This interview was conducted by Advanced Workshop students and JFR Editors Samuel McFerron, Lauren Lotarski, Alyssa Khuffash, and Jovaughn Williams in the Spring of 2024.
Hello, readers! Welcome to the second series installment of “Meet the Authors,” a series highlighting the visiting authors that grace Lewis University with their presence. On Thursday, April 11th, the University welcomed Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué and Naoko Fujimoto to the Art Gallery where both authors read poetry and gave a Q & A afterward. For this “Meet the Authors” post, we will be focusing on Naoko Fujimoto and her wonderful poetry (stay tuned for our post about Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué and his amazing work as well!) Now for a brief introduction to Naoko Fujimoto and an exploration of her work and her thoughts behind it.
Hello everyone and welcome to Garcia’s Guide to BIPOC Authors! I decided to write a blog dedicated to BIPOC authors after reading and looking at The Vida Count, which highlights imbalance in publishing by collecting data. Unfortunately, diversity in publishing (albeit getting better) is still concerning. Moreover, reading classical literature has left me with a need to discover voices and perspectives outside of the literary canon which tends to house primarily white authors. This is not to say that the literary canon does not have timeless and well developed pieces of literature, but I got tired of hearing stories about people of color from those that are not in that community.
As an Indigenous American (on my mother’s side) and Puerto Rican (on my father’s side), I feel as if I have some obligation to uplift communities that have been historically marginalized. Following Royster’s commentary, I will not speak for those outside of my community, but instead I would like to offer a promotion and recommendation of authors from various communities. In this series, I would like to highlight some of my favorite authors, both classic and contemporary.
Alexi Pappas is a Greek-American Olympian, writer, poet, actress, and producer. In this first blog installment of Stride for stride with Smrcka, I will be diving into how many athletes, and specifically in my specialization of running, go into deep literary lengths in the many books, poem collections, and blogs and websites themselves. Many notable runners and coaches have been known to be in the broad degrees of English such as Deena Kastor, Mark Wetmore, Chris Lear, Kathrine Switzer, and of course— as this blog will discuss— Alexi Pappas! The Novel that Pappas wrote is called Bravey where she talks about her own self journey in confidence, self-reliance, mental health, and the events in her life that led her to be who she is today.
Milan Kundera is both widely praised and somehow overlooked in talks of influential postmodern authors and poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. Kundera was born in 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and came of age during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia that started with the Munich agreement. From his early teenage years, Kundera was a devotee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In 1950, he and his close friend Jan Trefulka were blacklisted from the party for “Anti-Communist activities,” since the party’s take-over in 1948. Kundera and Trefulka both criticized the movement’s deviation from Marxist principles and leniency toward totalitarianism. In response to his expulsion, Kundera wrote The Joke, a novel in which he pointed out the hypocrisy of the party, which was banned as soon as it reached bookshelves. This novel was published in 1968 and was Kundera’s foothold for his involvement with the Prague Spring. To understand Kundera, you first have to understand this history. The Prague Spring was a reformist movement led by groups of philosophers, writers, and artists who introduced enlightenment ideals like freedom of speech and religion, as well as a decentralized economy and democracy to what was then Czechoslovakia. You can probably see where this is going if you know your history. The Soviet Union didn’t take kindly to these “Western” ideals being implemented so close to home and used other nations of the Warsaw Pact to invade and take control of the country in a rapid display of violence that lasted only 2 days. Kundera, though certainly on a hit list for his influence in the reformist movement, remained hopeful throughout the occupation, but was eventually pressured to flee from Prague to France in 1975, where he now, at the age of 93, lives a quiet, isolated life.
Hello again, Readers! As promised, we are continuing the Meet the Authors series with our profile on Dr. Rita Mookerjee. Dr. Mookerjee followed Dr. Carrie McGath’s presentation which you can read about in our previous blog post here. Dr. Mookerjee spoke about a variety of topics and gave important pieces of advice to the students in the class. She also spoke about her experience living in Jamaica on a Fulbright and read a poem she wrote while staying there.
Dr. Rita Mookerjee
Bio: Rita Mookerjee is the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Fellow at DePaul University. She holds a PhD in Literature from Florida State University. In 2020, she was a Fulbright fellow in Jamaica. She is the co-founder of Honey Literary, Inc. and a Poetry Editor at Split Lip Magazine.
False Offering, her debut full-length collection, is forthcoming in 2023 from Jackleg Press. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Hobart Pulp, New Orleans Review, the Offing, and the BaltimoreReview.
Rita Mookerjee holds a Ph.D. in Literature from Florida State University. In 2019-2020, she was a Fulbright Fellow to Jamaica. She is also the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Fellow at DePaul University.
