Fawn Parker
“It is with a considerable amount of excitement that I am joining the carte blanche team as co-editor of fiction alongside Kasia van Schaik. As a writer who works primarily with long-form fiction, it is funny that the majority of my editorial experience has been in poetry. In 2016 I founded BAD NUDES Magazine with the very talented Thomas Molander and Sandy Spink. We later launched a sister-press, BAD BOOKS, and I act as poetry editor (although we all wear many hats) for both projects. I am looking forward to not only working more closely with prose, but also to joining a new team, at a well-established and influential journal. carte blanche is an important part of Montreal’s thriving literary community and I couldn’t be happier to be getting involved, especially now that I spend so much of my time in Toronto. I hope to see work that is diverse, poignant, and beautiful on a word level but structured like a machine. I love impactful work with a light enough touch to sneak up on a reader. Restraint, in my opinion, is one of the most important components of great literary prose.”
Fawn Parker is a writer and editor based between Toronto and Montreal. She has been editing poetry and prose for web and print journals for a number of years, including publications such as The Puritan, Soliloquies Anthology, and The Void. In 2016 Fawn founded BAD NUDES Magazine with Thomas Molander and Sandy Spink, and they have since launched the sister-press, BAD BOOKS, where Fawn works as co-publisher, poetry editor, and managing editor. Fawn’s poetry and prose has been published in The Puritan, Joyland, Plenitude, and elsewhere. Her novel Set-Point is forthcoming with ARP Books in fall 2019. She is a current MA candidate in the field of creative writing at the University of Toronto, and the recipient of the Irving Layton Award for Fiction in 2017 and the Avie Bennett Emerging Writers Scholarship in 2018.
Kasia van Schaik
“A story that surprises. This is what we claim to look for – we readers of detective fiction, cash register tabloids, and literary journals alike. Something undisclosed, something unexpected. This is what keeps us invested in a story, and, more broadly, in language itself. But what exactly does it mean to be surprised by fiction?
Probing the etymology of the word, I rephrase my initial assertion: I’m eager for prose that “seizes” me, that “overtakes” me – sentences that re-configure or revitalize my perception of the world, that make the familiar strange or lively or scandalous, that alternate between precision and unruliness, nudity and disguise.
The last ten years as a teacher, writer, reviewer, and shameless imitator of authors I admire have taught me to cultivate an almost religious attention to detail. As I mention in my short talk on editing, during the revision process I devote myself to the text until I find its co-ordinates: the lines around which the narrative coheres. They lead me to the moving, breathing story underneath the surface. More than plot, I’m interested in sentences that teach us to notice. I’m interested in voice. In a hungry and attentive eye.
In life, I’m a very indecisive person. I’ll change shirts eight times before leaving the house. Menus are exercises in vertigo. But as an editor I find I’m assured in my choices. I feel good. Clear-headed, awake. My favourite colour ink is green.
I’m delighted and honoured to be joining carte blanche’s massively talented editorial team and becoming part of a publication that I’ve valued both as a reader and a contributor. As one of the incoming fiction editors, I look forward to discovering new and exhilarating prose and to be working with writers in Montreal’s thriving literary community and beyond. Thanks, carte blanche, for welcoming me on board!”
Kasia van Schaik is a South African born, Montreal-based writer. She is the author of the chapbook Sea Burial Laws According to Country (Desert Pets Press) and her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, This Magazine, Prism International, Jacket2, The Best Canadian Poetry Anthology (2015), and more. Kasia received the Quebec Writer’s Federation Short Story Prize (2009) and was a finalist for CBC Short Story Prize and carte blanche’s 3Macs Prize in 2017. She is currently a doctoral student at McGill University, where she teaches contemporary short fiction and creative writing. Follow Kasia on Twitter at @kasiajuno