish, and African immigrants and Cherokee residents of the area) on non-scripted orality, practiced in front of a mirror, performed on stage or in front of peers, fluid and changing with every performance, for both the purposes of entertainment and sharing of knowledge, didn’t exist in the same form. And I found the same to be true in other places in America that I’ve lived as well.

Do you remember the first time you heard a ghost story? If so, what was it, and how do you feel like it started to shape who you are today?

I don’t think I could tell you the first ghost story I heard! Honestly, I think my mother was telling me ghost stories before I could even talk. I do remember the first time I heard a professional storyteller tell a ghost story, though. It was at a music workshop I was attending in Jonesborough, TN (I’ve been playing violin since I was four years old so I did a lot of these such workshops), and they hired a storyteller to entertain us during our first night there. I remember her handmade, brightly colored costume that hung off of her arms in twisted strips and how pieces of her costume would whip around her as she gestured.

I also remember the gasps of my little sister as the storyteller moved about the stage, telling us about the woman who ate her own body as she nearly died of hunger one cold winter night. In the story, the woman’s husband finally came back to their log cabin with a deer for dinner, but the woman, now nothing but an animated skeleton, leaped out from behind the cabin’s door and consumed him, too. And that was the end of the story. 

At first, I hated the story because I wanted more. I wanted to know if the skeleton woman still wandered the mountains in search of food (of course she did!). I wanted to know what happened next and if the storyteller made the story up herself or pulled it from folklore. But then I realized that none of those things really mattered in a good oral story. The story often ends at the climax; there is no resolution. And the art of the story itself is not in the following of a traditional short story structure—the art is in how the story is told. The drama behind the storyteller’s movements and the inflections in her voice.

At that moment I was instantly in love with storytelling. The ability to entertain and enrapture large groups of people merely with words and gestures seemed like pure magic, and I knew it had to be something I incorporated into my life.

 Tell me a little bit about the origin story of Homespun Haints; what prompted the idea for it, why you chose the format for the podcast that you did, and how you see it differing from other paranormal-based podcasts.

Homespun Haints

One of the first things I’ve always asked people when I meet them is “do you have a ghost story?” I’ve always been intrigued by the way people interpret events in their lives that they can’t quite explain. It makes us vulnerable and human, and no matter how people carry themselves, when they start to talk about a ghost encounter they’ve had, they reveal their soul to the world. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had an insatiable hunger for those stories and those moments.

I wanted to find a way to capture those points in time where the person telling their story bears their deepest fears to an audience and connects with their listeners in a profound way. I initially considered starting this project as a written blog, but then I remembered the storytelling traditions from my hometown, and I realized I had to do something that was linear (and oral), experienced moment by moment by the listener as the story unfolded. Podcasting presented itself as the perfect solution. Because of my musical background, I already had experience with recording and editing audio. The rest just took some planning and research. 

I feel this podcast is different from other traditional paranormal podcasts because our primary focus is storytelling. Even though all of our stories must be ghost stories to fit with our brand, their magic comes not just from the events within the stories but also from how the story is told and how we react to those stories emotionally. We consider what we’re doing to be more of an art form than anything else.

Oftentimes, your episodes can be a mix of serious, spooky stories, along with dark (and sometimes light!) humor. Why is that approach so important to you and your co-host, Diana Doty? Why not go the “uber spooky” route? 

Initially, we did think of going down the “uber spooky” route, but our personalities got in the way. We started throwing humor in because we couldn’t help ourselves! And I think that’s fine. It wasn’t a planned approach or branding initiative; it’s just who we are. Our listeners have told us that a lot of what they like about our show is how genuine we are behind the mics, and we enjoy just being ourselves—weird, spooky women who love to laugh.

By Becky Kilimnik

Plus, a good story is always better if you access more than one emotion while listening to it. A scary story is just a scary story. But a story that makes you laugh, cry, and cover your head with a blanket is going to stay with you for a long time. We want to provide warmth, humor, and fear, and create a well-rounded experience for all of our listeners, no matter what their comfort level with the paranormal is.

You’ve also expressed that in mainstream American culture, the paranormal community (such as who is invited on these types of podcasts) can often times be very whitewashed. Why do you think that is, and what have been the ways that you’ve worked to change that on your own podcast?

If you go on a ghost tour or look up the famous ghosts at a historic site, the stories you’ll hear are disproportionately about rich white people. If you hear about a person of color, especially about an enslaved person, the story may be completely made up or altered to make it more palatable to a white audience. Though plenty of stories have been told in all communities throughout the ages, these sanitized, white-centric stories are the ones that have more often had the advantage of being written down and shared across different types of media.

