Writing from Zones of War

So it’s fall: government shutdowns, earthquakes, bombs in mosques, wars, drone strikes, whistleblower convictions. Here on the (US) East Coast, the sunlight grows longer and golder, leaves turn impossible colors and drift away, and the chilly morning air rouses us to writing projects we’re yet to complete.

Delphi completes four issues though–a whole year’s worth!–with this one, and it’s a very special issue dedicated to supporting change, peace, and rebuilding in the world. With much hope for the future, we present our milestone issue, marking a year’s existence of Delphi Quarterly: Volume 1, Issue 4, Fall 2013.

Please note, our summer and spring issues with their full sets of interviews–Summer, with Farah Ghuznavi and Sharbari Ahmed, Maureen Thorson, Steve Himmer, and Kathleen Rooney of Rose Metal Press; and Spring–with Tania Hershman, Gretchen Henderson, Minal Hijratwalla of Writing the Chakras workshop, and Dan Cafaro of Atticus Books–are archived in their completion and can be accessed via Recent Issues.

As also our entire Premiere issue which debuted in Jan 2013 with its stellar roster of interviews (Neil Shepard, Justin Sirois, Sarah Gorham of Sarabande Books, Rheea Mukherjee and Bhumika Anand of Bangalore Writers Workshop), fully archived under Recent Issues. Drop in anytime to read.

Volume I, Issue 4, Fall 2013

We are so pleased and proud to offer two editorial highlights this season, of a writer and a writing group both writing out of their experience of living under conditions of war, both working to raise funds and create awareness for special populations in dire need.

We would like to recognize and profile two of their fundraising efforts: Patricia Sarrafian Ward, who speaks with Co-Editor Dan Gutstein about growing up in and writing about war-torn Lebanon, is spearheading an online USAID-matched drive for Syrian children in camps through Save the Children; and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, whose directors chat  about writing one’s truth in the face of oppression and managing multiple writing salons across Afghanistan, is running a fundraiser this week in Washington, DC. We invite you to support their efforts.

As a bonus, we offer a special feature this issue profiling the innovative “non/fiction” of writer, blogger, university professor, literary journalist, and Delphi co-editor Dan Gutstein, whose interviews we’ve been pleased to present since Delphi’s start in January. He speaks with former student Jenn Alandy, an MFA candidate in Fiction, on a range of subjects from brevity in fiction, depth in characters, emotional anchors in stories, to his own take on Vonnegut’s manifesto–8 Things to Avoid in Stories!–superlative beer, and, of course, Welsh football!

Our Writer as Publisher feature is on hiatus this session. We’ll resume shortly!  Meanwhile, we hope you’ll stop and savor these rich and thought-provoking interviews, and sample too, our linked excerpts of their excellent work.

Patricia Sarrafian Ward was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and moved to the U.S. when she was eighteen. In addition to numerous journal publications and awards, her novel The Bullet Collection was published in 2003 and received the GLCA New Writers Award, the Anahid Literary Award and the Hala Maksoud Award for Outstanding Emerging Writers. In recent years, Ward has turned to book arts, making miniature books and dioramas exploring themes of wartime experience, depression, and the creative process that have been exhibited in numerous shows in the Boston area. Her installation “Re/Vision”, composed of book-objects made from the shreds of an unfinished novel, appeared in a solo show at Gallery 263 in Cambridge, Mass., and was a Featured Artist Project at the Center for Book Arts in NYC in 2012. Ward lives outside of Boston with her husband and child.

Dan Gutstein is the author of non/fiction (stories, Edge Books, 2010) and Bloodcoal & Honey (poems, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2011). His writing has appeared in more than 80 publications, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, American Scholar, The Iowa Review, Colorado Review, The Literary Review, TriQuarterly, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and Best American Poetry.

Lori Noack is Associate Director at the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP). In addition to serving on governing and cultural boards from local to state levels, her professional positions have included executive director of nationally recognized music festivals in Oregon and San Francisco, newspaper editor, founder of an arts management agency, university lecturer, and writing instructor. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing in 2009. She works to build AWWP’s North American team to ensure program excellence and enhance public awareness for the benefit of women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Susan Postlewaite is Editing Director at the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.  A journalist who has covered Cambodia and the Middle East for Business Week, the Asian Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and others, she has also taught journalism at universities in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and in India as a Knight International Press Fellow. She began her career with AP, then moved to the Miami Daily Business Review. She was an editor and writer at the Phnom Penh Post and later an AP correspondent on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. She co-authored “Losing Ground: Forced Evictions and Intimidation in Cambodia.”

About Delphi

As writers ourselves, the editors of Delphi Quarterly envision this journal as a diverse and inclusive space for conversations on craft with writers across genres—fiction, poetry, drama, film, ecological and creative non-fiction—and across levels of accomplishment.  These conversations will highlight a single published piece of writing, whether a book, poem, essay, play, film, or story.

We invite you to join us on these pages to become part of a global conversation on writing. We are especially interested in including writers who have published a great deal but not yet published a book, authors of texts on nature and the environment, and small-press authors and translators of prose and poetry whose books are lost to time­­­­­.

Writers Interviewing Writers

Delphi seeks to be a democratic venture and a space for many voices. We encourage writers to help spread the word about Delphi, as well as actively participate by interviewing deserving writers. Please see our Guidelines page for how to query us.

JOIN US!

As Delphi closes out 2013 with this our fourth quarter’s issue, and we expand our rubric to include documentary filmmakers, we invite writers, poets, playwrights, and filmmakers everywhere to join us–interview a fellow/sister writer or filmmaker, offer us insights into your writing workshops! We want to hear from you!