
RAVI MANGLA on film with Rebecca Gransden
Video, broadly speaking, is the medium people interact with most on a daily basis, so I think contemporary fiction has some obligation to engage with it (if aiming to render the world as it exists).
Rebecca Gransden lives on an island. She is published at Tangerine Press, Burning House Press, Muskeg, Ligeia, and Silent Auctions, among others. Her books are anemogram., Rusticles, and Sea of Glass.
Video, broadly speaking, is the medium people interact with most on a daily basis, so I think contemporary fiction has some obligation to engage with it (if aiming to render the world as it exists).
I’ve always been confused about books that attempt to tell a straightforward, filmic plot through the written word. Isn’t that just a less-good version of a medium that already exists? Instead, why not adopt film’s self-confidence?
One of my earliest memories is of jumping down all the stairs at once but it must’ve been a dream.
I grew up surrounded by woods, fields, an old mill, a Lutheran church, a cemetery just down the road, a local “party store” in the other direction, and farmland for miles and miles. It was glorious, really. And thank God for that party store.
Writers who seem to want to write a commercial screenplay in prose strike me as the least interesting sort. The same goes for all attempts at translating cinematic terminology to prose.
Have fun. Be yourself. All that live free Target store bullshit. But it’s true.
Growing up surrounded by people constantly quoting the latest gross-out comedy or something like Star Wars it makes me feel a little dirty whenever I say a line from a movie.
Remember, writing is about self-expression and emotional communication, so just focus on yourself and don’t worry about what anyone else is doing.
If anyone can be considered a psychonaut of literature it is Kathe Koja, a writer who utilizes prose to explore every altered state the page has to offer. With her latest project, Dark Factory, Koja enters the club scene, a place where mind-bending as old as licking a frog meets speed freak technology, and pagan archetypes dance with virtual avatars. I spoke with Koja about the sweet delirium of the project. * What attracted you to club culture for the world of Dark Factory? Everything I write starts with a character, and for Dark Factory, it’s Ari Regon—smiling, hyper-alive, throwing…
My sister had taken a bunch of us kids to the drive-in to see a scary movie, and we started out shrieking and giggling; by the end, we were jammed together in the front seat, silent, or crying. But the feeling I remember most deeply wasn’t fear, it was outrage.