Between the Lines: Rosa del Duca

Rosa del Duca’s, “The Script,” can be found in the Winter 2012 edition of the CALYX Journal. I wanted to find out more about this engaging author and how her story took its shape. 

Rosa del Duca

Some people think that the military is not an ideal environment for fostering creativity. What was your experience in the military like in terms of the influence it had/has on your writing? Did you do much writing while you were active? How has your writing evolved since then?

I’d have to agree that the military is not an ideal environment for fostering creativity.  I wasn’t very creative while in the National Guard.  Part of it was because I was a full-time student and working part time in addition to drill.  And it was partly due to the fact that being a soldier, especially at first, is all about conforming, doing what you’re told, keeping your mouth shut, and playing by the rules. The rigidity bleeds over into civilian life.  I remember coming back to classes at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo a few days after completing my AIT job training.  For at least a week I couldn’t help but stand at parade rest when speaking to my professors, and answer all their questions with a “ma’am” or “sir.” It was automatic.

Writing was a passion of mine before I joined the Guard.  And once I got out and gained some much-needed distance, writing about my military experience was cathartic—still is cathartic.  I’m working on a full length Army memoir because I still feel this searing need to explain myself. It’s all wrapped up in the guilt and anger and shame I feel from joining at 17 and then declaring myself a conscientious objector four years later.

I don’t know that the military has influenced my writing.  It’s just given me a glimpse inside a culture that many Americans aren’t privy to. And because I feel like I was somewhat exploited, being held to a six-year contract when I was just 17, I feel like it’s my responsibility to inform other young people who are thinking about doing the same thing.  There was so much I didn’t know.  There was so much I wasn’t prepared for.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that I joined before 9/11, but another time like that will come.  Another 17 year old country girl will think the Guard is a responsible and mature way to pay for college.  She’ll think she has it all figured out.  I hope she waits a year or two or three before signing her name.

In “The Script”, as the men are being punished on the CAT 5 day, you say, “I didn’t want to be spared just because of my sex” ; in your military experience, did you find that you had to work harder as a woman to gain respect from your peers and authority figures?

There’s this strange dichotomy women in the military have to work out for themselves. How much do you want to be seen as a man, and how much as a woman? You are supposed to be seen as a man. Your uniform is exactly the same as a man’s, so you have the shape of a man. You are reprimanded for standing with one hip out or walking “like a girl.” Make-up and nail polish are banned.  Well, I’ve heard nail polish is allowed in earth tones, but I’ve only seen a few drill sergeants wear it. Displays of emotion are ridiculed. You are expected to imitate a man in every way, and when a hint of femininity slips out, try your best to cover it back up. Once, in the chow hall at boot camp, right before I’d dumped my tray, a drill sergeant blocked my way to the trash bins. He asked me if I was wearing lipstick. Of course I wasn’t, and told him so. He made me wipe my mouth with a napkin as proof and show him my clear chap stick before he would let me go.

It goes beyond just wanting you to be as physically and emotionally strong as a man. I can only assume the same motivation was behind the drill sergeants walking in the female barracks one day, examining all our faces, and then punishing those whose eyebrows looked like they had been plucked.

That’s what burns. The impression that any and all feminine traits are flaws to be corrected. Because you do want to be strong and impervious and equal, but you also want to feel accepted as a woman. And recognized as a woman. Recognized by the men you’re training with. So there’s this constant tight rope walk, this constant gauging and censoring and monitoring. While half of you wants to blend in, to pull your weight, to prove yourself as unemotional as the guys, half of you wants to reclaim your femininity, to still look pretty somehow, to flirt (after all, you are surrounded by hot, fit guys), and to feel justified in feeling and showing those feelings. You’re only human.

Tipping the balance either way can ruin you for the rest of the training cycle. Play it too tomboy, and the guys will see you as one of them, which can be thrilling and rewarding, but can also make you feel like shit when they crack comments like, “I don’t trust anything that can bleed for a week and not die.” Or when they start talking about the flavor of their girlfriends’ pussies or what girls from other platoons they’d like to fuck while you’re just standing there, staring at the ground, willing them to remember that you’re a woman. Play it too feminine, or get romantically involved, and you can be seen as a weak link, a stupid “chick,” or some kind of slut who deserves to be fantasized about by a group of guys.

Winter 2012 CALYX Journal

Do you have a particular creative process when it comes to writing fiction and creative nonfiction? Are those processes different from one another, and, if so, how?

