SFWP Quarterly Special Issue 25 / Spring 2021
SFWP Quarterly
Special Issue 25 / Spring 2021
Editors’ Note
Monica Prince, Managing Editor, and Nicole Schmidt, Acquisitions & Developmental Editor
The Gay and Not Gay: An Editors’ Conversation on Queer Invention
All year, we’re accepting work from writers of marginalized identities for the Quarterly. This second issue is devoted to QTPOC/LGBTQ++ writers surrounding the idea of making/unmaking/remaking. Nicole Schmidt, our acquisitions and developmental lead editor for the press, and Monica Prince, our managing editor, edited this issue—Nicole on prose, Monica on poetry, and they split the difference on hybrid works. Editors for each issue will write the introductions.
Below is an edited live conversation between the two editors. All COVID-19 protocols for in-person gatherings were followed.
Monica: So, in the spring of 2020, moments before the pandemic hit us directly, I co-wrote a play about suffrage with Dr. Anna Andes, Pageant of Agitating Women. When it was staged, we made sure to cast women of color in appropriate roles, and didn’t participate in colorblind casting. After the show premiered, the actor who played Susan B. Anthony talked at great length about playing a queer woman. She expressed she rarely had an opportunity to act as her own identity, and how the chance opened up her understanding of representation and why it mattered. We hadn’t even considered that, so focused on avoiding casting white women in Black, Native, or Asian roles—and this is part of what sparked the choice to curate an issue devoted to queer writers.
I’m not a queer woman—though I identify as polyamorous and I’m in a mixed-orientation relationship—so it felt weird to determine what should go into this issue without the support of a queer editor or writer. It’s important to make room at the table, to keep serving love so more people arrive. Thankfully, one of those arrivals was you, Nicole Schmidt, an integral member of the SFWP press, who graciously accepted the chance to edit this issue.
Nicole—when I told you I wanted you to help edit Issue 25 because I wanted a queer editor on board, what did you think? Why did you say yes?
Nicole: I thought, I should probably come out to my parents. (laughs) I have straight-passing privilege.
Monica: Explain that.
Nicole: I usually wear all black, a lot of rings, big hoop earrings, and platform boots. At the same time, I like doing my makeup, I’ve always had long hair, and I usually take any opportunity to stunt in a body con dress and heels. And, frustratingly, my only long-term relationships have been with men.
Monica: Not to mention your nails are always done.
Nicole: Girl, you know. Even learned to do them myself when a bitch was broke. This puts me firmly but strangely in a stereotyped “edgy but straight” category.
Monica: So, why did you say yes to this issue?
Nicole: (pause)…because straight-passing has given me both privacy and privilege. But if the privilege isn’t addressed, it becomes oppression—for myself and others I should be a better ally to in the community. Is that too heavy?
Monica: Never. Now, you handled all the prose for this issue and most of the hybrid pieces. What were you looking for when you were vetting submissions?
Nicole: Okay, so—I went to an all-girls’ Catholic high school in Queens. Yes, I will accept all of your condolences now.
Monica: …what?
Nicole: I swear this is on topic! In high school, I didn’t date. I think it was my sophomore year when my mom sat me at our dining room table—and my thighs stuck to the plastic coverings that my Catholic-Italian mother insisted on putting on all our chairs!—and told me, “You know, I know what the Bible says. But... I would still love you if you liked girls. You know that, right?”
Monica: The fuck? Where did that come from?
Nicole: It came purely from the fact that I wasn’t dating—which she told me flat out. She assumed if I wasn’t bringing boys home, I must be dating someone in secret. And if I dared keep a secret from her, it was probably lesbianism.
Monica: (laughs) Wow. I have...no response to that. Just…wow.
Nicole: I vividly remember this!
Monica: Hence the plastic covering detail.
Nicole: You’re such a shit. It was an actual long-term fight between my parents to not cover the couches.
Monica: So…what does this have to do with curating the issue?
Nicole: Look, you’re the one who poured mimosas, give me a minute. (sips) My point is—in that moment, I told her she was crazy. And I know she’d still love me. But relax. And that was the first time I consciously lied to myself about my sexuality.
(Mimosa refill)
Monica: So, you lied to yourself at about 15 about potentially being a lesbian or queer or…what? Even though we recognize that categories are systems of oppression created to divide communities against one another.
Nicole: Now who’s being too heavy?