As storytellers and story-preservers, Diana and I want to do whatever we can to preserve stories from all communities, especially communities that have had their stories lost in the past.

It’s been a little bit of a struggle, I’ll be honest. When we started the podcast, we turned to our friends and family to serve as guests for the show. And many of those people are in very professional jobs and were uncomfortable talking about their ghost stories in a public setting. Many of our guests from the start chose to come on only with our assurances that their anonymity would be protected. When we did start reaching outside of our own circle for guests, we wanted to be sensitive to the fact that, when we have a guest on our show, we know they are doing us a favor. We needed to have a large enough listener audience to provide significant value to our guests in exchange for their time. We promote whatever projects our guests are involved with on our show and in our show notes, so the larger our audience, the larger the value of that exposure is.

Now that we are large enough that we can provide that value, we’ve really set an initiative for this season to seek out more people of color to come onto our show and share stories with us. Part of that work is ensuring that we are creating a space where people of color and their voices will feel safe and respected, so we’re also very upfront with our guests about this initiative; that we want to share diverse viewpoints that much of our audience may not even have considered or know about.

Ghost stories are both entertainment and history, both of which are, unfortunately, very whitewashed in mainstream media and literature. If you’d like to learn a little more about this, I suggest watching the documentary Horror Noire on Shudder, which discusses the evolution of Black actors and characters in the horror fiction genre. Also, there is a great episode of A History of Ghosts called “The Whitewashed Ghost” that discusses the psychology behind the white-centric ghost tour.

LISTEN TO: Filipino Folklore: Manananggal, Engkanto, and Duwende, Oh My! or Sometimes There’s Just Ghosts, on Appalachian Storytelling

I know that you and your co-host really encourage people to share their truths on your podcast—that it isn’t a place to question people’s ghost stories but rather a place to affirm their experience of the world. In the many interviews you’ve conducted and the stories you’ve heard up to this point, what have you learned about the history of supernatural stories and their cultural significance? Has anything surprised you or contradicted what you believed when you first started this podcast?

Our biggest surprise has been how cathartic the storytelling experience can be for our guests! After telling us stories that they’ve kept pent up inside of themselves for years, many of our guests will burst into tears, thank us, tell us that talking to us is akin to therapy. We were not expecting that at all when we started out. We thought we were just going to be sharing some ghost stories; we didn’t realize how many people would benefit from having a place to dig deep into their own pasts, and share stories they didn’t realize they were hiding from. Our commitment to having a non-judgmental, safe space has really paid off in that regard!

Obviously, this isn’t the case for all of our guests. Some of them have told these same stories dozens of times before. But for those that haven’t, it speaks volumes about our culture’s attitude toward true supernatural experiences. Many guests tell us how they’ve experienced ostracization from society, ridicule from family members, even fear of losing their jobs, when they’ve revealed these stories to others. Which is sad when you consider how profound and life-changing some of these experiences have been for some of these people.

Again, this was something that really surprised me, as someone who grew up in an area where sharing ghost stories was just a way of life. I believe everyone should have the opportunity to share their story and should not be punished for seeing the world a little differently than their peers.

So, you do even more than co-host and produce the podcast. You also create original artwork, stop motion YouTube mini-stories, and the original music for each episode. Talk to me about the art first: for the episode artwork, what is the style, and how do you decide which piece out of the whole episode to express visually?

By Becky Kilimnik

I would define my style as “quirky surrealism.” It’s not something I specifically developed; it’s just kind of what comes out of my hands. I began creating a piece of art for each episode because it seemed easier than hunting through stock photography sites for something that fit. I can’t tell you where inspiration for these things comes from—things just pop into my head and I try to replicate it. That’s how the initial pen and ink drawings started. I also began doing a few watercolor paintings as well because they were quick and easy and I could do them in color.

Toward the end of the second season, I started following some pop surrealism artists on Instagram (especially the paintings of Jesús Aguado @jm.aguado), and I became inspired by their work and wanted to try my hand at something similar. My first few works were a combination of oil pastel painting and drawing; pastel has always been my go-to medium for color, and I really enjoyed getting back into it. But, they’re messy and time-consuming, and my husband began grousing about the condition of our dining room as I was working. So, I thought I’d give acrylics a try. I’ve never used them before but I do remember watching my mother paint when I was a young girl, and I took to the medium right away. I’m really enjoying them and will probably stick with them for a while until I become bored and move onto something else.

As for what to express visually for each episode? I try to think of what piece of someone’s story would be the most visually impactful. When I picture the story, what do I see in my mind? And is it something I think I can pull off with a paintbrush? There’s not much more to it than that. The great thing about working with acrylics is that if I don’t like something that I started, I can always paint over it!

