Letter from the editors
Becca: I’m truly so excited to have all of you on board at Triangle House. It’s so crazy that for the past three years, it’s pretty much been me and Monika running this entire little operation, and now we have a much wider swath of humans and it’s like...I really can’t even imagine the amazing possibilities that opens up! Thinking back on when we started the review, something I thought about a lot was like: why. You know, there’s lots of lit mags out there, there’s lots of vessels for work (although of course there are also vessels of work shuttering daily…) anyway, what is your WHY? Why did you want to get involved with Triangle House specifically, but also why do you want to be a part of a container that puts work out into the world in general?
Thea: Ok, so confession. I learned about Monika and Triangle House about two years ago when I was reading her interview on GAL and she was speaking about her job as a literary agent and that she’d started a magazine as a way to make something. The whole setup was so cool and there were a million books, hard wood floors, and an adorable cat. It just stuck in my mind. So cut to 2020 when I meet Monika at Tin House, interview her and Becca, and then get to join the rest of the crew!
I can’t wait to make something with other writers and creators. I mean making something is the ultimate way to fight against the man? (In addition to voting, supporting women, supporting black women, dismantling white supremacy, etc.) It’s like we’re all in this world which at once feels totally isolating but also totally connective through the interwebs. Every day feels like the apocalypse and then I’ll read a poem by Terrance Hayes or speculative fiction gem online and it’s like, yes, the world is still giving gifts. I want to be the giver, if you know what I mean.
Alex: The world is still giving gifts! I fully share that feeling of wanting to be a giver—of wanting both to give readers something new and delicious and surprising in a really deadening time, and to give writers and artists assurance that their work is of renewed importance. I wanted to work with Triangle House because it’s a venue that has just always consistently published the smartest, most interesting kinds of work. There’s no pretension or compromise or stuffiness or corniness. There’s only this really committed dedication to prioritizing and nurturing community, to elevating the unexpected, to interrogating the status quos in publishing and literature and the art world. I’m really excited to be in an editorial role where I can have that openness with the writers I’m working with, where I can make sure every piece is part of a larger ongoing, open conversation about like: how art and entertainment and ego and tradition and solidarity intersect. I love how Triangle House brings artists into conversation with one another consistently and surprisingly, whether it’s through literal roundtables or themed issues or just by highlighting voices that are really clearly and deeply steeped in a certain artistic or cultural or ideological tradition. So I’m excited to find pieces that feel like a part of that dialogue already going within the TH microverse, as well as pieces that spark new conversations about our world.
Yash: Triangle House certainly does have a magnetic effect; so many of my favorite authors are Triangle House clients or friends of Triangle House, and there’s a gravitational effect, as authors and editors draw each other into this unique and dynamic orbit. It’s a joy to join this solar system! Especially with the arrangement of Triangle House Review issues, the time and care that goes into the meticulous curation of each one, I’m so excited to be a part of something with such an exhilarating precedent. Especially as Nonfiction editor, working with criticism, essays, and interviews, I’m so excited to harness the power of the incredible perspectives and pairings that the Triangle House team facilitates. It’s a remarkable opportunity to get to join my favorite brains and my favorite voices all in the same proverbial room.
Jeesoo: Small publishing houses like Triangle House and Wonder (which I run with my co-editor Ben Fama) only exist because it’s writing-first. To do something different than what is being offered from the machine requires a lot of labor, lots of new ideas, and no profit. It shouldn’t have to be this way, but this is why it’s so exciting to be part of the problem-solving process. I don’t think people realize how many odds are truly stacked against experimental writing getting a fair shot in this world … and to see the fruits of that particular hard work photographed on a yacht? Iconic.
Becca: How has your relationship to art changed during the pandemic? Or, conversely, how has it stayed the same?
Alex: I have no patience for any work that shows itself off anymore. Like everyone else I know, I’ve been fully unable to focus on anything for long stretches of time, other than my terrible little phone. Over the last several months when I have sat down to make myself read, I’ve had a much easier time digesting nonfiction. I’ve loved slowly, carefully reading things like Women in Clothes and A.S. Hamrah’s The Earth Dies Streaming and James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work and Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy. But at the same time, I think that shift in my attentions has really reenergized how I look at and think about and seek out fiction and movies and even visual media. I want the truth, or what feels true—I’m not finding refuge right now in really florid sentences or elaborate plots or glossiness or slickness or artifice the way I sometimes used to. I don’t want to see the author being an author.
