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A Review of Ryan Sallans’ “Transforming Manhood”

By Alyse Burnside

I read Ryan Sallans’ book Transforming Manhood in bursts during my first semester of graduate school. Each night, settling into his book felt like the treat I’d given myself for reading Foucault, planning an English 101 lesson about how to write a thesis statement, or simply walking around the Las Vegas desert feeling utterly alone. Finding a particular kind of comfort in someone else’s transformation is not unfamiliar to me. As a young queer from the Midwest, I often spent all day waiting to get home so I could read my clandestine queer books under the covers. I read Stone Butch Blues with the hunger some kids read Tiger Beat!, and Dykes to Watch Out For with the sort of admiration and desire some relied on Marvel comics to fulfill. 

All this to say, I’m well read in the (white) queer bildungsroman. The stories of my queer elders are shaped by pain, isolation, loss, and above all, being denied the ability to dream of a limitless future. Before attending grad school, I worked as an advisor for a high school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance in Minneapolis. I was a decade older than my students, but a world away from them when it came to their experiences as queer high schoolers. While I was too afraid to come out to anyone until I was through with high school, they were openly, and unapologetically queer. While I was just learning to feel comfortable changing in my gym’s locker room, they were navigating polyamorous relationships.

As things progress for the queer people in this country, there is a need for a new type of story. One that does not ignore the struggles queer people still face, but simultaneously allows for queer futurism. Narratives that dare to imagine what lies beyond survival – these give me hope, and Transforming Manhood was one such narrative for me. Sallans’ memoir moves beyond the transformation story and shows us what lies on the other side of struggle.

I had the honor of chatting with Ryan Sallans, and what follows is our conversation:

Alyse Burnside: Hi Ryan! Thank you for talking to me. I wanted to first tell you why I chose to interview you. 

This past fall I moved to Las Vegas from Minneapolis where I had a really supportive queer community. I’m queer and since moving to Vegas I’ve really been feeling the loss of my community. I’m slowly building my queer community here, and this experience has me realizing just how important community is to me.  So when your publicist emailed Witness about book reviews, I was excited by the possibility of talking to you about your activism and Transforming Manhood. While I’m not trans, there was so much in your book that resonated with me. A sometimes fraught relationship to my body, the fear of rejection, the navigating of my identity in straight spaces.

Ryan Sallans:  I am hearing so many people tell me “’I am not trans’ but I connected with so much of what you had to say”—which is the whole point of storytelling and the power of nonfiction. It is interesting because when I was receiving my MA in Creative Writing, I only wrote fiction; I couldn’t imagine writing about my life. Now, I can’t imagine doing anything BUT nonfiction. 

AB: I remember my fiction teacher having a conversation with me about my work. It was basically an intervention, he was like: “There’s this genre called creative nonfiction, and it’s actually what you are doing but calling fiction.” 

This is a good segue into one of the questions I had for you. I want to talk about vulnerability. This book is very personal! What do you think is possible through honesty? 

Courtesy of Ryan Sallans and Scout Publishing

RS: Oh man, this book literally nearly killed me. As we sent it to the printers I had a physical and mental breakdown. My body completely collapsed and I lost a dramatic amount of weight in a week. This experience let me know I wrote a damn good book because I put my heart and soul out there and addressed topics that need to be addressed. 

My life’s work is in inclusion and diversity, which for me means, having authentic relationships with people, meeting them where they are at, and giving them time to grow and change. Some forms of activism seeking to be inclusive are actually doing the exact opposite because these forms are focused on language, labels, judgement and shame. This is not the way to build relationships or help people who are uncomfortable with a topic; it actually just reinforces the discomfort and defensiveness.

I felt I needed to write a book about it, because sitting with a book you get a longer journey and get to see a person’s intention/soul. But I was scared to death to actually get it into readers’ hands because of the fury that can rise quickly with social media platforms, opinions, and soundbites. I am happy to say, all I am receiving is praise and thank you’s. Vulnerability helps bring down the defensive shield and open up people’s hearts to the same emotions/connections.

AB: I used to work as a Gender Sexuality Alliance Advisor for High Schoolers in St. Paul, Minnesota,, and one of the struggles I found in that role is that even though I was only eight or nine years older than some of my students, their experiences were so different. In particular, my trans students. I often felt like I was ill equipped to advocate for them because they were navigating something very different than me. And, some of my students were so nonchalant about their queerness. I had one student tell me that it wasn’t a big deal at all for them to come out. I feel like the queer experience is really evolving quickly.

