Slice Magazine Offers Writers (and Beer) on Tap

By Nick Fuller Googins

Brooklyn, NY, Sept. 6, 2014

It’s Saturday night at powerHouse Arena (a bookstore/events space in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood) and the free beer has run out. What’s striking is that this doesn’t seem to faze anyone. Okay, a few people complain, but they’re probably the ones who arrived late. The rest of us mingling beneath the chandelier glow are taking the beer shortage in stride.

In the House: an appreciative audience

Slice magazine’s “Writers on Tap” billed itself as “a reading for discovering new voices and drinking good beer,” and it served as an interlude of sorts to the weekend-long Slice Literary Writers’ Conference. Slice, based in Brooklyn, publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and interviews in a sleek, sexy magazine. According to co-founder Maria Gagliano, who introduced the night’s reading, Slice places a special emphasis on bridging the gap between emerging and established writers, with each issue featuring both well known and up-and-coming authors. The Slice Literary Writers’ Conference, held at St. Francis College in downtown Brooklyn on Sept. 6-7, kept true to this same focus, offering emerging writers the opportunity to meet with agents, attend workshops, and hear from a wide array of literary voices. Many of us here at powerHouse had come straight from the conference.

Earlier that day, we’d heard Tin House editor Rob Spillman, speaking at a panel entitled “The Secret Lives of Literary Magazines,” warn against what he called “Doogie Howser Syndrome,” or the predilection of some beginning writers to tack on an ending that tells the reader everything the previous fifteen pages of the story have already shown. At another panel, “It’s About Me…But It’s Also About You: Writing Nonfiction that Connects with Readers,” Dani Shapiro, author of Still Writing, told us, “Memory is an act of imagination.” During a session on revision, Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls, had this to say: “Anyone who says they write without editing is either full of shit or not a writer…or a genius.”

The “Writers on Tap” reading that evening showcased the work of five writers handpicked by editors from Slice, A Public Space, One Teen Story, and Henry Holt & Co. Included in this bunch were authors Kseniya Melnik and Justin Taylor, both of whom released story collections this year, Melnik with her debut collection, Snow in May (Henry Holt & Co.) and Taylor with Flings (Harper), his second book of stories.

Busy man: Justin Taylor reads from Flings

Celia Johnson, co-founder of Slice, introduced Taylor, describing Flings as “a wonderful ensemble of matters of the heart,” a collection filled with “grief, lust, and falling in-and-out-of-love” that “takes you everywhere, from Oregon to Hong Kong.” Taylor, who later confided that he’d done five Flings readings in the past couple of weeks, took to the podium and said he needed a break from the collection. Instead he read from a thick sheaf of papers, a section of his novel-in-progress about a former child actor who’s leveraged his faded glory into part ownership of a bar—one that he himself patronizes often, especially if a certain female bartender is on duty. Of the former actor: “He liked to sit at the bar and let his longing run away with itself,” and he “assumed that all girls knew all things and modified his behavior accordingly.” If the audience’s reaction offered Taylor some focus-group-like insight as to the response his completed novel may elicit, he can anticipate having to include plenty of pauses for laughter at future readings. But that assumes he’ll have time for pauses.

Justin Taylor is a busy man. In addition to being on tour for his third book, working on his fourth, and teaching at more than one university, he is currently writing a review for Bookforum on Denis Johnson’s new novel, The Laughing Monsters. In preparation, Taylor explained that he’d been reading much of Johnson’s backlist, including his plays.

“Denis Johnson writes plays?” I asked.

Taylor reached into his bag, pulled out Soul of a Whore and Purvis and flipped through, exclaiming with no small degree of admiration that Denis Johnson not only writes plays but he writes them in verse.

Not so La-Z: Kseniya Melnik reads from Snow in May

Sarah Bowlin, editor at Henry Holt, introduced Kseniya Melnik, praising her writing for its ability to “reveal something cutting very easily and something emotional very slyly,” as well as possessing a “human quality that transports you.” Transport us it did, all the way back to Post-War Russia, where much of Melnik’s linked collection is set. She read from “Strawberry Lipstick,” a story that begins with heart-broken Olya, who “lay in bed between her younger sister, Dasha, and her older sister, Zoya, feeling that, at eighteen, her life was over. For what was life without love? A never-ending shift at a factory assembly line.” Bittersweet, cutting and emotional, the tone seemed to instantly and precisely evoke that of a love-sick teenager living through a Soviet winter.

