Halfway through winter and thinking of...

Heat, sand, salt.

Wearing next to nothing.

Drinking iced gin laced with lime and tonic from tall sweating glasses.

In the meantime, nearly a winter's worth of work!

A brand-new website: karinceciledavidson.com. Right here! The old one vanished, and this one is not only pretty, but powerful. THUNDER ON A THURSDAY, my blog, is still ready and willing. The STORIES page lists my publications and awards, and the INTERVIEWS page lists all Newfound Journal interviews, as well as an archive of all the Hothouse interviews from the Poppy Series. Under the GALLERY page, I've added story snippets with photos and links, along with images that inspire me. Plus the typical things: my bio is found in ABOUT and you can get in touch via CONTACT. Very soon, I'll add an EDITING page which will offer manuscript consultation and editing services for short stories, chapbooks, story collections, and novels. Many winter hours were spent building this author website, with special thanks to Nicolette Swift for guiding me, redirecting the old domain to the new one, and designing the sweet little moon snail favicon that sits aside the web address. A round of applause to F. Anne Michel for the cover photo as well! I'm happy to have this work behind me, so I can get back to another kind of creating!

And that would be THE NOVEL. In the final stretch of revisions. Certainly and thankfully, the snow and ice will keep me inside and at the desk. And my reward for reaching the last chapter, the last page, the last word? Summer! Heat, sand, and salt, especially the brine of the ocean. Until then, head down, inside the writing, coming up for air only to catch my breath and dive in again. Until the work is finally done.

Farewell to “The Poppy - An Interview Series”

“THE POPPY - An Interview Series” has come to a close. Hothouse Magazine is ending its time online. Not to worry, though. All of the interviews have been archived here.

I've loved the procession of writers, artists, filmmakers, and dancers who've talked so openly about their work, how the world inspires and distracts, what they are caught up in and look forward to. And so, many thanks to all of them!

Yolanda Franklin, Andrew Lam, Jennifer Genest, Jamel Brinkley, Marlene Robbins, David Covey, Eliza T. Williamson, Matthew Draughter, Sharon Millar, Amy Wright, A.W. Sprague II, JoeAnn Hart, Emilie Staat, Brad Richard, Tim Watson, Brian R. Hauser and Christina Xydias, Claudia Zuluaga, Augusta Thomson, Bich Minh Nguyen, Susanna J. Mishler, Annie Bleecker, Kelly Magee and Carol Guess, and CJ Hauser.

I'll continue working on interviews with writers and artists at Newfound Journal, one or two in each issue - Autumn, Winter, and Spring. On October 1st Newfound's Autumn 2014 issue will be live with an interview with Luke B. Goebel about his novel, Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours. The book is astounding, and the interview is wild, just like Luke. And in the Winter issue John Carr Walker will talk about the stories of Repairable Men, a beautiful collection that closes in on characters and their newly realized desires.

Back when I was a baby girl, just out of college, the chief editor of a magazine in New Orleans told me to go out into the world, talk to some folks, write up the words, and just maybe they'd publish them. I was far too shy and didn't follow her advice. And now, after all this time, look what's happened. I just can't stop talking to folks. Took me a while to find the way, and I'm so glad I did.

Hothouse Anniversary Album – From Sugar to the Mountain

“So take a day. Call it day one.”

These are the first lines of my first post for HOTHOUSE. Twelve months gone by, and suddenly it’s March again. In that time “The Poppy: An Interview Series” has grown into a true HOTHOUSE flower. My reason for creating an interview series – to promote writers and artists via conversation and in terms of where their artistic lives are leading – has become a reality. The plural WE of the interview, and the lone I, pouring over a collection of poetry, stories, essays or a script, a set of images, a succession of movements, thinking things through. And then the connection made when we exchange questions and responses, ideas and thoughts, discovering more than we’d imagined. Add to that another dimension, in which the interviews focus on, circle around, or flat out dive into the idea of PLACE: the spaces we occupy in our minds and art; in dreams and visions, in actuality; and geographically, where we have been, where we are going.

And inside this enormous year so much has happened. So many surprises, so much sadness, so much happiness, and some serious sigh-filled moments in between. Friends’ successful artistic endeavors; good-byes; finishing a novel-in-stories; too-good-to-be-true cocktail concoctions; a bitter-cold winter with bluebird skies; and yes, any day now, any day now… that moment of almost-spring when the forsythia buds and frost comes three more times.

And so, here we are. Again.

So let’s begin. Again.

“Take a year. Call it year one.”

Open your eyes and recall one large, laughing, amazing year! Serious celebration is called for. An open-your-mouth-wide-and-insert-cake kind of celebration! Because March 8th marks my one-year anniversary with HOTHOUSE MAGAZINE!

