The Catch Newsletter
MArch 2021
Welcome to Talon Review’s second edition of The Catch newsletter! This month includes an update on The Talon Review, an interview by C.G Myth with Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn’t Require You, Hadley Hendrix's “Side Steppin’” playlist recommendation, and a poem, “My Irishman,” by Grace Rodriguez.
Talon Update
March was the last full month that the Talon Review was accepting submissions for our Spring 2021 issue. The deadline to submit your fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, audio, or video is April 1st by midnight. We’re excited to see your work soon!
For the rest of March, we were hard at work marketing Talon Review’s call for submissions. We have also been looking towards the Fall 2021 semester and the future of the Talon Review. Next semester, the journal will see many new members as well as new leadership. If you are a current or former UNF student interested in coming on board, you should send an email to Talon’s advisor Mark Ari at mari@unf.edu, letting him know about your interest.
With the end of March, Talon will soon be shifting gears to start curating our Vol. 2, Issue 4, sending out acceptance emails, and designing the issue. Stay tuned in April for the results, and we hope you enjoy the March edition of The Catch!
— Sarah Dumitrascu,
Co-Editor in Chief
Book Interview: The World Doesn’t Require you — Rion Amilcar Scott
Interview by C.G Myth
The following is a transcript of an interview. Cas Campbell (otherwise known as C.G. Myth) is the social media director for the Talon Review. They interviewed Rion Amilcar Scott, the author of The World Doesn’t Require You and the winner of the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
Cas: Does writing energize or exhaust you?
Rion: I think it does both. I just don’t feel right if I go too long without writing. But when I’m dealing with heavy themes, as I do often in my stories, I often need to take a break.
Cas: What was your hardest scene to write in The World Doesn’t Require You?
Rion: There is a scene in “Rolling in my Six-fo’” that presents some pretty charged imagery. It is kind of like dealing with explosives. I had to be careful to write in such a way that critiqued these images rather than reinforced them. Even when I was pretty sure I got it right, I had a lot of anxiety about including the images in my story because of how much harm they’ve done over the centuries. I never want to write anything that black people are ashamed of, but I’ve gotten good feedback on those scenes.
Cas: Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
Rion: Again, I think it’s both. I would like each book, and each story, to stand on its own. But each book builds upon what I created previously (even unpublished and failed works). There are characters and themes, and locations that will continually return in my books. I do think of myself as writing one long book called, the Cross-River Saga.
Cas: How long on average does it take you to write a book?
Rion: Forever. Lol. Some of the stories in TWDRY took over ten years to write. “Rolling in my Six-Fo’” was one that took that long. Each book and story takes its own time.
Cas: When writing The World Doesn’t Require You, why did you choose the title “Mercury in Retrograde” for one of the short stories? How did you come up with the idea of the robots being affected by space (astrology)?
Rion: I’ve always been fascinated by astrology, and it seems to be having a moment. In astrology, Mercury rules electronics and everything with moving parts. When Mercury is in retrograde, supposedly electronic objects go haywire. I thought that idea would be interesting when applied to AI, and I had never seen it in a science fiction story. Also, I thought the idea of superstitious robots to be hilarious. It has become a thing that is just a part of robot culture in my fiction.
Cas: What caused you to order the stories in The World Doesn’t Require You the way that you did? If you were working on the book now, would you order them any differently?
Rion: The novella was supposed to be in the middle, dividing more grounded stories and the more speculative stories—a horrible idea. It grew too long to be anywhere, but the end, and I’m lucky for that. I knew “David Sherman” would be first because it has a great first sentence, and it is, overall, a showstopper. I had it nearly completed when I was working on my first book, but I thought it would overwhelm the stories in Insurrections, so I held it so it could be with stories that were more its peer. I wanted to end with “Rolling in my Six-Fo’” because the ending is a great echo in the reader’s head. So those became my bookends. Everything in the middle was up for grabs. There were a couple of stories in the middle that happened in chronological order, so I put those in their proper order (for instance, “Slim in Hell” takes place after “The Temple of Practical Arts.”). Everything else was up for grabs.