What do you think is the most important issues facing Gen Z queers?

RS: That is one of the reasons I loved Chapter 1—it is so healing to have spaces where older LGBTQ folks can spend time with LGBTQ youth, one: to help them feel heard, but two: to help provide them with guidance. The queer experience is evolving, but the human experience will always be the same. Deep down we all experience fear, happiness, anxiety, uncertainty, etc. We need to keep generations connected because while the world looks different, the emotional experiences and developmental processes will remain the same. Finding meaning in life and a sense of purpose. Gen Z is in this beautiful place where they are the first generation to grow up with us talking about gender and sexual orientation openly and more positively. (Obviously we have a lot of work still to do). This open space allows them to explore their sexuality and try on different labels. What can be frustrating for these youth is that older generations do not take them seriously, or try to shut them down, so I think they are in the position to move us to the next wave of essentially feminism. We are now shifting from focusing on men and women and opening it up to freeing gender and orientation. This is going to be amazing to watch, but it is important that older generations are there for guidance, assistance, and perspective. 

RS: I think a challenge is that, developmentally, Gen Z is using labels to try to understand self, but then in turn are applying labels to other people. This is harmful and creates those moments where people write each other off because of what they physically see or assume. Things like referring to people as “Cis, het, old, white guy, etc” is not helping build bridges or understanding. It is labeling and judging. 

AB: Yes, even as a lesbian I’ve never felt so old, boring, monogamous, out of touch. While I see that this can be polarizing, I also understand the urge toward self-protection. Because Gen Z is still young, I sort of feel it is my task as a millenial to try and bridge the gap in some ways. 

RS: Yes—absolutely. We will all figure this out as we navigate the healthy and unhealthy approaches to change.

AB: I’ve been reading a lot about queer futurism and potentiality lately. Have you read or heard of the book Cruising Utopia? I’ve just started reading it, but the title really summarizes it. It’s imagining the potential of a queer future. One in which there is flourishing rather than resistance. I see your work as future focused. I think a lot of books center on the transformation narrative, but Transforming Manhood to me feels like it’s pushing further than just transition. What do you think of this?

RS: I have been on the forefront of this current wave of LGBTQ rights and development. Just as an example, I had one of only a few websites about personal transitions on the web in 2005; think about what it looks like today!  So I am in a place where I can write about themes that go beyond a transition or coming out (my first book Second Son did that). My third book, which I am starting to jot down little things [for], will focus on Self (not about being trans) and what happened in my life when I found my center of balance while moving further into middle age. 

I think “futurism” is also what comes with age. I am a Gen Xr, like the middle child. I can look at older generations and think about what their lives looked like and everything they had, and continue to go through and then ask them for guidance when I start experiencing what they have in the past as developmentally they were in my age range. I can also look to the generations below me and take pause to give them space to express what they are going through while also listening to what they are truly feeling, and then having a conversation with them. I think futurism in a way is a representation of maturity, patience, open hearts and vulnerability. I am always trying to seek ways to describe the emotionality behind the language. We can connect through the emotions but interpret the language very differently.  

AB: Hmmm, I like that. It sounds so…doable, allowing space for those who need it and connecting through common experiences/emotions. I wonder why it is actually so difficult sometimes. Are you willing to talk about book three?

RS: Honestly, so much of this is so freaking simple, but we just muck it up because being vulnerable, being centered, and talking about what we are really feeling is terrifying and confusing. So we apply language, talking points, policies, remind people to use “I statements”. I remember when I used to be a health educator (I am still a health educator but do it through being a speaker/storyteller) I hated it when they made us use curriculums or train-the-trainer materials. It never felt authentic. It never felt like it actually gave people tangible information that they could digest. So, I just quit using them and instead got in front of people, read the room, and then opened up so that they felt comfortable with the topic and asking questions. Twenty years later, I am still doing it and it works.

So, book three is going to be about this. Getting back to our center, finding our sense of self, and forming relationships through being authentic humans who are allowed to be vulnerable and unscripted. I literally just started writing yesterday, and as you know, what you think a book will be when beginning versus what it actually becomes are two different things. However, I am excited by this journey and what stories I will tell. 

I think what excites me the most is that last year I turned forty and released this book that contained all of my fears and uncertainties. Writing about them, taking five years to spend time with the chapters has allowed me to enter into a new plane for the first time in my life where I am not living in fear, but instead I am living life with curiosity and confidence in self. 

AB: Since we are talking about fear and difficult subjects, could we talk briefly about a subject you write candidly about? I found myself really thinking a lot about the relationship with queerness and eating disorders.