What about the YouTube channel? Why stop motion and how does this function as an extension of the podcast? 

Our stories are home-grown (hence the “Homespun” in Homespun Haints) but they’re also on the bizarre side. Therefore, I’ve steered away from doing anything too polished visually for the aesthetic of the podcast—I want it to retain a little of that slapped-together feel. 

I grew up in the eighties, when stop-motion animation was everywhere, from Claymation shows to special effects. For me, this technique always existed between the realistic and the strange. Plus, I do digital art all the time for my day job and it’s really relaxing to just stop and create with my hands.

Stop motion animation is also quirky, funny, and old-fashioned, just like many of the ghosts we talk about on the show. This style of animation also gives me a chance to create videos from hand-drawn components, just as the art that illustrates the episodes is hand-drawn. Every once in a while, I’ll accidentally get my thumb in a frame as I move pieces around and I just leave it. Those little mistakes just augment that homespun feel.

Now tell me about the music. What is the process behind creating the music for each episode and how does it impact the storytelling aspects of your podcast? 

I have several pieces of music that I’ve composed, performed, and produced that I use and re-use throughout the episodes. I generally change it a little from season to season (the first season was piano, the second was digital music, the third is the organ and violin). I came up with the theme song when we first started the show by messing around on the keys; everything since then has been some sort of variation on that theme.

Now for the more detailed answer. I’m a classically trained violinist with strong ties to the bluegrass fiddling of my home area. After I moved to Chicago, I became bored with classical violin and fiddling and started performing with progressive rock and glam rock bands. For eight years, I played in every bar throughout the Hyde Park, Rogers Park and Wicker Park neighborhoods. One stipulation for me being able to play with these groups was I had to learn how to improvise. When you’re hungry, you’ll learn how to do anything. So, I spent nearly a decade refining my improvisation chops. 

When I started the podcast, I had barely touched my violin for ten years. Hence, the piano. But quarantine altered everyone’s fate. I accidentally formed a band with some neighbors one drunken night, and before I knew what was happening, I was shredding on the old fiddle again. A few months later, I seem to have acquired a great deal of equipment, pedals, cables, and other strange musical items that just keep appearing in the living room. At one point, a Theremin even showed up.

Now, whenever we need new music for the podcast, I pull on those violin improvisation skills of yore. I’ll pull out my fiddle, go up to a mic, and mess around until something I like comes out. Then I create variations on that, and use editing software to mix, loop, overlap, and combine the tracks until it sounds like something that works with our show.

As for how it impacts the storytelling? I am committed to never using music to enhance or detract from our guests’ stories. Therefore, we only use it at the beginning, end, and interludes in the podcast. Music never flows over our guests’ words. I believe the story itself is enough and adding anything to it would be a disservice to the speaker’s words.

In the production, how do you manage to enhance the oral storytelling (with guests who may not always be natural storytellers) without stripping them of their individual voice? 

This is a tough one, but something I’m quite proud of. In a heavy edit, I may move pieces of someone’s story around so that it flows a little better—for instance, if someone accidentally tells the end first, and then says “Oh I forgot to mention….” I may even add extra spaces in between sentences to build suspense if a guest is nervous and speaking quickly. I will often remove excessive filler words (uh, um, like, you know). But I never touch colloquial language. I would never alter an accent. And, we always give the guest the opportunity to listen to their episode before it airs.

Most guests, however, do not require heavy editing. We’ve found that most people, whether they realize it or not, are natural storytellers. Most of our job is just to help them be comfortable, help them figure out a good starting point, and then sit back as the story flows out of them. 

What do you feel like folks outside of the paranormal community get wrong about it? 

Oh, that’s a tough question. I think there may be the assumption that people who enjoy paranormal stories or who are involved with paranormal events, are a bunch of “scary devil-worshipping creeps.” But in actuality, every single person we have met has been an amazing human being. I think people who love this stuff are used to being on the outside; they have a lot of empathy for anyone else who is used to not fitting in. And they’re just the nicest people ever. 

I think there’s also a belief that anyone who believes in ghosts is either completely ungrounded in reality or is trying to take advantage of gullible people (think common beliefs about fortune-tellers and palm-readers). My co-host, Diana, is a former physician with some pretty hefty scientific training under her belt, and our guests are down-to-earth people that just happen to have had some unexplainable experiences. When we’ve interviewed spiritual mediums (and we’ve had quite a few on the show), they are also very truthful about their abilities and their beliefs and have no intention of taking advantage of anyone. In general, we’ve found a great group of people, we’ve formed some strong friendships, and we’re so excited to be a part of such a warm and inviting community.