Specter: A Tumblr

Minutiae from the curator of Specter, a literary website.

[onlyemilyacosta]

The Last Bookstore

Los Angeles, CA

[smashfizzle]

I was just here a week or so ago. It was my first visit. I hope it won’t be my last.

[mensah4000-deactivated20160520]

I can’t overstate the importance of the internet and having social media at my disposal. I can’t overstate its importance to Specter and to my writing career. Without it, it would’ve been much more difficult to build up a readership for both myself and for Specter, and more importantly, or maybe just as importantly, it would’ve been much more difficult to build up a support system of like-minded individuals: whether you write similarly to them or not, just having people around who understand the process…

A few months ago, NYC-based Late Night Library interviewed me about my writing life and Specter Magazine. This past week, the interview podcast was released. Check it out!

(via mensah4000)

[spectermagazine]

WHAT’S NEW IN 2015 FOR SPECTER

First and foremost, I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year! 2015 will mark four years since Specter first went live with Issue Zero. Over that period of time, this literary project has taken many shapes, and has been touched and innovated upon by many different people.  And one hopes that within four years, a publication gets better, becomes stronger, and continues to improve. I think Specter will do so and much more as we plan out 2015.

Over the summer, we regrettably saw the departure of Kameelah Rasheed, who helped shape Specter’s visual aesthetic and broadened our literary appeal with her in-depth writer interviews. Rion Scott and Brett E. Jenkins have been tremendous in developing the fiction and poetry “voices” for Specter, and as editorial advisors, they will continue to provide advice and assistance when needed.

So as we enter 2015, I have taken on full editorial responsibility for Specter, selecting the fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and artwork that is submitted to our queues. This transition, which has quietly occurred over the past four months, represents a huge shift for Specter. I’m forever thankful for everyone who has helped edit Specter, yet I’m excited and eager to take on this personal and professional challenge. I’m also happy to have on board three excellent readers for our fiction and poetry queues; Diamond Sharp, Jean-Luc Bouchard, and Tom Bardwell have been invaluable additions to our staff and I can’t thank them enough for the work they’ve done thus far.

We have a lot planned for Specter this year, including themed issues, the relaunch of our blog, the return of regular contributors, and more (perhaps a podcast or two). In the meantime, I’m looking forward to continuing to publish the kind of entertaining, provocative literature you’ve come to expect from Specter.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me or find me on Twitter.

Peace,

mensah demary, Editor

[bostonpoetryslam]

I don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.

Lucille Clifton, interviewed by Hilary Holladay for the Poetry Foundation (via amaalsdrifting)

[spectermagazine]

It was unfortunate that it took me so long to figure out all the broken pieces of the woman I married and how they had cemented into jagged spikes and edges that not even motherhood could change.

“How To Hide A Child” by Akwaeke Emezi, in the October issue of Specter. (via spectermagazine)

A pleasure to have published this, one of my favorite stories, for spectermagazine.

(via mensah4000)

[purposefulthoughts]

“I’m asked, what good is science fiction to Black people? What good is any form of literature to Black people? What good is science fiction’s thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking-whoever “everyone” happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people?”

Octavia Butler, “Positive Obsession,” Blood Child and Other Stories, pg 134-135. (via purposefulthoughts)

[medievalpoc]

I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.’

-Toni Morrison (via medievalpoc)

[spectermagazine]

To know that we African-Americans came here enslaved to work until we died but didn’t die, and instead grew up to become doctors and teachers, architects and presidents — how can these children not carry this history with them for those many moments when someone will attempt to make light of it, or want them to forget the depth and amazingness of their journey? How could I come from such a past and not know that I am on a mission, too?

"The Pain of the Watermelon Joke" by Jacqueline Woodson

[mysharona1987]

[mensah4000-deactivated20160520]

Open for Literary & Visual Art Submissions

Specter, my literary magazine/project/platform, is now open for submissions once again. Submit your poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art today! (or tomorrow if you’re busy today…whenever you like.)

Specter is a literary platform for women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. Specter publishes new art, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from writers often forced to the margins of literature. We feel the work we’ve published thus far best represents the type of submissions we want. Take some time to browse our archives. Then submit.

[spectermagazine]

Our November issue is now live, with new work by Anastasia Selby, Tom Connor, Junior Clemons, Darren Demaree, and Jenny Erwin.