I think eating disorders are really common in the queer community because so much pressure is put on the body, even if you are cisgendered. I think that we don’t talk so much about that aspect of queerness, and I found that part of your book to be a place where I really connected.

RS: Since I’ve been sick, I spend a great deal of time thinking about eating disorders and how we can help people heal. This past year I’ve dived even deeper into this both through therapy and also through reiki. Last week I had a reiki session and it so happened she picked up on my desire to understand the deeper roots of my own ED and my desire to heal. While her hands were over my solar plexus (where we store sense of self) she mentioned that something happened to me around 18 months to 2 years of age with both my parents. 18 months to 2 years of age is when children start to see gender and have a sense of their own gender. My sense of self was invalidated at that time by my parents and it continued to be stifled as I aged. My healer also said my eating disorder wasn’t about control, but about acceptance and love. I think for many queer people, we do not feel like we can speak our truths, we then question our sense of self because other people are not accepting or loving of us. Our eating disorders are a way for us to escape from what we truly feel inside. There is something deeper here that I am on the brink of being able to speak to, I can’t wait for when that happens.  

AB: That’s really interesting. I like the perspective that EDs can be about acceptance and love more so than about control. That gives me a lot to think about. I only have one more question for you. What art/literature/person/movement etc. is inspiring you most right now?

RS: Things that are inspiring me most right now are—listening to the musician Jose Gonzalez, learning the craft of raising, shaping and moving bonsai trees, not watching TV and not being on social media, but instead, spending time with people or spending time alone where I can then get lost in my thoughts. I guess, I am moving into a transformational movement where I am staying centered and finding music, people, hobbies that keep me there. It is amazing!

I cannot stress enough the importance of getting offline. It keeps us constantly outside of ourselves and what is surrounding us.

AB: I love that! I hope to raise a bonsai someday, I can’t keep my easy plants alive though. Thank you again for chatting with me. Your work inspires me and I can’t wait for the debut of your next book.

 

Courtesy of Ryan Sallans

Ryan Sallans is a renowned transgender speaker and author specializing in health care, campus inclusion and workplace issues impacting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) community. Since 2005, Ryan has been inspiring individuals around the world through the programming that he offers. His work as a speaker is rooted in storytelling and branches out to interlace personal stories with research and data focused on creating inclusive environments for LGBTQ individuals, employees and patients. He is hosted as a keynote speaker across the country for conferences and diversity and inclusion events highlighting finding similarities through our differences. Ryan also serves as the Lead Subject Matter Expert and script writer for e-learning courses used around the nation to train healthcare professionals and staff seeking continuing education around serving the LGBTQ community. These courses are now part of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Healthcare Equality Index (HEI). 

Ryan’s memoir Second Son: Transitioning Toward My Destiny, Love and Life is one of a few books detailing the life and transition of a transgender man. Second Son has been noted as required reading in Mary Karr’s 2015 New York Times Bestselling book The Art of Memoir. 

You can learn more about Ryan on his website. | You can buy his books here.

Mice-troes: A Review of “The Life and Times of Ward Kimball: Maverick of Disney Animation”

By James Earp

Walt Disney was what used to be referred to as a “walk-around manager.” Old timers often spoke about the vague disquiet that arose upon settling in at their animation tables first thing in the morning to find little squeans of cigarette ash on random surfaces (desks, credenzas, file cabinets)—an unmistakable sign that the boss had swung by afterhours to look over your recent output. His ability to manage the intimidating stable of talent he had assembled was key to Disney’s achievement.

The Life and Times of Ward Kimball: Maverick of Disney Animation (University Press of Mississippi), Todd James Pierce’s new biography of the animator, railroad enthusiast, and jazz trombonist, is the first in a projected series of extensive, self-contained biographies of each of the “nine old men” (Les, Marc, Ollie, Milt, Ward, Eric, John, Frank, and Wolfgang), the core group of artists who, under the supervision of their complex, restless boss, laid the foundations for what would become the most formidable entertainment behemoth of the 21st century. 

A professor of literature at Cal Poly and boasting a hefty catalogue of publications in his own right, Pierce has set himself a daunting task even for someone practiced in Disneyana studies. Here’s hoping he gets whatever grants and sabbaticals he’ll need to complete it; the professional and personal interplay among this cast of vivid, formidably skilled and preternaturally talented, inveterately interesting characters at that point in American History is a tantalizing prospect. The whole shebang, woven together through nine volumes, could add a new dimension to our understanding of the tumultuous dawn and maturation of the Disney organization, and a unique perspective on the nexus of commerce and national identity through four of the country’s most transformative decades.

