Guest post: Trisha Faye, editor of IN CELEBRATION OF SISTERS

Confession time. There's a reason I usually write speculative fiction: I'm not very good at writing about reality and my own life. But when Trisha Faye put out a call for poems about sisters, I had to try, and I'm thrilled to say that "I Cherish Allegra" is included in the just-released anthology IN CELEBRATION OF SISTERS. Trisha stopped by to tell us more about the project.

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Why I Created IN CELEBRATION OF SISTERS
by Trisha Faye

Anne, thank you for the invitation for a guest blog. I’m excited about my newest release, In Celebration of Sisters, which is a collection of many stories and poems from talented writers. In fact, that’s how Anne and I connected. She has a poem in this anthology, honoring her sister Allegra and the sister memories she has, even though Allegra left this earth many years too early.

That’s been my favorite part of working on this anthology – meeting new authors and reading the delightful tales that celebrate the wonderful world of sisterhood. There’s some old friends in this book too. Several of the featured authors also had stories in my first anthology, In Celebration of Mothers, which was released a year ago. A new book about sisters seemed to be a natural follow-up.

Publishing an anthology brought about a whole different set of challenges than simply writing a story or a book. There were coordination issues between almost forty authors, getting permissions, collecting pictures, formatting, and trying to keep it all on schedule. I felt like I needed to put on a totally different hat for these tasks. But, you know, it’s in the working with new challenges and opportunities that we all experience growth – both personally and professionally. And at the end, when we can look back and see that we accomplished something we set out to do, it makes it all worth it.

The best part about the experiences of publishing two anthologies (with a third underway and set for publication in March 2018) is the new friendships that are formed. Through this, I’ve met an array of fascinating people who craft with words to touch others with their tales. And through the virtual world of email, the internet and social media, we can connect and interact in ways that were unthought-of not that many years ago. We’re not limited to having fellow authors – or readers – in our circle that we meet at book signings, in the bookstores, or on the physical path of life.

Anthology editor Trisha Faye and her sister

With Anne in Brooklyn, as I sit in Texas I most likely wouldn’t have crossed paths with her with her YA and Middle Grade books. I wouldn’t learn that she writes poetry also, nor that she had an older sister, Allegra, who had a perfect hiding place in the woods and didn’t like the ladder going to the upper bunk bed. But thanks to this anthology, and the virtual world we live in, my life is richer from meeting these wondrous new friends across the globe.

In Celebration of Sisters rejoices in the dynamics of sisters of all phases of life – those that have had a falling out and been reunited, other sisters, like Allegra, that were gone from life too soon, sisters from another mother, and the most glorious of all – sisters that are golden threads in the meaning of life. You can find their many stories, memories, and recollections here. Meanwhile, I’ll keep on celebrating sisters…and mothers…and the new friends I meet along the journey of this magical writing life.

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You can order In Celebration of Sisters on Amazon.

Anne-Adele Wight on turning picture to poetry to story

Poet Anne-Adele Wight just released her chapbook, Opera House Arterial, a poem cycle telling a series of stories about the life and adventures of an opera house. Knowing that her first book, Sidestep Catapult, is a collection of richly textured but separate poems, I asked Anne-Adele to talk about how and why she produced this new work as an almost-narrative set.

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Tangling with a Trickster

Opera House Arterial (BlazeVOX, 2013) is a mythology in 56 poems. The focus is a trickster spirit in the form of an independently mobile opera house. It chooses different modes of travel: flying, swimming, crashing through trees, manifesting in a couple’s bed. When weary of traveling it hangs out under a bridge and gnaws bones. This entity is up to no good, so beware.

When Opera House first showed up it didn’t feel like a narrative. In 1983, a friend showed me a postcard she’d received from Ecuador. It showed a view of Teatro Nacional Sucre, the 19^th-century opera house in Quito. Buildings in the foreground made the opera house appear to be floating, and the Andes rose high in the background. I responded on a sensory level with the urge to write a poem. The unreal quality of the postcard made me see the opera house as hallucinatory; the poem would revolve around that hallucination.

My first thought was that two people would hallucinate the same opera house at the same moment, without communicating and possibly in different places. But how to convey that thought? I couldn’t make the poem stick. So I put my idea in the usual black hole and left it there a long time.

 In 2011 I finally realized I was dealing with a collection. The insight came during a surreally long afternoon at a racetrack, where I’d gone under duress and was bored to extremes. I pulled out the notebook I always carry, and suddenly the opera house was staring me in the face. I began to scribble notes––not poems, but their raw material, the poetic ore.  I took them home, let them process themselves for a while, and the book took off.

I let the notes sit for about three months while I published another collection and lived my usual life. One day I pulled them out and started writing. The first completed opera house poem opened the way for another and then another. Sometimes the poem would overtake me and I’d write a draft or fragment in my notebook. Sometimes I’d sit down at my desk with no particular idea, pull out my notes if I had any, and start typing. Opera House gestated for about nine months, a perverse mythical infant.

Most of the book isn’t a linear narrative; each poem tells a small, discrete story. However, the last six poems link together to show the opera house kicking off an apocalypse––all in fun, of course.

The writing process was so delightful that finishing left me with mixed feelings. As soon as BlazeVOX accepted Opera House I started wondering about the next book. Could I do it the same way? Could I do it at all?

I tell myself I can do it again. The process will be different. This part is an act of faith: believing there’s more in my head than is apparent from a surface perspective. I have no encompassing vision so far, only poetic fragments and a folder of pictures I’ve downloaded that intrigue me for some reason. Lots of odd colors, lots of sky. I’m not sure where the pictures fit in, but I do know they have a place in whatever happens next. Whatever it may be.

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You can purchase Opera House Arterial directly from BlazeVOX or on Amazon.