Monica: Answer the damn question.
Nicole: So, I lied, and I didn’t really mean to. I just was so on-the-spot in the moment. I hadthat fun nagging voice that you only get from being a child of a heavily religious person muttering in my brain, Lies by omission are still lies.
Monica: Ah, yes. And they sound like the creepy witch from Snow White.
Nicole: Spot on. My point is—I left the dining room table just trying to tell my mom, “You’re being crazy as usual. Don’t worry about me. Boys suck.” (Fucking true.) But what actually happened was a very naïve teenager subconsciously realizing if she’d thought too long or answered differently, she would be the reason her family wasn’t invited to holidays anymore. I don’t think the lie to myself or my mom was conscious it just … came from a fear of more … crap. On me, or my family.
Monica: Mmm. Okay, yes. Is that why these pieces don’t talk a lot about trauma?
Nicole: Look, fuck queer trauma. Even if it was beautifully written, I rejected pieces that focused on gay abuse or trauma. We have enough of that in the world. Coming out stories in all the arts (music, TV, movies, writing, plays, etc.) center on trauma a character had to endure to “deserve” publically being themselves. We’ve seen those stories, and we haven’t needed them for a long time. People compare art to escapism because that’s exactly what it lets us do. Why would we perpetuate this tradition of escaping into our own traumas just to prove to our audiences that they were worth our suffering? Tradition is just dead people bullying us from the grave (shout out Rob Barkley who taught me that first).
Monica: Oh I forgot he said that!
Nicole: #NeverForget.
So, instead, each prose piece was chosen either because it unmade a traumatic trope in queer art, or because it remade a portion of a queer person’s life for the better. Now, yeah, some of these pieces still have ignorant families, unsupportive friends, or bystanders who refuse to be allies.
Monica: Well, yeah—to publish an issue about queer life without acknowledging pain is to publish a lie—and you just talked about lying to yourself.
Nicole: Yup. Another checkpoint to bring up with my future therapist. And that’s the whole point.
We’re not publishing this issue in June—
Monica: Pride month!
(fist bump)
Nicole: —because it’s not a token issue. The writers in this issue are representative of the QTPOC/LGBTQ++ community, every day and every month of the year. They aren’t heroes for the two week-lifespan of a viral video or a retweet. They aren’t a cautionary tale or an ad campaign or a rainbow flag plastered on an overpriced t-shirt to support a corporation that would suddenly eliminate their position if they brought their same-sex partner to the company cookout. They’re voices that have deserved to exist for a long time, (dramatic hand-waving) whether that’s in their pain or their triumph or just in their day-today. The same way we accept straight narrators and stories for just doing their thing. They don’t have to do more, their shit on the reg is enough.
Since I joined SFWP, I’ve actually had a platform given to me by a cishet white male that allows me to make a professional point of saying, Fuck only publishing cishet white male authors writing literary fiction.
Monica: Shout out to Andrew Gifford, since his royalties pay all our checks, including the contributors in this issue.
Nicole: #moneymoves #securethebagsis #girlsgaysandtheys #alphabetmafia #imoutoffuckinghashtags
Monica: Oh god.
Nicole: Yeah, buddy. (pause) Well, your turn. What did you look for in the poetry?
Monica: When it came to the poetry, I focused on language that stopped my heart. I wanted poems that focused on the theme of making a life or unmaking one, so in some ways, I also shied away from queer trauma as well. After curating the BIPOC issue in February, I’ve been lowkey obsessed with the ways we can make joy in our art. What would our lives look like if the poetry we published surprised us?
Nicole: When you talk about being surprised, do you mean that in craft itself as well as content, since you’re not part of the QTPOC community?
Monica: Yes, definitely. I think one of the most important ways to be an ally is to read outside your experience, and give a platform to those whose lives I may share but never truly enter. My partner (y’all remember Rob) is pansexual, and even though I have him in my ear every day, I’ll never be able to step into his livelihood. And empathy literally means “in + feeling” (shout out Leslie Jamison), so the only way to get closer to the narratives and moments and desires expressed in these poems by writers with whom I share some but not all intersecting identities is to lean heavily on this theme.
Nicole: So why did you choose making/unmaking/remaking as the theme for this issue?
Monica: When I was pitching this year of special issues to Andrew, he kept telling me to do whatever I wanted.
Nicole: Sounds right.