Courtesy of Uni. Press of Mississippi

In straightforward, objective prose, Pierce reconstructs the emergent America in which Kimball was born, grew up, and, through unsurpassed mastery of his pencil yoked to a delicate balance of subservience and friendship, ascended to a position of influence with one of the 20th century’s most powerful influencers. While he documents Kimball’s life and times panoramically, Pierce shows keen appreciation of Kimball’s very complex art, generally focusing on the development of creative solutions to technical and aesthetic problems. Pierce’s book also presents a finely drawn, lucid account of the inner workings of the Disney organization—its complex hierarchy, its stew of comradery, rivalry, friendships, antagonisms, alliances, exhilaration, malcontent, and the incessant, pervasive internecine warfare within its walls—all of it agreeably devoid of pixie dust.

However effectively these men worked as a unit, they remained individuals, each in his own way brilliant, supremely talented, imaginative, insecure, whimsical, cranky, egotistic, inquisitive, all of them inveterately hard-working—and Ward Kimball was as individual as they got.

Bruce and Mary Kimball of Minneapolis were struggling when Ward was born in 1914, a struggle that continued with the arrivals of Ward’s sister and a younger brother. Bruce’s dreams of becoming an attorney or inventor had withered by the time Ward made his appearance, and after an eclectic series of jobs (manager of an indoor swimming pool, donut maker) he had become an itinerate Midwestern territory salesman for the National Cash Register Company. Prosperity remained elusive, and one nine-below-zero morning in Parsons, Kansas, Bruce declared his intention to move the family to California. There, Ward’s natural talents, encouraged early on by his family, found fertile ground for cultivation in Southern California schools, culminating in his enrollment in the Santa Barbara School for the Arts. 

Most of the faculty at Santa Barbara held Hollywood, in contempt as collaborative and therefore antithetical to the aims and purposes of a serious artist—an easy opinion to hold from a secure faculty chair. Their thinking was nonetheless in line with that of Kimball, who still entertained ambitions of becoming a fine artist. The purist position was at length undermined, however, by Kimball’s observations during his tenure as leader of a children’s band that assembled for weekly gatherings of the Mickey Mouse club at the Fox Arlington Theatre, where songs were sung and animated cartoons were screened. Watching pictures like The Three Little Pigs and Father Noah’s Ark, enthralled, while yet holding tenuously to dreams of membership in the New York art establishment (probably as a painter of landscapes) Kimball began to perceive artistic ambitions at work in the cartoons (animal movement studies, interesting palette combinations in the service of narrative mood, other effective absorptions of technology) that seemed to have escaped his art school professors.

Out of school at the bottom of the depression, back home and wearying of side-eye from his father, Kimball happened on a Disney recruitment ad in Popular Mechanics calling for “trained male artists.” Desperate, he took his portfolio, uninvited, to the Hyperion Street studio; lucky, he was hired when he implored a secretary to have someone look at it, and that someone at hand turned out to be Walt. 

Starting in 1934 at the bottom-rung position of in-betweener, Kimball weathered the ferocious attrition rate among new hires owing to a myriad of hazards—the trial-by-fire sniping of ambitious colleagues; jealous, inconsistently competent supervisors; low wages, and the high standards of Disney and his most trusted lieutenants— until he graduated to assistant, then full animator. His first star turn was in Woodland Café (1937, an extravagant Cotton Club sendup with bugs), wherein he caricatured Cab Calloway as a jive band-leading grasshopper. He rapidly moved up to work Snow White (1937, Dwarfs), Pinocchio (1940, J. Cricket, whom Kimball is on record as having hated animating (“All those ovals!”), Dumbo (1941, Dumbo, Timothy, the wonderful if problematic crows), Fantasia (1940, Bacchus, Jacchus), and Cinderella (1950, mice Jaq and Gus; Lucifer the cat). Along the way, Kimball’s lofty artistic ambitions fell victim to the tremendous amount of fun he found himself having with his work. He also discovered that animation offered ever more available outlets for a sense of humor whose liveliness verged on the Promethean. 

The broad comedy perfected and liberally if deftly applied in the shorts had been relatively soft-pedaled in the features, but that changed during the upheavals of the early and mid-40’s. The domestic box office under-performance of Pinocchio and Fantasia (the European market for which was decimated by impending war) simultaneous with the traumatic animator’s strike of 1941 obliterated much of the comparative good will inside the animation division. As global conflict loomed, the United States War Department came calling with strong ideas about what a fine communications tool animation of such a high caliber could be, and surely Mr. Disney as a loyal American would be only too glad to place his staff and facilities at the service of armed forces education and morale, et cetera (Victory Through Air Power and others). 

