Category: Publishing Industry

Letter From the Editor on Issue 3

12/1/2020

Inverted Syntax Issue 3 | November 2020 Cover Art "Earth-like" by Violet Mitchell

Dear Reader,

We hope you are staying safe and finding ways to replenish your spirits. Here at Inverted Syntax we have been busy in continuing to work towards addressing our publishing practices. We wanted to send a progress report in September but we got caught up preparing our print Issue 3 for you, which by the way is now available for preorder.

Before we get to our practices, here's a quick peek into Issue 3. In this print issue, we bring to you, dear reader, the embodied and disembodied, the self and absence of self: self as a place, as a thing, as the missing, as a life, as the dead. When we were accepting pieces for publication we must have been connecting with those themes because we found ourselves shocked by the number of narratives that centered around grief, self, and language. It was clear that we wanted to bring them together because we wanted to be whole, because all the topics, from grief, to sex, to language were the disembodied self seeking a way to make itself whole again. We saw ourselves, the editorial team, in these pieces, and we leaned into each, bringing with us our own sadness and joys, despair and hopes.

It almost feels as though we created Issue 3 as therapy; as a community space to find solace in our shared joys and suffering; to be a space for readers to find comfort in the shared grieving, in the experience of losing ourselves, or being robbed of our selves. As in past issues, Issue 3 speaks to our deepest subconscious desires about our mortality. We ask you to embrace this issue as a story you wrote — enter it and discover art as a map to the subconscious at work in your life. You’ll find that it is already in conversation with you, before you even open its pages, it connects you to an alternate space, where you will discover that you are not only reading this book, you are also in it — your voice, too, has been woven in and become the text and art.

I have said before that putting an issue together is about building a language for our readers — a way in which we seek to be understood, and it starts with the narrative. In my work as an editor of Inverted Syntax I know we are telling a story through the words, works, and people we choose to publish, and we here at Inverted Syntax have been actively seeking ways to revise and create a more inclusive narrative, reflective of many diverse voices and reflective of who we are as a literary magazine. Inverted Syntax's editorial board discovered that in 2020 we looked for submissions that were about more than just resisting conformity and complacency in style or form. More than anything, this year we sought work that turned us inside out and revealed something profound and often menacing about our shared human experience.

The murders and continued lynching of Black and Brown bodies have left us in revolt, feeling angered, raw, and at times, helpless and at a loss. In response, we decided this summer to begin bringing forth the change we wish to see in public by reviewing our own private actions, habits, and practices, and we shared with you our goals for improving our publishing practices in particular.

Our primary goal at the start of this summer was to do our part to actively tear at the vestiges of racism that permeates all aspects of society and end up seeping into our veins to become our implicit biases. As editor, I saw it as my role to begin an open discussion with the editorial team to find new ways to better attract writers from diverse backgrounds. I am conscious of my responsibility in this role — along with the editorial team and advisory board, and our writers, readers, and publishers — to take action in dismantling the systems of oppression by addressing the ways in which we have held implicit biases, and as a result, been complicit in these systems of oppression.

I put forth an examination of our publishing practices so all facets of our literary magazine mirror not only our humanity, but also our values as those who vehemently oppose racism and desire racial equity, and as those who seek to actively support ways to eradicate all traces of discrimination that persist and suppress human beings. I have been regularly asking my team questions about our publishing practices so as to hold ourselves accountable in the role we have played and in the spaces we have made and not made for Black, Indigenous, and all artists and writers of color.
We have since taken actionable steps to help us reform our publishing practices:

We surveyed our past submitters to help us learn the demographics of who sends us work, and to solicit feedback to help us improve both how we attract submitters and how we can continue to read blind, with a lens not predisposed to filter out racially diverse texts or writers.
We discovered that one of our publishing practices that affects who we publish was related to marketing: we had not been effective in reaching racially diverse communities. By engaging in more thoughtful and intentionally inclusive marketing, we have already successfully begun to build a racially diverse group of readers and submitters.We extended our Sublingua Prize for thirty more days, eliminated fees, and made it available only to those able to identify as BIPoC.
Through our contacts, we initiated discussions for partnerships with VONA, HBUCs, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and other organizations, inviting their writers and artists to apply to be readers, interns, and to submit work.
All Inverted Syntax editors and readers were asked to improve their understanding of the African-American experience and to that end, take a certificated COURSERA course through the University of Chicago that we hope helps us become better readers of multiracial texts. https://www.coursera.org/learn/race-cultural-diversity-american-life
Explore some of the resources I reviewed in my examination of institutionalized racism in publishing industry http://www.invertedsyntax.com/blog-full-site/resources-addressing-institutionalized-racism-in-publishing-practices

Currently, the publishing industry does not publish enough positive stories for young people about people of color by people of color. As a trained educator, I am aware that in early learning years, people can only continue to select and teach and introduce what the publishing industry continues to offer them: a limited shelf of books, all of which are of a single story. At Inverted Syntax, we want to take steps towards rectifying that. We have contemplated pursuing new ventures, like publishing chapbooks starting in 2022; however, we feel that if we want to do our part in effecting change in the publishing industry, we must target the specific places in which that change needs to happen. We will continue to report on our efforts.

With that, we are eager to present to you Inverted Syntax print Issue 3. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did reading, curating, editing, and assembling it. We hope it means as much to you as it does to us.
Stay safe and take care of yourselves.

Until next time, with love,

Nawal Nader-French

Special thanks to Editors, Yesica Mirambeaux and Jesica Davis for their help in editing this letter.

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An Intern’s Perspective: Meet the Mags Volume 2

4/30/2019

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by M. Bui

What happens when you put 12 publications, an array of zines and merch, and a bunch of lovers of literature all together in a cozy space with a bar and a stage? You get a room full of like-minded creatives and a festive feast of literature, complete with readings, drinks, and wonderful company with those who share in your love for language art and books. At least, that’s what I felt as I immersed myself in the scene at Meet the Mags Volume 2 in the heart of Denver a few weekends ago (yes, the specific evening happening to align with 4/20).

Never before had I felt so inclined to indulge myself in a literary world with many other like-minded people. The Meet the Mags event rounded up and featured 12 of Denver’s hottest independent lit mags at Syntax Physic Opera, offering an inviting space to chat, share, read, and listen to readings from the various publication there. Our very own Inverted Syntax was here featuring our latest print issue and later with a reading by none other than Kathy Fish (published in our print issue). This was the event to be at especially if you’ve been looking for a sampling of the literary scene here in Denver or simply to learn more about this hidden but rumbling culture of independently published literature.

The quaint and charming space of Syntax Physic Opera, found right along 554th and Broadway is the perfect spot for such an event. The warm lighting, artistic architecture, classy decor, and friendly bar with a vast selection cocktails and dishes helped make the music venue an enchanting literary haven. But it was those who filled the space that brought it to life: readers, writers, artists, lit lovers, fashion designers, coffee enthusiasts, and so much more, all with our loaded arsenal of zines, mags, merch, and more. From our numerous, varied backgrounds, everyone here came together to share in our common love of the literary culture.

I spent most of my time perusing each publication and thoroughly enjoying meeting with the people behind the scenes, learning about each publication and about the editors themselves. We chatted about everything from our magazines’ visions to the peculiar printing presses we use to the day jobs we find ourselves in when we’re not creating art. Typically, when we read published work, we sometimes forget about the hard work involved in the process of putting out a print issue; we may forget that there are minds and hearts behind those words and art, so it was a refreshing opportunity for me to be able to interact with other people behind the scenes of independent publications.

Raw Fury

Punch Drunk Press

Stain'd

Attending this event was a wonderful way to wrap up my semester long internship at Inverted Syntax. The community, creativity, and passion that filled the venue that 4/20 evening was truly a treasure for any resident of the literary world--I’m already looking forward to Volume 3 of Meet the Mags. I left the venue with an armful of zines, cards, and merch, and a brain full of artistic inspiration.