Cas: Why did you use emails to tell a large part of the story in “Special Topics in Loneliness Studies”?
Rion: Email is ubiquitous in the modern workplace, especially in academia. In my campus jobs, I have drowned in emails. It just made sense that the narrator, so alienated from everyone, would be trying to make connections via email.
Cas: How did you come up with the town of Cross-River?
Rion: I started writing about the D.C. area. But I felt my knowledge of the area was a bit skimpy despite having lived here for most of my life. I also read other authors who wrote D.C. in a dazzling way that I didn’t want to compete with. I knew that no one else could write my imagined space better than I could. It’s one of my better decisions in this life.
Cas: Why did you choose to start The World Doesn’t Require You with “David Sherman, the Last Son of God”?
Rion: It’s largely because the first sentence is, “God is from Cross River, everyone knows that.” But it also sets the tone for the books: irreverent, somewhat mystical, and magical, but grounded at the same time.
Cas: Do you work on a set schedule, or do you write whenever something comes to you?
Rion: Each project gets its own writing schedule. Right now, I am so swamped that I just write a sentence at a time whenever they come to me. That’s how I’m going to get through.
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Rion’s Links
New short story collection available now!: The World Doesn't Require You (Norton/Liveright)
Debut short story collection: Insurrections: Stories (Univ. Press of Kentucky)
Winner of the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
Side-Steppin’ – Heel Toe, Heel Toe
Playlist curated by Hadley Hendrix
As the title of this playlist suggests, almost all of these songs were selected on the basis of whether or not one could “side-step” to them (subtitled, “Heel Toe, Heel Toe”). Originally intended as a Thanksgiving playlist to dance to with close friends, it has now become a go-to warm and fuzzy collection of songs I can play when the mood is lighthearted but still groovy. Whether at the beach, cleaning, or simply hanging out with friends, this playlist combines tender tunes that still have enough pep to get you side-steppin’.
My best friend, Lily Rake (IG | @vanishingpointtt), and I spent several hours crafting this playlist to include the best of the best, including but not limited to: Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, Cocteau Twins, The Clash, The Wake, The B-52’s, Cream, and so many more! It even has transitions…so if you listen, we ask you kindly to do so in order to soak in all the subtleties and slips in the groove.
My Irishman
by Grace Rodriguez
Your essence, a jazz tune blaring across
Your eyes, kelly, shining seas
Your words, lullabies that float on the breeze
Your voice, my honeyed high
Your laugh, a burbling creek
Your smile, gives bloody butterflies
Your mind, parallels complex compositions
Your heart, a crescendo of passion and kindness
my heart? Yours from the start.
Meet Talon Review’s Harper Warner
Harper Warner studies English and Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. She has been a part of the Talon Review staff since 2019, working with non-fiction, fiction and art. She interned at Trio House Press in 2020, as well.
Meet Talon Review’s Hadley Hendrix
Hadley Hendrix is the Fiction Editor at Talon Review and is currently studying Psychology of Fiction at the University of North Florida. She intends to become a book editor, literary agent, or something else in the world of publishing that she may fall in love with along the way. Before joining the staff, her work has previously been published in Talon Review, alongside other publications, including the Élan International Literary Magazine and Scholastic, where she’s also won several awards. Just like she aspires to achieve in her own writing, she looks for stories that eat at life and leave readers with its seeds, the pulp sticking to the sides of an empty glass.
Meet Talon Review’s C.G. Myth
C.G. Myth is a poet, fantasy writer, and jewelry maker from south Florida. They cherish making stories for other queer and disabled people to enjoy. They will earn a BA from the University of North Florida in spring 2021 and start pursuing an MFA from Stetson University in summer 2021. When they aren’t writing, they are usually listening to music and petting their service dog.
Meet Talon Review’s Grace Rodriguez
Grace Rodriguez is a reader for the Talon Review. She is studying English with a focus on Creative Writing and she spends most of her free time either painting or writing. One of her goals in life is to eventually publish a novel. One of these days, she’ll actually figure out how to write one too.