These turns of fortune obliged Disney to adopt a stopgap roster of omnibus features consisting of what were essentially loosely packaged shorts (Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time) or live-action features enveloping a limited amount of animation (Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart). Compared to the meticulously planned, lavishly produced and technically innovative features of the thirties and early 1940’s, the new projects were cheaply produced on shortened production schedules (a result of lessons learned during the production of Dumbo, the studio’s first solid box-office success since Snow White), and the visual burden was shifted to the character animators. Kimball and his colleagues responded by delivering character work of unprecedented sophistication and virtuosity, but this approach brought with it new liabilities. Now Kimball’s disposition for extreme, antic comedy was given free rein, and the headlong rush from gag to gag became a company-wide aesthetic unto itself. More and more, narrative tended to be lost in beautifully executed but flailing stretches of slapstick choreography. This maelstrom of movement continued apace for the next ten years, securely ensconced by the time feature production resumed, with Peter Pan (1953; Kimball animated Captain Hook, among other Neverlanders) a case in point.

Another mostly unwelcome newfangle was an ill-conceived overreliance on the narrative crutch of voiceovers, performed with varying degrees of patronization and arch vocalization that sent any hint of subtext scampering for the undergrowth. Dinah Shore is pleasant enough in the “Bongo” half of Fun and Fancy Free (1947), and Nelson Eddy isn’t bad in his double duty as narrator and singing voice of “Willie, the Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met,” an odd, affecting little fable comprising one episode of Make Mine Music, in 1946 (Willie the Whale’s Pagliacci has to be seen to be believed, the climax of whose featured aria obliges the entire Metropolitan Opera audience to deploy umbrellas), and one of Kimball’s more idiosyncratic outings. Eddy and Shore are exceptions, though. Sterling Holloway, a delightful character actor whose familiar voice was apparently developed via a diet supplemented with talcum powder, renders what should be an entirely enchanting “Peter and the Wolf” (also Make Mine Music) all but unwatchable by way of a labored, bust-you-on-the-nose, listen-and-watch-while-I-tell-you-what-you’re-seeing script. True, Prokofiev provided narration for his composition, but we are left to wonder why no one considered that the shouldering of visualization duties by the studio might require paring down the Prokofiev script, rather than egregiously padding it. Worse is Bing Crosby, buh-buh-buh-booing with surpassing inappropriateness over “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad 1949), though he mercifully shuts up for Kimball’s suspenseful, hilarious pursuit of Ichabod Crane by the Headless Horseman. 

Kimball’s sensibilities are at their most untethered in the “Pecos Bill” segment of Melody Time (1948), which exemplifies both the heights and depths of the Disney aesthetic during this period. It relies heavily on voice narration provided by Roy Rogers, relegating the characters to pantomime (not that that’s a bad thing). This opens kinetic possibilities Kimball exploits brilliantly but, for all its precisely focused wit and energy, simply isn’t very funny. This shortcoming is compensated somewhat by the rambunctious beauty of its movement. Besides the exploits of the ur-cowpoke, the segment opens with a prologue, “Blue Shadows on the Trail,” sung by Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers—an affectionate, altogether charming ‘toon dream of the desert at night that by itself mitigates the more cloying aspects of Melody Time. 

Walt’s interest in animation flagged (though it, of course, never died) following the strikes and commandeering of the 40’s, and the old enthusiasm was redirected to the development of amusement parks. This too was at least in part to Kimball’s influence. Once his livelihood seemed established, Kimball had accoutered his back yard in San Gabriel with a full-sized, painstakingly restored and fully operational steam locomotive, run on 500 feet of track laid across three scrubby acres. Kimball had infected both Ollie Johnson and Disney with the train bug, and as the contagion spread, model railroads had gradually become a feature of the animation facility, followed by trains of various configurations routed to service as a prominent feature of the park.

With a new vision of the films and soon, television as a synchronous component of marketing for Disneyland, the features were no longer priorities (though windfalls such as the True-Life Adventures happened along from time to time), but there was still enough work that Kimball and the other members of the nine were kept busy, even if absent the prestige of the earlier films. Most of the nine made the transition to television with varying degrees of satisfaction, but Kimball found ample acreage to cultivate new, ever more exotic produce. Confronting the unpleasant specter of “limited animation” arising from some of the new facilities arising from the ashes left by the strike, he produced and directed an imaginative documentary on music, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (1953), winning, coincidentally, the Academy Award for animated short that year, and with which Walt was so taken that he told Kimball not to do anything like it again. The tide of limitation was inexorable, though, and ultimately even Walt was forced, if not to embrace the new style, then at least to tolerate it. Kimball managed a few more excursions along limited lines; the last of these, It’s Tough to be a Bird, (1969), won another Oscar. 