Thea: At this point, I don’t even try to deny that the pandemic, along with the state of this country, has fully encroached on my creative and reflective space. But then I remember that it has always been that way for a lot of folks in this country. And we still made art! Right now, I crave fiction that will instantly transport. I recently re-read Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and I was reminded of how she helped lay the groundwork for women’s interiority. It’s how we go to these works now that lie so far outside the white male imagination. From Zora, I can trace the through lines to Raven Leilani’s Luster and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half which were mini-salvations in the pandemic.
Jeesoo: I’m not reading as much writing that I normally would have just to keep up with while talking to people over drinks. I’m rereading a lot of essays and poems that were really important to me when I started to build my own practice. Lyn Hejinian’s The Language of Inquiry ... Joan Retallack’s The Poethical Wager ... everything by Chelsey Minnis. Writing has been slow for me, but it’s extremely encouraging and exciting to see writers and artists offering remote workshops over Zoom with lots of engagement. There’s not enough time to spend on anything you don’t enjoy, and I think more people should come to terms with that in what they read and write. Yet, I still struggle with this, too. The pandemic’s devastating effects are so beyond the obsession with the annual lists and awards … that all faded away this year ... and is obviously ultimately unimportant … isn’t that something we all reflected on during this time? And yet … attention and money is what prolongs the longevity of literary projects.
Relatedly, I’d like to plug that Arjun and Kevin have a very excellent podcast where they interview Rahel Aima on how corny and disingenuous it is to see institutions scrambling to make themselves relevant to the political moment.
Becca: Alex’s answer made me think about: these days social media is, for better or worse, a huge part of the production and consumption of art and writing. How do you envision creating a more nurturing social media landscape for writers through our work?
Alex: Wow, I was thinking about this question for like two days, unsure of what to say, and then I started reading Elena Ferrante’s Frantumaglia, and in the very first section she reprints a letter to the publishing house that put out her first novel about how she was going to refuse to do any promotion for the book: no conferences, no award ceremonies, no TV interviews. And it’s this metal, brutal letter. But then it takes a really beautiful turn, and she talks about waiting up at night for presents from the Befana as a little girl in winter, and about how now she has this great hope that her novel will be this marvel that will succeed on its own, and she wants to wait and see if her book becomes the miracle she hopes it’ll be, or whether it doesn’t. It’s going to sink or swim with or without her—she’s just the author, she’s no longer connected to the book, the readership decides now. And what I love about TH’s approach to social media is that it’s never this bombardment of “in case you missed it”s, trying to get the work seen by as many people as possible just so they can see it. It’s about selecting work that’s miraculous on its own, and working with authors to give them that confidence in the longevity of their work, and I think it’s why I’m always looking back at past issues and why we have so many readers who are doing the same thing. So my hope for our new group of editors is that we’ll be nurturing of the work, and that in turn will create a more organic sharing process. You always want people to be linking to poems and criticism and stories on social platforms out of real excitement, a real need to talk about something they’ve just read and can’t stop thinking about with someone else.
Thea: Yes @ Alex! Nurturing is so crucial to a writer and yet it almost seems antithetical to the landscape of social media. I don’t want a conversation that begins and ends with consumption or the question “have you read?” I want the lingering, meandering conversations akin to those in a niche book club. So the challenge is how to do that on a platform where the terrain is always shifting or, even worse, derails us from the deep thinking that writers and readers ultimately crave. I think the answer lies in cultivation and that’s what I see TH doing. It begins with the work itself and then I think the audience congregates around that. There’s no faux urgency. Instead, there’s a trust that the pieces in each issue will be worth your time. Visibility on social media is important—but so is what we choose to make visible.
Jeesoo: I took this weeklong workshop, and one of the instructors (allegedly famous) made a big deal about not talking about technology in a poem. Sorry to the famous poet, but I had no clue who she was without looking her up later. As a writer, being against social media and tech is a really easy but super boring default position to have. It’s much more helpful for me to think about writing with the acknowledgement that not everything is for everyone, and that is fine! We don’t have to like each other’s art, but we also don’t have to be assholes about it. I’ve been introduced to so many people and art through Twitter and Instagram. Conflict Is Not Abuse has had a big impression on me about being more generous and approaching anything with good faith and accountability. If you say something on the Internet, you should follow it up and say it in person.