Writing fiction is very different from writing nonfiction for me.  My Army story really is like this little animal, trying to claw its way out whenever I start a new essay.  To get inspired, I reread partial journals I kept while I was in the Guard.  I also have a stack of letters people wrote to me while I was away at training, copies of letters I wrote back, a few pictures, and a copy of my conscientious objector packet.  I like to let the weight of what I was feeling, (trapped, depressed, alone, disgusted, guilty, exhausted) settle back on to my shoulders.  It always works to inspire me to either write something new or revise something I’ve already started.  But it often leaves me in a funk and I don’t think I’m very fun to be around when I’m working on nonfiction.

Fiction is completely different.  I feel a huge sense of freedom, especially when I hit a rough spot. If something isn’t working, I can make plot/character/setting/theme changes much more easily.  And it’s liberating to make up all the details, or rely on research instead of racking my brain for scraps of memory.  Nonfiction feels confining comparatively, but then again, I’m more driven, focused and passionate when I write nonfiction because it’s so close and personal and raw.  Maybe it’s because of the safety of the fictional world that I tend to work on my novel and short stories more.  Hmmm, I should really do something about that.

Your biography says you are also a songwriter. How has music influenced your writing and vice versa? Who are some of your musical influences?

I’m influenced by a lot of the original folk musicians, including Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan, but the new wave of folk rockers too, including M. Ward, My Morning Jacket, Iron and Wine, The Dirty Projectors, and Bon Iver.

Some of my most favorite songs are songs that tell stories. For instance, Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.  And I’ve come to learn that I’m most satisfied with my songs that are driven by narrative. Whether it’s fully reflected in the lyrics or not, most of my songs are little stories in my head.

I started a band this past year called The Eiders. One of the songs on our demo is (in my head) the story of a political science major who goes to Madison Wisconsin in the spring of 2011 as some kind of aide to Governor Walker.  He arrives all idealistic and ready to be engaged and do great things, but as the protests escalate and the political stonewalling intensifies, he grows disillusioned. He ends up going back home and telling everyone little white lies about where he went, and what he was doing the past few months.

The story grew out of me sitting and thinking about the rhythm and tone and progression of the song.  Our lead guitar player usually makes up the music and I write to it. By soaking in the emotional undertone of the music, a story or idea usually buds. And then comes the hard part—choosing just a few words to convey the emotion of that story, and then matching a melody to those words to capture the right feel.

There’s a song on the demo that’s Army inspired too, about the Forth of July at Ft. Lee, Virginia. So I suppose even in songwriting I do a mix of fiction and nonfiction.  If you’d like to hear the songs you can find them at: http://theeiders.bandcamp.com/.

Do you have any words of wisdom for women who are looking to establish themselves as writers?

What a flattering question!  I don’t consider myself “established” yet, but this is what I’d suggest for writers looking for that first publication: Write, revise, share, revise, share, revise, edit, edit, edit, and then submit like crazy.  On a more practical note, something that really helped me when I was ready to start submitting to literary magazines was the Literary Database.  It’s basically a spreadsheet of hundreds of lit mags with some useful facts about each one.  For me, it was worth the small fee. Duotrope is a free online resource that works the same way.

***

Rosa del Duca is from Montana, but now lives in Northern California. She divides her time between teaching at San Jose State University, producing at NBC Bay Area, and writing fiction, non-fiction, and songs. Her work has been published in Cutbank, Grain, and River Teeth. Her creative non-fiction piece, “The Script,” is published in the Winter 2012 edition of CALYX.

Christina, Intern Extraordinaire

My Favorite Conversation at AWP (or “why I love submissions that make us snarl”)

If you couldn’t tell from our snarky twitter tags (#nooneputsbabyinthecorner), the CALYX table this year at AWP was on the polar icecap of planet book fair. Despite our distance from the hustle and bustle of the central corridors (or perhaps because of it) we still had a great turn-out at the table: authors stopping by to say hello, new writers who were unfamiliar with our journal, old friends, new readers. All of them were happy to chat about CALYX and hear about the new staff’s plan for the coming years.

My favorite experience meeting someone takes a bit of set-up to explain properly. It started on Thursday when I went to a great panel hosted by VIDA called “Troubling the Label: When Does a Text Become Feminist?” This panel addressed so many of the issues and questions that we talk about around the CALYX editorial table—how do we consider a piece of writing “feminist”?  Do we as gatekeepers/editors have the right to judge writing as feminist or not—or is that better left to our readers? How do labels like “art and literature by women” exclude gender-queer individuals?

One of the panelists brought up an interesting point—that journals must define themselves as feminist not only through the work they publish, but also through how they conduct themselves as an organization.