He did a lot of work as well on Disneyland, the weekly electronic brochure for the park airing Sunday nights on ABC, most of it in the form of freewheeling documentaries now usually categorized under the heading “infotainment.” They’re mostly enjoyable, and a few of them are downright startling. Werner Von Braun was persuaded to appear, explaining salient aspects of what was then known about space travel for a couple of installments of the “space trilogy,” light, larky reportage on nascent American efforts toward space exploration. The last of these, “Mars and Beyond” includes a brief segment speculating on alien life, exhibiting “what-if” specimens of mixed-media animated Martian fauna. Some of these are as coldly creepy as anything that has slithered across the screen since Alien. Kimball also has the distinction of having made the only animated film independently produced by a member of the nine. Escalation is a savage, phallic take down of Lyndon Johnson and his adventure in Vietnam. Walt, laid to rest two years previous, would not have approved.

The ability to attract talented artists, cultivate their impressive stores of raw talent (talent invariably attended by an at minimum proportionate ego), then to train them to a company culture and inspire loyalty—often underpaying them, sometimes egregiously, while simultaneously denying them any royalties to work whose durability was to prove as extraordinary as it is inarguable—is an ability which in Walter Elias Disney surpassed just about everybody since Charlemagne.

Kimball survived and for the most part thrived during a lifelong career in the Disney organization despite marked tendencies toward iconoclasm and overt egalitarian sympathies. Walt Disney wasn’t blind to these characteristics; indeed it was his clarity of vision that protected Kimball, whose expertise was so unquestionable that his boss tolerated his idiosyncrasies in a shop about which Walt had a habit of bragging that he himself could not have held a job.

Bravo, Dr. Pierce. Well done! Only eight more to go. Get cracking.

The Life and Times of Ward Kimball: Maverick of Disney Animation
By Todd James Pierce
University Press of Mississippi
312 pages
$30

A Review of “Healing Las Vegas”

Cover image for Healing Las Vegas (2019), a book of photos and oral histories collected by UNLV about the 1 October and the subsequent creation of the Healing Garden in Downtown Las Vegas.
Courtesy of University of Nevada Press

By Veronica Klash

What makes someone a Las Vegan? Is it the first time you correct people when they mispronounce Nevada? Is it being one of the first to discover the hot new spot on Spring Mountain Road? Is it getting choked up when you hear the Killers perform their rendition of “Home Means Nevada”? Or is it picking up a stranger who has been shot while attending a music festival and driving them to the hospital? Then going back to the scene and picking up another stranger and another one and another one until the blackness of night is broken by the oranges and pinks of morning?

“1 October” (as the tragedy is called within the city by officials and media outlets) put Las Vegas in the national conversation in a new and horrible way. It also changed the conversations people were having here. Suddenly the terms “transient town” and “starter city” were replaced with “Vegas Strong,” with neighbors lining up for hours to give blood on Oct. 2. And a community garden was planted in the span of a week. The new book Healing Las Vegas: The Las Vegas Community Healing Garden in Response to the 1 October Tragedy (University of Nevada Press) tells the story of that garden, how it came to be, its purpose, and its continued mission.

The format is a literary collage of essays, images, poetry, and dialogue. In the first section, the reader is granted a behind-the-scenes look at the garden’s creation. There’s also an introduction to the people who conjured an ameliorating public space based on a napkin sketch in five days. People like co-creator Jay Pleggenkuhle, who realized that it was more important for the garden to simply exist, and quickly, rather than chase perfection.

In subsequent sections, the book explores how the garden seeded within the community ever-important remedies of hope, love, joy, life, and peace. Setting the stage for each chapter is a meditation of sorts written by UNLV and Get Outdoors Nevada (an outdoors advocacy nonprofit) staff. Teeming with resources, the book also devotes pages to practical tools for handling trauma at every stage and at every age. Claytee D. White, Director of the Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries, prefaces the Love chapter with the following:

“Love is commitment. Las Vegas worked passionately to nurture the world. Our client base—now our friendship base—is truly global. We all collaborated to make the world a better place for everyone. For a time, there was no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ There was just us—all of us as one.”

