Untelling Magic

Issue 2 of Untelling is out, the literary and arts magazine of Hindman Settlement School. Like issue 1, I'm very proud to manage such a stage for writers, artists, and photographers to share their work with the world. The contributors in this issue range from folks garnering their first ever publication credit all the way to those with literally a dozen or more books out. The creators span from residents of Knott County to Iceland.

Cover image "Funguy 2" by Sarah Josephine Pennington.

When I was in grad school, I was an assistant editor on the Mid American Review, and that was my first step into the editing world. One could argue that 17 years teaching college composition classes is also a form of editing. And putting together my own poetry collections gave me the experience of making a whole book out of small pieces.

But my first big editing job was our flood anthology, Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-year Flood in Eastern Kentucky. Talk about jumping in with both feet. It was with Troublesome Rising that I really learned how editing a collection of dozens of writers can go.

Troublesome Rising has 60 contributors of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and photography.

It was like building a puzzle without knowing what the whole picture is going to be. It's about seeing patterns and connections and micro-movements and how to build them into a macro-movement arc across the whole manuscript.

It feels like when I read a poetry collection, sometimes I jot down my favorite lines, and then do the magic and math afterward to make some of them into a cento. It's a lot of moving by faith. Solicit work without knowing what it will be or how it will fit together. And have faith, because there will be great work, and when you put great work together, you get even greater experiences. And there will be serendipitous connections.

That's what I'm finding with Untelling. It seems fabricated almost how some of the pieces perfectly overlap in theme or subject. Whether by providence or coincidence, you can decide, but it's certainly unplanned.

In issue 2's submissions, I was stunned to see an art piece by Chris Dockery about a water witch after reading Jane Hick's poem "Granny Green" about a granny who uses a dowsing rod to find water. Kopana Terry's photo of a cross and worshipper and Clinton Waters' poem "Tears of the Hungry Church." Sullivan Potter's photo of Hamden Gas and Willie Carver's story "The Gas Station."

And there were similar overlaps in issue 1.

It's a thrilling moment when I see the second piece of the magic pairing. It feels like a little, sparkly nudge from the universe confirming that yes, we're doing the good things.

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If you want to see more about Untelling, order a copy, or subscribe, check it out here: https://hindman.org/untelling/ . Also, you can read some teasers, inclucing the Willie Carver story mentioned above. And if you're a writer, artist, or photographer, watch Hindman Settlement School's social media for the call for submissions for issue 3, which will open in April.

If you want to order a copy of Troublesome Rising, you can do that at The Orchard Shop: https://theorchardshop.org , through the University Press of Kentucky ( https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781950564439/troublesome-rising/ ) or your local independent bookstore.