As a CALYX editor, this made me twitterpated with pride. Since 1976, we’ve been practicing collective, non-hierarchical decision-making. Rather than a top-down process with a famous guest editor or a graduate student round-up, CALYX reads its “slush pile” (is it okay that I cringe when I say that? even if work isn’t right for us, I hate to say that someone’s creative effort is like dirty snow) collaboratively—every piece of work that comes to the journal is looked at and voted on by two readers.

If the two readers feel that there’s promise in the work, the piece is held and sent to the editorial collective, a group of six editors from different ages, cultural and educational backgrounds, and aesthetic tastes (not exactly like this). We usually “hold” about 15% of all work received. Our editorial collective then reads—and discusses every piece. We argue, we debate, we stand up for our own unique taste and what moves us as readers—and we end up with a journal that speaks to many different women with tastes as diverse as ours.

One of our recent disagreements was over some poems from a young queer-identified writer. Half of the editors loved her work—found it funny, fresh, and sharply written. These poems didn’t resonate with the other editors. This split may have been a generational gap, it may have been an aesthetic disagreement, I’m not sure. We’re all taking more time to think about the poems and we’ll talk about them again next week.

And during AWP, this particular poet came to our table to introduce herself. I was so excited to meet her—not only because I have a crush on her poems, but because she put a human face on the whole controversy.

What it comes down to is that even if we decide (as a group) that her poems don’t fit with us, I’m grateful for the chance to have read her poems and for the conversations that she sparked. “Rejection” can be a hard word to swallow, but at CALYX it can be even more complicated. When editors agree that they must reach a fair consensus, sometimes writers fall victim to the compromises we make as a group. Sometimes we miss out on great work because we can’t make an agreement—but we always end up with a diverse group of writers and styles in the work that we do publish.

I love being an editor because I love reading. As senior editor (and the leader of the editorial posse), I’m especially excited when we get submissions that challenge our assumptions about what is art or poetry or what makes a story “good.” I love discussing work around the table that makes us snarl a little bit—if the writing forces us to have a meaty conversation, I can guarantee that it does the same for our readers.

-Rebecca Olson

Future Kicks: CALYX Journal makes the switch to electronic submissions

Paper, paper, paper...

Last week, the CALYX editors gathered around my kitchen table eating almonds while we discussed an important question: Should CALYX Journal switch to accepting electronic submissions through an online submission manager, or should we stick with the good ol’ fashioned SASE system?

Here are some of the questions that were on our mind as our discussion blossomed:

How will the change affect our accessibility to writers from diverse groups?

Despite the ever-growing influence of technology in our lives, many women today continue to lack regular access to the internet or may face circumstances which do not allow them to get online frequently. There are also many women who cannot afford the costs of postage, printing, and paper which our regular submission process requires. In order to be sensitive to both of these limitations (and therefore be accessible as a journal to more women), we have decided to remain open for both paper submissions and electronic submissions for the coming year.

How will electronic submissions influence the amount of submissions that we receive?

We anticipate that opening to electronic submissions will greatly increase the amount of work that we receive. In 2009, we received around 1200 submissions. Last year, it was down to 950. We’re hoping that accepting online submissions will turn this trend around and we’ll see work from many new writers–and many writers who have never submitted to us in the past.

How will electronic submissions affect us around the office?

Last year, our paper submissions process produced approximately 125 lbs of paper that are in boxes around our office (see photo). We’re hoping that moving to electronic subs will help us reduce clutter and paper waste. We’re also hoping that it will save us some time and speed up our response time back to our writers.

How will electronic submissions affect our reading process?

While the change will affect the way that our volunteer readers and editors literally read manuscripts (Retired Senior Editor Beverly McFarland loves to read out on her back porch in the sunshine), it will not affect the integrity of our decision-making process and the care with which our editors read each piece of writing. We will continue to practice collective decision-making and every submission will still be read by at least 2 different readers before it’s presented to the editorial collective.

Are we excited?

Yes, yes, yes. What a great change. We’re all on board, and we look forward to seeing your work in our system when we open for submissions on October 1.

Read our editorial guidelines and find our online submission manager here: http://www.calyxpress.org/submission.html

 

 

 

Virtual Book Tour: Who in This Room by Katherine Malmo

Introducing our latest project–bringing CALYX authors and literature to life through video. This month, we’re featuring Katherine Malmo, author of our Fall 2011 Creative Nonfiction release Who in This Room: The Realities of Cancer, Fish, and Demolition.