Hello, readers! Welcome to the first edition of “Meet the Authors,” a series for the visiting authors that grace Lewis University with their presence. On March 3rd, the University welcomed Dr. Carrie McGath and Dr. Rita Mookerjee to AS 158 where both authors read poetry and gave a Q & A afterward. For this “Meet the Authors” post, we will be focusing on Carrie McGath and her wonderful poetry (stay tuned for our post about Rita Mookerjee and her amazing work as well!) Now for a brief introduction to Carrie McGath and an exploration of her work and the thought behind it:
Before Dr. McGath and Dr. Mookerjee presented their work for the University, they made a special appearance at the Advanced/Intermediate Creative Writing class taught by Dr. Simone Muench. At this closed event, the students listened to the wisdom presented by each author and had the opportunity to ask questions following the presentations. For this blog post, we will run through some of what McGath discussed throughout the private session as well as the University event that occurred after.
Dr. Carrie McGath
Bio:Carrie McGath’s first collection of poems, Small Murders, was released in 2006 by New Issues Poetry and Prose. Since then, Carrie has self-published five limited-edition chapbooks, including: Ward Eighty-One,The Chase, So Sorry to See You Go, Ohio Lonely, and Dollface. She is currently at work on her second full-length collection of poems, The Luck of Anhedonia. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including The Chariton Review, Hiram Poetry Review, and Barrow Street. Her poem, “Dear Anhedonia” won the AWP Intro Journals Project Award in 2019and was published in The Tahoma Literary Review.
Hello everybody, my name is Samuel and as the title suggests I will be writing about authors of poetry, prose, music, essays, and novels who proved crucial to cultural and political revolution. I’m gonna walk a fine line between expressing authors’ viewpoints without affirming them, but rather provide a historical breakdown on their influence on the world around them. Without further ado:
Gil Scott-Heron was perhaps the most influential voice of The Last Poets; a supergroup of Black poets who organized in the late 1960s. Though an honorary member, Scott-Heron blended elements of blues, jazz, and funk in his music and combined melodies with politically charged poems to create the earliest instances of what would come to be known as Hip-Hop.
“Peluda” is a collection of poetry by Melissa Lozada-Oliva that discusses the author’s journey regarding her identity through an overarching theme of hair. Oliva presents her difficult position as a hairy Latina Americana via details stemming from conversations with friends and her culture. In the poet’s introductory poem, “Origin Regimen” we see the common position of Latino’s in America very clearly. Olivia writes:
“before there were legs, bikini lines, eyebrows, upper lips,underarms, forearms, labias, assholes, chins,or the waxing table there were houses & two immigrants who cleaned them (ll 1-4).”
The latter portion, “two immigrants who cleaned them” highlights the reality that many Latinos within the United States hold service or labor jobs. In the same breath Olivia is introducing the stigma around female hair. By naming all these places in which women get waxed, the poet is directing us to analyze why we feel it is so necessary to tame our hair. In her poem, “My Hair Stays on Your Pillow Like a Question Mark” Olivia again presents the issues through intersectionality via the speaker’s conversation with her white friends. She tells us:
This is my first blog; forgive me for I am but a simple being trying to emote the daily feelings that all of us often feel through poetry. Sometimes the poetry of choice will be mellow, sometimes a little sad, and rarely cheerful. But I can’t help it as I find myself drawn to poetry to find solace and to find comfort. Poetry helps me better understand my experiences—as well as the experiences of those who deal with life in ways that don’t mirror mine at all. Found below is a wide range of lonely poems, from a broad range of contemporary pieces, classics, well-known poets, and emerging poets. I hope these poems will resonate with you.
Our first poem by Dionisio D. Martinez is a salute to lonely people. It acknowledges most of the things lonely people do so that it can inspire them to keep on moving through life. Sometimes we lonely people need a reminder that we’re not alone and we have our community, this poem serves that purpose while at the same time uniting people.
For our Spring 2019 issue of Jet Fuel Review (with cover art by artist Delano Dunn) there is a special section that presents collaborative writing, which is writing that multiple artist’s crafted. As a way to celebrate the successful launch of our 17th issue, we’ve asked some of students, faculty, and alumni to join in and construct a piece, or multiple, that they created with their peers.
Presented below is a segment of the Special Section’s introduction as written by JFR Managing Editor, Zakiya Cowan, and a collection of fantastic collaboratively written pieces by some of our very own editors of Jet Fuel Review as well as some members of the Lewis University community. In summation, each of these pieces remain as a showcase of the bridge of collaboration and we are excited to present this talent.
JFR Blog 