Melnik admitted she enjoys writing stories about snowy places. It comes as little surprise because she grew up in Russia, moved to Alaska at age fifteen, and went to school in upstate New York. Currently she resides and writes in El Paso where it does in fact snow on occasion, though not often and not in recent memory. A word Melnik uses to describe the place is “sweltering.” The incongruity of writing much of Snow in May while living a few football fields from the Mexican border is so delicious that Melnik must be sick of people mentioning it. So I didn’t. But I had to wonder how she coped with such contrast. What was her secret?

The next day, Melnick answered my unasked question while participating in a panel entitled, “Literary Quirks,” when she said, “I cannot write at a desk. I write in a La-Z-Boy. I trick myself to think I’m relaxed.” If that helped her write so sharply about life in snowy Russia while living in El Paso, then that must be one hell of a La-Z-Boy.

Photos courtesy of Slice magazine and © Maria Gagliano

Kseniya Melnik's Competing Passion

In the fourth in a series of posts on 2014 books entered for The Story Prize, Kseniya Melnik, author of Snow in May (Henry Holt and Company) talks about how she gets unstuck and where she finds inspiration.

If you weren't a writer, what would you be doing?

I think I would be a medical doctor or a therapist. I was seriously interested in both professions when I was younger; both have caring and storytelling aspects to them. My grandmother was a doctor, and I worked at her clinic one summer and spent much time hanging out with the doctors. I was fascinated by medical gadgets, scalpels, and other surgical instruments. (The main character in my story “Summer Medicine” shares this early interest of mine.) I took premedical classes in college and afterward and volunteered at the emergency room at a Brooklyn hospital. Writing, of course, was the competing passion, and I felt like I wouldn’t be able to devote enough time and attention to it if I were to be a good doctor, too. I admire writer-doctors: Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Conan Doyle, Janusz Korczak, Chris Adrian, and many others.

Do you ever borrow characters or situations from real life, and has anyone ever confronted you about it, been angry or pleased?

For Snow in May, I borrowed several situations from life and then developed them in new directions. These premises often come prepackaged with the main players, and I had to decide whether to substitute them with completely fictional creations or model the characters on the people. I found that sticking too closely to real life details froze my imagination; I felt pressure to tell "the true story," which is impossible anyway. I prefer to pick one or two psychological and physical traits that are most interesting to me in the real person and fill in with my imagination from there. So far only my family members have recognized facets of their lives in the book, but they knew I was using some biographical material. They are pleased that I'm interested in telling their stories. 

What's the best story idea you've had that you've never been able to write to your satisfaction?

I don't know whether it's the best idea I've ever had—in fact, it might’ve been the worst one—but for a while I was really excited about a story in which a girl begins dating the Devil in New York City. My Devil was a sort of exhausted, jaded Wall Street banker type who made deals with singularly ambitious people. It was a bit burdened by description of the mechanics of these deals and explanations of how various celebrities throughout history were connected to the Devil: Caesar, Lincoln, Bonnie and Clyde, Marilyn Monroe, Hitler, etc. I could never quite figure out why the Devil would be interested in my girl-next-door character, though, aside from the fact that maybe he needed someone to take care of him, to offer him a safe haven for respite from his difficult career. 

Where do you do most of your work?

I’ve written at office desks, in libraries and coffee shops, on planes and subways, on a ferry sailing through Alaskan and Canadian waters, and even in a car on cross-country trips. Ideally, I prefer to be alone and in a more relaxed environment, so that I can fool myself into thinking that writing is not hard work. Right now I work at home in El Paso, Texas; my love seat stands by the window from where I can see the Mexican border. I place the computer or a book on a lap desk. With a cup of coffee and my purring cat wedged between me and the computer, it's quite perfect.

What do you do when you're stuck or have "writer's block"?

I read! I have gotten the majority of my breakthroughs while reading, and I believe that most craft issues can be solved by reading a writer who does excellently whatever gives you difficulty. If you have spent enough time on the story, your brain will continue to work on it subconsciously while you do other things. Reading often engenders surprising connections, so does going for a walk or a run while listening to music that you relate to the story in some way.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Keep writing, keep revising, keep reading, and keep believing in your story and the importance of telling it.

What else (beyond books and writing) informs or inspires your work?

All kinds of other arts: music, dance, painting and sculpture, film, photographs. Snowy and rainy weather always puts me in the mood for daydreaming. Looking at (not in—that would be creepy!) lit-up windows at night and imagining what kind of people might live in those houses, what kinds of lives they might lead.