Word Pirates Interview Barrelhouse
We’re starting a new feature around here at Word Pirates. We’re going to deeper analyze that beast called the literary journal.
Literary journals publish everything from short stories to essays to poetry to author interviews. While they can sometimes be a little elitist and dull, the good ones showcase some of the best cutting-edge writing around. According to Wikipedia: Literary magazines function as a sort of literary nursery for writers by publishing new works by authors who are not yet established or well known.
But where, we wonder, does that leave writers who are hoping to publish in these things? How do we sift through the hundreds of journals out there? More to the point, who are the people editing these things, and what do they want from writers like us?
So we decided to ask them. We’re starting a series of interviews with literary journals, big and small, to understand a little more about them and our own writing in the process.
Our first interview is with Dave Housley, one of five editors from Barrelhouse. This new literary journal focuses on humor and pop culture, and wants to “bridge the gap between high and low culture.”
Barrelhouse’s print journal comes out twice a year, and the website is updated regularly. Instead of being affiliated with a university or writing program, it is produced by “writers for readers who are looking for quality writing with an edge and a sense of humor,” according to the website.
A very special Swayze section, where contributors praise the mulleted icon from Dirty Dancing all the way to Donnie Darko. An action figure portrait gallery featuring Spiderman in repose, the Lone Ranger and Silver facing down the camera. A punk rock interview with iconoclast Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and five-dollar Fugazi. … Issue Two of Barrelhouse is fun. Though it tends to the silly side of kitsch, the comic eccentricities of some of the prose belies the quality and craft of the storytelling…
This sounds right up our alley!