Konstantin Nicholas Rega is an internationally published poet, a recent graduate of the University of Kent’s writing program, a columnist at Into the Void, a staff writer at Treble, a fiction editor at Crack the Spine, and a host at Livewire 1350. He’s the author of Waterlight Recollections—a collection of short stories now available on Blurb—and Arrows & Bones—a poetry chapbook soon to be published.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Konstantin about experimenting with style and personal circumstance in writing, as well as jazz and other music-related topics.
Nan Sanders Pokerwinski was a science writer at the Detroit Free Press for more than a decade, and she worked as a science writer for the University of Michigan News Service for fourteen years. She’s been a contributing editor to Health and Alternative Medicine magazines and has written for More, Fitness, Dallas Morning News, and other print and online publications. Her journalistic byline is Nancy Ross-Flanigan and she’s received a Pulitzer nomination and several awards.
What awards has Mango Rash won so far? How did you come to write it and how long did it take?
Mango Rash won first place in the memoir/nonfiction category of the 2018 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Awards and was a finalist for the Northern Colorado Writers Top of the Mountain Book Award, the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards (twice), and the 43rd New Millennium Writings Literary Awards.…
I have been singing the same song in my head for twenty minutes now. It’s not that it’s my favorite song or that I don’t know lyrics to any others. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to sing it, but I do know that it was three minutes and seven seconds long and that its title was five words long. I also knew that if I picked up a rock to examine it, I would have to start the chorus over again because I would be too perplexed on which way the rock should sit to think about the words. North, south, left, or right, either way it wasn’t how it should be situated and….shit. It’s the troll again. …
James A. Cox is the Editor-in-Chief of the highly popular and comprehensive Midwest Book Review, which hosts nine monthly book review magazines such as The Reviewer’s Bookwatch and Internet Bookwatch (which are written by volunteer reviewers), while the other magazines are by Midwest Book Review and associates.
How did you become the Editor-in-Chief of The Midwest Book Review physically located in Wisconsin?
In the summer of 1976 I was sitting in a Wednesday night meeting of the Madison Science Fiction Club in a State Street restaurant. The purpose of our weekly get-togethers was to socialize with like minded folk for whom fantasy and science fiction were something more than just another hobby.
Into that night’s gathering came a good friend of mine by the name of Hank Luttrell.…
The
air is crisp. Leaves are changing, and October is almost over. Halloween
approaches: the best day of the month for spooky season lovers. If you’re
looking for a scary read to cap off your night of jack-o’-lanterns, candy, and
costumes, check out Robert Jackson Bennett’s novella, Vigilance.
Bennett is better known for his superb work in fantasy (The Divine Cities trilogy, Foundryside), but with Vigilance (Tor, 2019), he ventures into dystopian science fiction. In the year 2030, the United States is in a state of almost total economic collapse. Most of the younger generations have fled as refugees to other safer, more stable countries. Global warming has induced massive flooding. A refusal to transition to sustainable energy has left Texas a burning oil field.…
No matter how long you’ve been painting, you learn something new with every canvas. Every single dang one.
All colors go together. Some just go
together a whole lot better than others.
Art is the deliberate attempt by
someone to make something he feels is beautiful. That’s all art is. You’re not
required to like it … to like it at all … but respect the time and effort the
artist took to try to convince you otherwise.
If black ain’t a color … what is it?
Folks will like your art better if they
like you. I know that thought might be repulsive to some artists. Some artists
believe that the work should stand on its own. I don’t necessarily disagree,
but if you make art and you’re the one personally selling it to prospects …
and not your agent or the nice lady in a gallery … then being likeable sure
does help people like your art a whole lot better.
For
me, non-fiction has to meet a lot of requirements in order to be classified as
a good read. I’m a curious person. Even a nosy one. I want to eavesdrop on the
writer’s experiences and secret thoughts. I want to know what happened to them.
I want to understand how they felt. And, most of all, I hope to discover
profundity, some kind of wisdom about what it means to be alive. It’s a tall
order, but I’ve found a book that fills it.
Relief
by Execution: A Visit to Maunthausen by Gint Aras (Finding the Moon in Sugar,
The Fugue) is one of the best
non-fiction books I’ve read in a long time. Lyrical and gripping while sparkling with wisdom, Aras leads his reader
through darkness and despair to epiphany as he ruminates on his experiences of
abuse, racism, ethnic identity, and the long-term effects of generational
trauma.…