The book acts as a memory box, gathering and harboring the voices that are grieving—and grateful. It is the perfect extension of the garden, forged collectively to aid in a process that involves forward momentum yet allows for positive reflection on the damage done. Images of individuals kneeling in the dirt, hands deep in the hard work of building something new, are interspersed with close-ups of flowers saturated with color, and angelic mementos hanging from slim branches. This is a way to ferry home the emotional support provided by the garden, particularly for the many who were touched by 1 October, but don’t reside in Las Vegas.

In a quote from the Peace chapter, Joy Rineer, architect and supplier for the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center, summarizes what those who love this city have known for a long time and those who watched it from afar finally learned after 1 October.

We are a strong community. We are a small-knit community. We’re a community with incredibly deep roots and identity….We’re big and we’re little all at the same time. People see only the big. They see only the billboards….Yes we’re that. But we’re so much more; we’re this.

The reader can spend hours attempting to interpret exactly what Rineer is referring to when she says this, does she mean the garden? The strength to create it? The community that keeps it alive? In any case, the feeling is what comes across clearly here and in the text as a whole. It is an embrace meant to renew our energies and replenish our soul. It is the type of clasp that Las Vegas is not known for, yet, as this book showcases, our city offers it in spades.

Healing Las Vegas: The Las Vegas Community Healing Garden
in Response to the 1 October Tragedy
Edited by Stefani Evans and Donna A. McAleer
University of Nevada Press | 104 pages | $19.99

Courtesy of University of Nevada Press
Courtesy of University of Nevada Press

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello, Dark Holidays…

How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?
–On Beauty, by Zadie Smith

Merry and bright? Or dark and dismal? Depending on how you holiday, we have you in mind this season with an entirely new zine.

We’re spiking the eggnog to introduce spiced realism and bittersweet fantasy to this problematic season. We’re lighting a bright candle of truth in the frosted darkness of mass consumption and sleep-inducing turkey (if that’s your culture.) We’re drunk with metaphors, celebrating Winter Solstice with the inaugural publication of our fiction-exclusive Dark Holidays Zine.

You’re invited to join us by sending your holiday-themed short stories and flash fiction for review.
Considering that there are over 30 holidays celebrated by seven of the world’s major religions in these winter months, we are looking forward to a variety of interpretations on this theme. Your story can simply take place during this season, or center on a specific holiday event/idea, but before sending work be sure to consider the ways in which it interrogates the gloomier side of this time of year.

At least five of very best entries will appear on our new website in the month of December, with the small-run print zine appearing shortly thereafter. The submission period will be from November 22nd to November 29th (Black Friday) or until we reach a maximum number of submissions, so don’t delay!

We’re feeling the holiday spirit, so we are operating at a loss to bring you this issue; all submissions are free for this round. If you’re interested in a little more than just the standard interaction, you will notice we are also offering several options under “Payments”, one of which is to receive personal feedback from a Witness editor, and a guaranteed response by December 21st (solstice.) You do not need to select any of these options when submitting your work, but thank you for considering our hardworking volunteer editors and readers.

We look forward to reading your dark fiction!

A few things to note:

Please limit your submissions to one short story (up to 7,500 words), or three flash fiction entries (under 1,000 words each) in a single document upload.

Make sure to fill out the forms carefully and include the title(s) in the Title Box on the submission page.

Work should be double-spaced and set in a standard 12-point typeface.

Further information regarding payment and submissions can be found on our main Submittable page.

 

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Introducing the Spring 2019 issue of Witness: Disarm

The Spring 2019 issue of Witness is here!

Witness spring 2019
Featuring:

Fiction by Mark Budman, Miriam Cohen, Samar Fitzgerald, Jameelah Lang, Robert McBrearty, Lance Olsen, Jennifer Sears, Courtney Sender, Eric Severn, and Christine Vines

Poetry by Kazim Ali, Marina Blishteyn, Lauren Camp, Trace DePass, Ricardo Hernandez, Adrian Lurssen, and Gale Marie Thompson

Nonfiction by Amy Collini, David Mura, and Richard Prins

Introducing the winners of the inaugural Witness Literary Awards:

Fiction– Jane Pek (1st place) and John Tait (Runner up)
Poetry– Sophia Stid (1st place) and Renia White (Runner up)

Subscribe here!

Announcing the winners of the 2019 Witness Literary Awards

The editors of Witness are pleased to announce the winners and runners-up of the first Witness Literary Awards in Fiction and Poetry.

