Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression - Relief Interviews Guest Editor Jill Kandel

Relief Interviews Guest Editor Jill Kandel

Written by Coach Culbertson

Thursday, 06 March 2008

Relief welcomes Jill Noel Kandel as our guest editor for creative nonfiction. Jill is reading and editing for issue 2.3 (summer 2008). Our submissions period for issue 2.3 will remain open until April 1, and we still have slots to fill in all three genres. We are reading for fiction and poetry as well as creative nonfiction.

After her short essay, “Dill,” was published in Relief issue 1.3, Jill went on to have work accepted in journals like Image, Brevity, and Apalachee Review. Jill writes for a local women’s magazine in Moorhead, Minnesota, and she also teaches creative writing to homeschooled high school students.

Relief: Jill, welcome! We “met” you last year when we published “Dill” in our third issue. The piece was quite short—under 1,000 words—and it had so much punch. I see you have creative nonfiction forthcoming in Brevity, which is impressive. Do you always write very short material like this? Is the short-short work what you’ll be looking for in creative nonfiction submissions?

Jill: I started out writing all over the board, lacking in control. I attended a writer’s workshop and sat under the teaching of Robin Hemley, Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Robin introduced me to flash nonfiction. It has many names: Brief, flash, short, postcard. Basically it is writing a complete nonfiction story in under 1,000 words.

Writing short allowed me to learn how to focus. I had to understand this in order to move on to longer essay writing. I’d love to see more short and more experimental writing coming in to Relief for the summer issue. I also really enjoy traditional narrative, especially when it has multiple narrative lines running through it.

Relief: Please tell us a little more about “experimental” writing, and especially how nonfiction writing can be experimental.

Jill: Writing can be experimental in form or voice among other things. Often experimental writing uses different structures. In nonfiction the structure can be fragmented with small snippet stories broken up by reflection. It can be braided, with two or three story lines—or history, or research—running simultaneously throughout. Writing or reading experimental work is a little like watching someone who knows what he’s doing play with a Rubik’s cube. At first the movements seem random, but in the end the colors all come together, the essay pulls into one piece. I was thrilled to see Chris Fisher’s “Scars” in Relief. It is a good example of a piece of experimental creative nonfiction writing.

Relief: We’ve gotten more positive comments from readers on “Scars” than on any other creative nonfiction we’ve published over the past year and a half since we started Relief! What is it about Chris’s work that is so appealing?

Jill: He doesn’t give it all away. I love “Scars” because as a reader it keeps me thinking. Where is he going? What does this mean? He weaves stories of his own intrigue with scars, his family history, and his chickens. While I’m reading it my mind is bouncing back and forth between these incongruous ruptures. But he is able to hold the story threads tightly as he slowly ties them all together. That is the beauty of it. In the end you are left not with the fragmented sections but with the whole story. All the puzzle pieces fit and it is very satisfying.

Relief: A number of our nonfiction submissions are more like articles or even sermons and not what we at Relief think of as creative nonfiction. How can writers be sure their work is appropriate for Relief before they submit?

Jill: Christian writing has many avenues. Doctrinal, devotional, and magazine article writing seem to be prominent. I would say that Relief wants to publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that is out of the Christian mainstream. If a piece is something I could read in Guideposts or Christianity Today for example than it probably isn’t right for Relief. I think that what I am looking for is of a more literary quality.

Relief is trying to do something different. I love the definition given by the Relief staff:

Relief- An architectural term referring to a raised projection of figures on a flat surface. It is an image of a reality caught halfway between 2D and 3D.

This is precisely the type of writing that I will be looking for. Writing that reflects the reality and honesty of the world we live in tempered by the hope given to us as believers. Leave the cotton candy at the fairgrounds.

Relief: Please make a couple of comments on your own nonfiction writing and particularly the pieces you have forthcoming for publication in literary journals. How does your freelance work for the local Moorhead magazine Area Woman differ from the work you’re publishing in literary journals?

Jill: I do basically two types of writing. My work at Area Woman is journalistic. I’m given the name of a person and a story line. I do an interview and write up a story. There are strict deadlines and word counts. I get paid.

The essays I have coming out in journals are literary. Each word must carry the right sound, rhythm, and tone. I spend months working on each essay, looking for depth and meaning. Essay is more than a narrative arc. It is a journey. I write about things I don’t understand. In journalism it is often easy to see where a story is going. This is death to an essay. A good essay is a journey with the reader following the writer’s own path.

Relief: Is all of your own literary work experimental?

Jill: No, not at all! The piece I wrote that Image will be publishing has a very traditional narrative arc and is chronological. I love the essay because it can take so many forms. I’ve written everything from a five hundred-word, second person, fragmented essay to a five thousand-word narrative essay written in the traditional first person style. I get jazzed about the funky stuff. But I also don’t want to be confused as a reader.

Relief: What is it that makes a piece of writing absolutely Christian?

Jill: As a writer I am still trying to learn how to write faith. As Christians we walk by faith and not by sight. To write faith is not to write sight. What I mean is that as Christian writers we tend to want to write the end of the story, heaven, and angels wings. Throw in a little victory celebration. But as human beings living here on this earth we are often like Joseph sitting in Pharaoh’s prison. He didn’t know the ending of his own story. I try to write what I know today to be true.

Relief: What makes a good piece of creative nonfiction? And when I ask that, I’m really asking what kind of work would really excite you and make you want to publish it in Relief?

Jill: I want to see stories that make me curious and are bigger than the narrative itself, whether experimental or traditional. I enjoy stories that pull me in with vivid language and then surprise me with added layers running through them. I like disparate images that are braided together.

Relief: What are things that make creative nonfiction fall short of the mark?

Jill: When a story is anecdotal, and that is all it is, it falls apart. When I’m left with, “Oh, that was cute,” then it’s not enough. A story must have more meaning than itself. If it’s only an interesting happening on a Monday morning on the way to school, then it’s not enough.

Relief: Are there sure ways a writer submitting to Relief can get your attention? Lose it?

Jill: I would love to see stories with Christian faith woven in, but I don’t want to see pages of Bible verse quotations. This is not a devotional journal. It’s a literary journal that I hope produces thoughtful writing and thoughtful reading.

I would like to read a piece and be able to see people living life, sifting through the confusions, reaching out and trusting that Jesus Christ is big enough, grand enough, God enough to hold it all together, even when we can’t see it ourselves.

Creative nonfiction can err on the side of confessionalism. He who spills the most beans wins sort of mentality. I believe that good memoir sits on a teeter totter and requires an absolute balance between truth and respect. There are always going to be things that don’t need to be written. This is one of the difficult choices every nonfiction writer must make. I respect authors who respect themselves and those they write about.

To writers I say, take me on your journey. Let me see what you see and feel what you feel. Show me how it is in your world. Don’t write easy answers.

Relief: Thank you, Jill, for taking the time to twist the Rubik’s cube a bit and tell us what you’re looking for in creative nonfiction to publish in Relief.

To submit work to Relief in creative nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, click here.