Since first reporting for HOTHOUSE from Boston’s snow-covered AWP 2013, I’ve posted nineteen interviews with fiction writers, poets, filmmakers, visual artists, and dancers.  Of those interviewed, all were open to and inspired by the questions and the possibilities the responses presented. They discussed endless ways of seeing and understanding the world, whether in description and dialogue, momentum and motion, from mountaintop and coastline, in multiple voices on the dismantling of DOMA, and solo on language and memory, sadness and bliss. And inside the conversations, we always came back to place, for place is where we begin, where we find our muse. And so, I wanted to recognize and thank those writers and artists for accepting my invitations and then playing along.

Every celebration needs music and so the playlist follows – the thus-far collected hits of “The Poppy: An Interview Series” – each matched with a song. I call it “From Sugar to the Mountain,” thinking of my first interview with Natalie Young of SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW and the latest with Augusta Thomson of “Nine-Story Mountain.” Turn it up loud, laugh, go ahead, have another glass, stay a while. It’s still snowing outside. Where else do you have to go?

FROM SUGAR TO THE MOUNTAIN 

– The Collected Hits of “The Poppy: An Interview Series”

AWP13: Interview with Natalie Young of Sugar House – Def Leppard – “Pour Some Sugar on Me”

An Interview with Yolanda J. Franklin – Sheila E. – “The Glamorous Life”

Andrew Lam: Language, Memory, Bliss / Andrew Lam: A Voice from the Heart –  James Taylor – “You’ve Got a Friend”

Jennifer Genest’s Worlds and Words – John Mellencamp – “Small Town”

Brooklyn’s Jamel Brinkley – Floetry – “Say Yes”

Tim Watson: A New Orleanian Now – James Booker – “Black Night”

DOMA and the Arts Revisited – with Marlene Robbins – Sister Sledge – “We Are Family” – and with David Covey – David Bowie – “Heroes”

Matthew Draughter: Vision and Voice – Stevie Wonder – “All I Do”

Sharon Millar: from Caribbean to Commonwealth – Ella Andall – “Bring Down the Power”

Brad Richard: from Aubade to Bacchae – James Booker – “Classified”

Amy Wright: In the Garden – Doug Paisley – “Wide Open Plain”

Surrealist A.W. Sprague II – Amethystium  – “Exultation”

The Gaze of Emilie Staat – Karen Choi – “Tangled”

The Coastal Concerns of JoeAnn Hart – Steve Earle and the Dukes – “The Rain Came Down”

NONTRADITIONAL: The Landscape of Homecoming – with Brian J. Hauser and Christina Xydias –Bach – “Cello Suite No. 6 v-Gavotte”

Fort Starlight: A Florida Story – with Claudia Zuluaga – Duran Duran – “Lonely in Your Nightmare”

NINE-STORY MOUNTAIN – with Augusta Thomson – Rusted Root – “Send Me on My Way”

BONUS TRACKS – with thanks to and inspiration from all those interviewed – James Taylor – “Blossom” & Pete Seeger – “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

Since we spoke, many of the writers and artists interviewed have received all kinds of recognition for their work. Congratulations to all! And so I asked what they felt were their greatest artistic achievements of the past year. And here is that playlist as well.

• Natalie Young comments: “Hmmm… Not shutting the magazine [SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW] down. Just kidding! I guess I feel the most accomplished about sticking to the series of poems I’m working on and getting a number of them accepted for publication. I have commitment issues – that’s why I’m a poet.”

• Yolanda J. Franklin has had two readings, one at AWP and the other at FSU for their warehouse reading series, and a publication in African American Review.

• Andrew Lam’s short story collection, “Birds of Paradise Lost” (RED HEN PRESS, 2013) won a Pen Award.

• Matthew Draughter was nominated as an American Voice in the Scholastic Young Art and Writing Competition.

• Sharon Millar writes, “My greatest artistic achievement was co-winning the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.”

• Brad Richard on artistic success: “Stumbling upon the perfect title for my next book, the title I didn’t even know I was looking for. Like the titles of my last two books, it scans as trochaic dimeter.”

• Jennifer Genest’s biggest artistic success this year: finally writing a personal essay – and having it published! And in THE DOCTOR T.J. ECKLEBERG REVIEW!

• Jamel Brinkley placed a story for the first time and what a venue! A PUBLIC SPACE!

• Tim Watson says, “Artistic success? Finishing Booker film ["Bayou Maharajah"], finding a deeper story in another film that is in progress, and unshelving another film project that has been on the shelf for 8 years.”

• Marlene Robbins was awarded an Ohio Dance Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement of dance education.

• David Covey calls his artistic achievement from this past year “surviving the renovation of Sullivant Hall [Ohio State’s Dance Department] and all the rest of the BS in the world.”

• Amy Wright had three essays accepted by journals she’s long admired – BREVITY, DIAGRAM, and KENYON REVIEW!