Poetry judge Hanif Abdurraqib has selected Sophia Stid’s poem “Apophatic Ghazal” as the first-place winner and Renia White’s poem “lump” as the runner-up.

Fiction judge Lesley Nneka Arimah has selected Jane Pek’s story “The Nine-Tailed Fox Explains” as the first-place winner and John Tait’s story “The Kristian Vang Fan Club” as the runner-up.

Winners and runners-up will be published in the spring 2019 issue of Witness.

About the winners:

Sophia Stid is a writer from California. Currently in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, she has received fellowships from the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets and Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is the winner of the 2017 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers. Her poems can be found in Image, Beloit, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.

Jane Pek is originally from Singapore and now lives in New York. Her work has appeared in the Brooklyn Review, where it was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She holds a BA from Yale University, where she received the Meeker Freshman Prize for Poetry, and an MFA (Fiction) from Brooklyn College, where she received the Lainoff Prize and the Himan Brown Award for Creative Writing. She is currently working on a novel about an unusual detective agency and the algorithm-aided quest for contemporary love.

About the runners-up:

Renia White is a poet from the east coast. She earned her BA from Howard University and her MFA from Cornell University. She’s taught writing of different forms, has received awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and Sonora Review, and has been a finalist for the 1/2 K Prize, the Mary C. Mohr Award, the Pocataligo Prize, and other honors. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, Prelude, Tahoma Literary Review, Slice, Ruminate, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City.

John Tait’s stories have appeared in journals such as TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Fiction, Prairie Schooner, and The Sun and have been anthologized in The Crazyhorse 50th Anniversary Issue and New Stories from the Southwest. His work has won four national awards including the Tobias Wolff Award and the H.E. Francis Award for Fiction. He is an Associate Professor of fiction writing at the University of North Texas.

Contest Finalists

POETRY

Jody Chan, “last summer”
Trace DePass, “[requiem] for colored boys who have considered jumping off the Brooklyn
Bridge & into an eternal wave of depression when Mick Jenkins ‘Waters’ Mixtape wasn’t enough”
Teresa Dzieglewicz, “There are no police in this poem”
Benjamin Grossberg, “In the Days Before Sumter”
Geetha Iyer, “Meaningful Symbols Placed in Meaningful Places”
David Koehn, “Delta 18”
Matthew MacFarland, “Poem I Cannot Title”
Meghann Plunkett, “Beyond Nature”
Sasha Mariel Prevost, “The Survey Asks Have You Ever Been A Victim of Intimate Partner Violence?“

FICTION

Brian Clark, “St. Claire”
Dewaine Farria, “There is No Morality Outside the Tribe”
Rickey Fayne, “Now and Then”
Michael Kaplan, “Auditioning for Touch”
LaTanya McQueen, “What We Lost”
Shubha Sunder, “Final Exam”
Leah Velez, “Sink Lady”
John Van Kirk, “Missing and Presumed Dead”

Thank you to our judges, congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all who submitted work; we received many more submissions than anticipated, and spent time with so many excellent stories and poems, making this year’s selection process very difficult! We look forward to reading your work for the 2020 contest, which will open for submissions in August.

Witness Launches Annual Literary Awards in Fiction and Poetry

The editors of Witness are pleased to announce that we are open for submissions to the first annual Witness Literary Awards in Fiction and Poetry.

Submissions to our 2019 contest will be open from August 15 through October 1.
*Note: Contest deadline has been extended to October 7*
One winner in each genre receives $500 and publication in Witness. Runners-up receive $250 and publication in Witness. All contest entries will be considered for publication.

The judges for our inaugural contest are 2018-2019 Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellows Hanif Abdurraqib (poetry) and Lesley Nneka Arimah (fiction).

About the judges:

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems The Crown Ain’t Worth Much was released by Button Poetry in 2016, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released to critical acclaim in November 2017 by Two Dollar Radio. His next projects are Go Ahead In The Rain, a book on A Tribe Called Quest due out in 2019 by University of Texas Press, and They Don’t Dance No Mo’, due out from Random House in 2020.

Lesley Nneka Arimah was born in the UK and grew up in Nigeria and wherever else her father was stationed for work. She has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award and the Caine Prize, and a winner of the African Commonwealth Short Story Prize and an O. Henry Award, and other honors. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, GRANTA and has received support from The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, and MacDowell, among others. She was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 and her debut collection What It Means When a Man Falls From The Sky won the 2017 Kirkus Prize. She lives in Minneapolis and is working on a novel about you.

For contest guidelines, and to submit your work, please click here:

 

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