Monica: And that’s such a weird position to be in because it forces you to—
Nicole: —actually confront what you want because every day of life is filled with bare-minimum survival being the top bar for accomplishments, and it’s rare to be able to sit back and think about a pure want rather than a necessity?
Monica: Yup, that exactly! I was like, Tell me what to do, and Andrew kept saying, I don’t care! Do what you want! It’s your journal! And I said, well, my polycule is mostly queer, so…
Nicole: MAKE IT GAY!
Monica: (laughs) Uh, yeah, so I made it gay! Most of my students identify as queer in some way, or they’re trans, or they’re nonbinary or ace or aro or recipromantic, etc. etc. It felt like a disservice to have a platform and not use it for a community that I actively serve alongside the BIPOC community. And since many of those in one are also in the other, I thought about what it means to recreate yourself as the person you want to be rather than the person you’ve been raised to be.
Nicole: Shout out Catholicism. Or whatever the opposite is.
Monica: When I think about the theme of this issue, I chose it because I didn’t want the theme to be ownership (which is our theme for the writers with disabilities issue going live in July). I wanted a theme that resonated with this community but also challenged them to not just send trauma porn. I talked about this in the BIPOC issue, too.
Nicole: (singing) Listen, I’m on the right track baby, I was born this —
Monica: Nope! Shut it down!
Nicole: Fine! But Lady Gaga needs to call me! Still, what you said is spot on—the reason I was actually excited and didn’t just feel obligated to edit this issue is because the theme genuinely ‘resonated’ with me. We didn’t toss crumbs for members of the community to scavenge after; they didn’t have to tell us the worst moments of their lives to be valid people. They got a full seat with a full plate and second helpings at our table, and we wanted them to take their place there and build a fucking empire with it, and they did.
If all we had done was toss those breadcrumbs, it would have been thinly veiled virtue signaling. I don’t want straight people to feel morally justified by our suffering, just because they believe they “wouldn’t have done that” if they were in the same shoes of the perpetrators of that suffering.
Monica: We all like to believe we’re better people than the villains.
Nicole: Like how Disney villains were intentionally queer-coded so the audience will root for their demise.
Monica: All. Of. This. I wanted queer writers to see this issue as a chance to remake themselves but also to remake their genres, to push the boundaries of what it means to create art outside of, in conversation with, and as one’s identity.
I had a therapist who told me not to cling too fiercely to my identity, lest it be the reason someone murders me. And while pitching this issue, I thought, I have so much less to lose.
Nicole: I … wish I was deep enough to get that immediately. But here we are. SO. What do you mean?
Monica: Well, we started this by talking about your straight-passing privilege, and similarly but not, I have monogamous-passing privilege. And I have less to lose if my employer discovers my polyamorous status than the writers we’re featuring here have to lose if their employers find out their full identities. Since it’s still legal to fire queer people or deny them service or access or babies in so many states in this country, the least I can do as an ally is to give space for queer writers to make, unmake, and remake their characters and speakers with the same and more characteristics that would have them branded the villain in different settings.
(Sigh) What do you hope our readers take away from this issue?
Nicole: I hope that people take away the fact that issues queer people encounter are inherently always queer issues. But that’s not all there is. And it doesn’t mean that they were queer-caused; it doesn’t meant that if they were straight, they wouldn’t have these problems. It just means—if a person is in the LGBTQ++ community, their lowest and highest moments are always inescapably tied to the fact that they are queer. I am done highlighting the lowest moments. There’s more. Whether it’s getting a haircut, confronting a family member, or finally having your insurance company approve the hormones necessary to your survival, I just want more cheers for queer victories.
The good deserves as much attention as the bad. More, actually.
Monica: Well said. Girl. That’s it.
Monica Prince, the managing editor for SFWP, teaches activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem ([PANK], 2020), Instructions for Temporary Survival (Red Mountain Press, 2019), and Letters from the Other Woman (Grey Book Press, 2018). She is the co-author of the suffrage play, A Pageant of Agitating Women, with Anna Andes. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Texas Review, MadCap Review, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter and check out her website.
Nicole Schmidt, acquisitions and developmental editor for SFWP, received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University. She is a tequila loving cat-mom, partially-reformed Queens hoodlum, and admitted coffee addict. Her work is featured in Newtown Literary, and when not editing for SFWP, you can find her tweeting nonsense at @niccschmidt.
Past Issues of The Quarterly