All previous photos by M. Bui

Interns and Nawal discuss Inverted Syntax with interested readers.

Kathy Fish and Nawal Nader-French

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Coloring Outside the Lines: Why We Must Break the Rules of Genre and Create Hybrid Forms

6/12/2018

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By Nawal Nader-French

When I think of genre, I think of a color-by-numbers coloring sheet. I think of borders that are imposed to contain identities, whether that be an association to a country, a religion, or a culture. I, for one, was raised Catholic by a Maronite Catholic father and a Ghanaian-Lebanese mother who went to Catholic boarding school. My mother was exposed to the beliefs of her Asante heritage, and her father was a Lebanese Muslim and her mother was a Ghanaian Protestant. That meant I had relatives who were practicing Catholics, Muslims and Protestants. It meant for my mother, designing a faith for herself that made room for all. Because of that, when it came to religion and faith, I had no borders or lines dividing the shapes on my coloring sheet. It meant I had no choice but to be human first, before being a race or a faith or a gender.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a mixed-race woman who doesn’t fit into one race that I find the idea of genre challenging. As a writer, I find myself sometimes adhering to publishers’ restrictions on length, form, content, and I want to write more and more for a world that publishers will not let exist. When determining what kind of journal Inverted Syntax should be, I found myself frustrated with the different genres we must impose on readers because we are all in this world of controlled categorizations. As readers, we have memorized frames of references and schemata that we draw upon to help us make sense of content and context within literary works, but that background information only makes sense within certain spheres, a limited group with similar experiences.

Genre restrictions also perpetuate the idea that because things tend not to be created to fit into multiple overlapping categories, human beings who are able to fit into multiple identities, whether by gender or race, are opposed by a world that struggles to accept them because they don’t have a designated genre space on “the bookshelf.”

The idea of genre in literature and the arts, like with the idea of borders, not only minimizes our humanity but also restricts creativity to a fixed system of comfortable patterns while trying to contain artistic impulses within the bordered spaces that is allotted for our creativity. Can creativity be restricted? What art can be produced in a world of genre restrictions? If we continue to adhere to these outdated writing and artistic rules, we will not transform our world but instead allow the corruption of our humanity.

Throughout history our world has changed because of hybrid thinkers, those with competencies in multiple areas: Da Vinci was an inventor and artist; Benjamin Franklin was a politician and a scientist. Genre categorizations become a bigger issue than simply whether a piece of writing is more poetry than prose, they become an affront to creativity, to invention and innovation, to humanity, to identities, and to the boundless possibilities that exist when hybridity is allowed to thrive. For some, genre categorization feels playful and safe as when one colors within the lines, but for many others, it is a suffering that restricts invention and creativity to imposed lines.

Much like borders, genres are a construct. And the publishing industry, much like politics and government, controls the lines and often rejects cross-categorization. In a world where bookshelves are structured around what is the most marketable, crossing genres creates a problem for the publisher.
But real life is not neatly composed to genre. Our lives are disjointed and disconnected. Sometimes I think in poetry, speak in prose and dream in fantasy, and I’m still learning how to write this voice. Hybridity thus is inevitable, because the act of writing and making art is an identity-making act. And when you bring yourself to literature and art, you arrive multifaceted, in broken and fractured parts. How can you not cross genres?

We break the genre rules so as to write ourselves, so as to write and paint across the genre coloring lines until there is no “genre” but instead a new space for brave new works.

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Inverted Syntax
Notes from the Editors

Letter From the Editor on Issue 3

An Intern’s Perspective: Meet the Mags Volume 2

Coloring Outside the Lines: Why We Must Break the Rules of Genre and Create Hybrid Forms

Archives

Categories

Inverted Syntax ​Notes from the Editors

Letter From the Editor on Issue 3

An Intern’s Perspective: Meet the Mags Volume 2

Coloring Outside the Lines: Why We Must Break the Rules of Genre and Create Hybrid Forms

Archives

Categories

Inverted Syntax
Notes from the Editors