Based in autobiography, Who in This Room explores a young woman’s experiences with breast cancer with an emotional honesty and cutting humor that’s rarely represented in mainstream publishing.  Who in This Room is not your typical “cancer book”–this is a story about fly fishing, lemon trees, and a stubborn woman’s drive to survive.

Who in this Room will be available for presale at www.calyxpress.org in summer 2011, and will be released in October 2011.

CALYX Books is currently seeking donations to help with publicity costs for Who in This Room. Our goal is to raise enough funds to donate copies of this collection to oncology support groups across the Pacific Northwest.  Click here to help CALYX Books with this important project.

10 Reasons Why CALYX Loved Being at AWP This Year

10. Because of organizations like VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and fierce women like Amy King who came ultra-prepared to the Women’s Caucus ready to get the crowd both excited and pissed. Check out their website to see current information about the what journals and presses are woman-friendly, and which are woefully not (um, The New Yorker and The New Republic, I’m looking at you).

9.Because of this awesome lady DJ at The Black Cat, uniting the people with funky-fresh beats. This is what I’m talking about!

8. Because there’s feminist presses and publishers there. A big high-five to organizations like Kore Press, Argos Books, Akashic Books, and The Feminist Press for doing the important work of keeping women’s voices in print (oh, and, ahem, of course, CALYX).

7. Because there’s feminist writers there, silly. I had the chance to meet so many fearless women writers today of all ages and backgrounds who aren’t afraid to say, “Yes, I’m a writer. Yes, I’m a feminist. Yes, this matters.”

6. Because of Jhumpa Lahiri. Need I say more?

5. and Kay Ryan.

4. and Pam Houston.

3. Because feminists love Washington D.C. Where else can you find that many statues of Eleanor Rosevelt??

2. Because people get just as excited as you are when you say “We’re celebrating our 35th year as a journal!”

1. Because it’s rewarding and energizing and delightful to see the up-and-coming men and women feminists of the writing world wandering through the bookfair. Each person there is a reminder that books matter, art matters, creativity matters.

Thanks for a great conference everyone! See you next year–

-Rebecca Olson

Assistant Editor for CALYX Press

Young Feminist Challenge #1

Hey young feminists. I know you’re out there–starring star-eyed into cyberspace, reading Feminist Hulk tweets, slowly visualizing your takeover of the world and how that probably involves Janelle Monae‘s dazzling brand of funk music.

"Wow. This is great."

As I’m sure you know as literate, intelligent young women, magazines like CALYX have been hard at work bashing gender stereotypes since the ’70s. My challenge for you today is to push your boundaries and tastes, to shake up your ideas about gender and literature. I want you to read something that connects you to a feminist of another generation, written BY a feminist of another generation.

Today, I’m starting with the issue of CALYX Journal printed in the year that I was born. Here’s the opening line from “Eros,” written by Olga Broumas and published by CALYX in 1986 “On Death’s face all religion dances/ like pins on the head of a clit”. So…I finally have hard evidence that Olga Broumas was using artwork to resist patriarchy when I was mastering the art of holding my 3-month-old head aloft. Great.

Want to know what brilliant, hilarious, juicy, heart-breaking, wretched, angry, reflective, wise poems are in your birthday issue? Click here to find yours. Read! Connect! Be surprised by great writing and great women!

-Assistant Editor Becky O.

Feminism Friday: “Feminist Press: You Mean, Like, Books for Girls?”

As an editor of CALYX Press, a 34 year-old feminist publisher of art and literature that has published the likes of Barbara Kingsolver and Jane Hirshfield, it’s necessary to sometimes explain to curious parties what it means to be a feminist publisher.

I know what it means to be a feminist.  To me, it means a freedom of choice.  It’s not about women or men necessarily; it’s about the freedom that we deserve as human beings to choose what kind of lives we make for ourselves.  To some, this means the choice to have children, marry a partner, and be a stay at home mom.  For others, it means traveling the world or owning a motorcycle.  For me, it means living in Oregon apart from my family and devoting my life to books and writing because that’s what I love—I’m grateful that I had the ability to make that decision for myself.

So how does that freedom translate into publishing? Well, for one, the women of CALYX have always had freedom of editorial choice.  All of our editorial decisions are made collectively—that means that every submission that comes into the office is read by at least two women.  Twenty-five percent of all submissions are then discussed by 6 women and voted on—we sometimes hold stories and poems to read again later.  That means that we practice equality and fairness in our decision-making.

Freedom of choice is also big around the office in how we run our non-profit.  We work collectively to get jobs done, from our Director down to our wonderful student interns—everyone is encouraged to share their ideas about how to get the word out about different projects.   You should have seen us Wednesday crowded into the backroom, every staff member sticking stamps onto envelopes because that’s what we needed to get done and we all wanted to help.