[spectermagazine]

Our new issue for the month of July is now live. New poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by Nathan Knapp, Melissa Wiley, Dennis Bensie, Coop Lee, and Laura Miller.

[spectermagazine]

Specter, an online magazine of literature and art, is now accepting applications for a Social Media Editor. A senior editorial position, the Social Media Editor will be responsible for expanding Specter’s online reach and readership, evangelizing the Specter “brand”, and managing Specter’s social media presence via Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. This is an unpaid position (Specter is an all-volunteer publication). The candidate must be able to meet the following requirements: Specter Fan: hence, “evangelizing” the brand, whether you’ve read Specter since 2011 or recently found us online. Social Media Fan/Expert: Demonstrated experience with Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr is required. Loves Data: Experience with Google Analytics (site visits, unique visitors, engagement) and can interpret data to create action plans to expand readership and reach. Strategist: How can each platform be best used for Specter? How do other literary organizations use social media? And in what ways can Specter use social media more effectively to improve readership and engage relevant conversations? Plugged in: The ideal candidate is familiar with the indie/online literary scene as writer, editor, and/or reader. Candidate will look for advertising/cross-promotional opportunities for Specter. Empire State of Mind: Though Specter is an online publication, we consider ourselves “Brooklyn-based”(because it’s where our editor in chief resides). So it’s not required to live in Brooklyn or NYC in general, but...it’ll definitely be a plus if you do. Loves Video Chat: Must be able to attend our very infrequent staff meetings via Skype or Google Hangouts.

[spectermagazine]

Our new issue for the month of May is now live. New work by Jane Liddle, Jean-Luc Bouchard, Graham Shafer, Michael C. Keith, Jesse Myner, and Cortney Lamar Charleston.

This month, we feature an interview with Roxane Gay.

Artwork is provided by Kalen Na'il Roach.

[mocada-museum]

Early Octavia Butler stories coming out in June

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) A pair of recently discovered early stories by prize-winning science fiction author Octavia Butler will be coming out as an e-book in June.

Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher, announced Tuesday that “A Necessary Being” and “Childfinder” will be compiled in a single volume titled “Unexpected Stories” and will be released June 24. Walter Mosley, the best-selling crime writer, has contributed an introduction.

“’Unexpected Stories’ reveals the themes that would become Butler’s lexicon: the complicating mysteries we assign to power, race, and gender,” Mosley writes. “Reading these tales is like looking at a photograph of a child who you only knew as an adult. In her eyes you can see the woman that you came to know much later; a face, not yet fully formed, that contains the promise of something that is now a part of you; the welcomed surprise of recognition in innocent eyes.”

Butler, who died in 2006 at age 58, was one of the first black science fiction writers to receive mainstream attention and was known for such books as “Bloodchild and Other Stories” and the novel “Parable of the Sower.” She was inducted, posthumously, into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2010.

Butler’s literary agent, Merrilee Heifetz, found the stories, written in the early 1970s, among the author’s papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. According to Open Road, “A Necessary Being” tells of how the leaders of two ancient tribes “must broker a delicate peace to ensure that their peoples are to survive.” In “Childfinder,” a young woman “locates children with budding psionic powers and teaches them to protect themselves from society.”

[evelynnalfred-deactivated201608]

Happiness

[spectermagazine]

For the month of April, 2014: new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by Michael Estabrook, Holly Painter, Lex Bowbrow, Frederick Foote, and Fayroze Lutta.

An interview with writer Daniel José Older.

Artwork by Alain Marciano.

[mensah4000-deactivated20160520]

What attracted you to this field? What inspired you?

There was no one moment or source of inspiration. My parents—college-educated—didn’t instill in me a love of reading at an early age. I didn’t gravitate to books, and though I wrote one or two stories as a child, I never thought of “writer” as a thing I might want to do.

All of that is to say, the attraction to literature—editing and writing—has been a slow burn, of sorts. In my teens, I started writing terrible poetry, which became terrible short fiction. I read a book—“Things Fall Apart”—because I actually wanted to for a change…then I read another book, then another, and so on…

As for inspiration? These days, I want to write like Bolaño and Baldwin and Butler and Smith (Zadie). I want to publish a literary magazine of the same quality as Granta. I don’t want my work to be boring, a great fear of mine. I’m inspired by the writers doing their thing online, writing like their lives are coming to an end, dodging boredom with every syllable.