• A.W. Sprague II, an incredibly talented surrealist artist, and very humble, says his greatest success this past year was being interviewed by me. Thanks, Bill!

• Emilie Staat tells me that her Faulkner-Wisdom award-winning essay, “Tango Face,” was recently published in THE DOUBLE DEALER. And it’s exciting to see everyone going mad over HBO’s “True Detective,” which she worked on as the Script Coordinator.

• JoeAnn Hart says, “My greatest success would have to be the publication of my second novel, “Float“.”

• Brian J. Hauser and Christina Xydias think their greatest success of the past year was securing two tenure-track jobs in the same place, while their greatest artistic success was finishing “Nontraditional” and getting it accepted to the 2014 Bare Bones International Film and Music Festival!

• Claudia Zuluaga writes: “After eight years of revising and finally publishing a new novel ["Fort Starlight" (ENGINE BOOKS, 2013)], even with a new baby and full-time job, I’ve built enough momentum to get deep into a second novel.”

• Augusta Thomson’s biggest artistic success was completing a full-length film about Mount Kailash, Tibet – “Nine-Story Mountain.”

• And mine is, of course, this glorious collection of interviews, the music heard and stories read, and low and behold, the completion of my novel-in-stories!

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

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First posted in the ARTS section of Hothouse Magazine.

The Poppy Becomes a Hothouse Flower

THE POPPY: AN INTERVIEW SERIES is moving to a big, bright venue. I've been invited to write a regular interview series at NEWFOUND JOURNAL's Arts section of their blog, HOTHOUSE. After a few AWP posts for HOTHOUSE, written during the adrenalin days of the conference, I'm looking forward to the more relaxed momentum of the interviews. The series will continue on a regular schedule, and I'll repost here at Thunder on a Thursday.

The first interview at HOTHOUSE  for "The Poppy" will be with Yolanda J. Franklin.  Poet, teacher, PhD candidate, and third generation, north Florida native. And in early April, I will post an interview with the Vietnamese-American journalist/essayist/short story writer, Andrew Lam.

As NEWFOUND's mission states, the journal is interested in place, from many perspectives. I'm looking forward to this new adventure, one in which "The Poppy" will transition into a "Hothouse flower."

Newfound Journal is a literary and visual arts publication that features fiction, poetry, nonfiction, visual art, reviews, and more. Our work explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding.

At Newfound, our mission is to foster greater awareness of our environment through the arts, events, and cultural inquiry. We believe that a richer experience of place—human-made, natural, conceptual, or otherwise—is essential in understanding ourselves and our world. Newfound is passionate about positively transforming how we relate to our habitats and bringing about better stewardship of our homes, neighborhoods, communities, cities, nations, and the globalized world at large.

Hothouse Magazine is a views and opinions magazine. Our mission is to foster greater awareness of the spaces we occupy, informed by culture, science, gender, the arts, and more. We contribute to public discussion of hot topics and newsworthy stories (current, contemporary, and cultural). We also publish content that provides resources to improve our reading community’s relationship within their environments.

AWP13: Hothouse Interview with Natalie Young of Sugar House Review

Natalie Young is a poet, graphic artist, and an editor for Sugar House Review. She’s a Utah girl, down to earth, whimsical, creative, compassionate, with a genuine and sly sense of humor. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in “Rattle,” “Tampa Review,” “South Dakota Review,” “Tar River,” and elsewhere. 

Natalie and I both graduated from Lesley University’s MFA Program in 2009, and it has been incredible to spend time with her at AWP — her third, my first. Over lunch, we talked about the differences in her AWP experiences. Her first two times at the conference, she spent her days at the Sugar House Review table at the Bookfair. This time she has been able to attend panel presentations, readings, tributes, the keynote conversation between Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, and more.

I asked her three questions, short and sweet.

KARIN C. DAVIDSON: So, Natalie, how would you describe the difference of being here for Sugar House at the Bookfair and here for the events?

NATALIE YOUNG: Well, at the Bookfair, I’m here mostly as an editor. People know where to find us, and so we can meet our contributors. And as a participant, I can go to panels, visit other reviews’ tables at Bookfair, go to readings.

DAVIDSON: How has AWP influenced magazine submissions for Sugar House?

YOUNG: It has definitely increased them. There is always an influx of submissions after having the table at AWP’s Bookfair. The volume is affected, as well as the quality.

DAVIDSON: What is the importance of AWP to a small literary magazine?

YOUNG: AWP is a good marketing outlet. We get to meet people that we wouldn’t normally meet, especially since the review’s home base is in Utah. (In fact, SHR is the only independent print literary review in Utah). We also get ideas from other people, including editors and publishers. Spending time at AWP is productive in many ways. On the east coast there is a higher concentration of writers than in the west, where they are more spread out. Networking is important for a small journal.

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This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.