We also choose to publish exceptional work by women that is representative of that freedom to be ourselves.  Some of the poetry and prose that goes into the journal has nothing to do with women or personal identity.  One story going into the new Summer Journal Vol. 26:2, for example, has a homeless man as the main protagonist (you’ll be excited when Lego Bionic Moses comes into the story).  On the other hand, some poems in Vol. 26:2 deeply personal and intimately explain experiences from women’s perspectives: what it’s like to give birth, look for a job as a woman, learn to Kayak for the first time.  The editors of CALYX choose work that we feel is well-written, interesting to read, and represents some important part of the diverse and dynamic experience of women.  There’s no one perspective that embodies everything that it means to be a woman (or a feminist, for that matter), so representing as many different viewpoints as we can is a good place to start.

What do you think about this? How does a business, a person, or a piece of writing be “feminist”?

-Rebecca Olson, Associate Editor

Feminism Friday: Learn from the Past, Don’t Leave it Behind

For Feminism Friday, there is an issue that has been on my mind, and that I will begin to discuss here. If you have thoughts to share, comment. In honor of Feminism Friday, I’d like to start a dialog about the idea of “outdated” feminism.

Why do so many feel it necessary to separate themselves from first, second, and even third wave feminism? It is as if a stigma has been created that many feel they must “shake off” or “move past” in order to accomplish the feminist ideals of today. While I can see a little of where this comes from, my experience leads me to find fault with this logic.

As one of the new staff members of CALYX, I find it more and more necessary to learn and listen to the women on staff who have been through it all. Traveled all over the world? Check. Became the first press to publish Frida Kahlo in color in the United States. Yeup. Raised families while striving to change the way we see art and literature by women one journal/book at a time working? Oh yes. Dined with a movie star and his wife? Definitely. (If only you could hear Margarita, our director, tell that story.) Published over 3,5oo female artists and authors in an effort to equalize the disparities between men and women? Double check.

As I explore the rich history of the 34 year old press I am honored to be a part of, I can’t help but wonder why some folks (mind you, this isn’t saying everyone feels this way) don’t take more advantage of learning from the feminists of the past. Is fear of fanny packs and shoulders pads 80s feminism really stopping us from learning from feminist women? (Not necessarily just employing rhetorical devices here. Go ahead and answer.) Maybe the goal of those who equate a negative stigma to this portion of feminist history is to simply show our goals have evolved.  However, to me, it is only after embracing the lessons from the past that feminism can move forward. After all, the past waves of feminism laid the groundwork for the goals and ideals of feminism today. If we can’t learn from the past, how can we legitimately look toward a better future?

The struggle for equality is not over. Many of you might remember last year, when controversy over this list led to outrage from women and men people everywhere? Small presses like CALYX continually work to change this. We publish art and literature by women that other larger presses may not consider because our purpose is to celebrate women’s voices. CALYX is a press that will always value its history, even while working toward making the future a place where women’s art and literature is on as many darn top ten lists as possible valued as highly as it should be.

Thanks for reading these thoughts, even as they are just in the fledgling stages.

-Kelsey Connell, Assistant Director

Feminism Friday: Staying True to Values in a Scary World

We’ve taken note that some of the awesome feminist blogs out there have been taking part in Feminism Friday, originated by Thinking Girl. We’ve decided to try to take part as often as we can and would encourage other feminist-minded bloggers to do the same! The folks at Feminism 101 encourage you to “let loose” any opinionated essays you may have regarding feminism and tag it with Feminism Friday to help the search engines!

It’s a scary world out there. In the past few days, there has been disturbing legislation passed in Arizona stripping away the rights of people of color, a potential car bombing in NYC, the 40th anniversary of the Kent State shooting, and a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s hard to say how to stay positive in the face of so many different kinds of horrors, especially when our country faces so many threats–to the environment, to equality, to our safety, to our rights, to our minds and bodies.

CALYX is a publication dedicated to the idea that reading, writing, and publishing are acts of social justice. We would like to take the opportunity to remind our readers, writers, and ourselves, that activism isn’t limited to getting on a bus to hold up a sign in DC–opportunities for defending important causes are all around us.  Continue to read, continue to write, continue to listen and question, and above all–continue to stand up for what you believe in to the best of your ability.  We’re all in this together, feminist or not, and we have a duty to continue to fight for justice and equality in this country.

-Rebecca Olson, Assistant Editor*

(*These ideas are a personal statement and do not necessarily embody CALYX Press)