ISSUE NINE: Contributors & A Note
featuring KYLE SEIBEL, BETHANY BALL, KEVIN MORBY, ВОВ HICOK, and paintings by KAMI BAERGEN
Happy to have you here for Issue Nine. A note below from me. Print is free! -AV
CONTRIBUTORS:
KYLE SEIBEL
I SUPPOSE I SHOULD TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT MY LIFE NOW
KEVIN MORBY
BEAUTIFUL STRANGERS AT THE BATACLAN
ВОВ HICOK
TOO LONG FOR A NOTE, MORE OF A THANK YOU SHORT STORY
- & -HERMETIC THINKING (print only)
BETHANY BALL
THE CROW KNOWS WHAT IS BREAKING
- & -
THE WATERMARK
A NOTE:
In 1999, I took a job at a medical research center in Seattle. It was an admin position supporting the recruiters in HR. On my first day, I met Edward, the guy I was replacing. There were banker’s boxes sitting on the floor of his cubicle—now my cubicle, my first—packed with photos and knickknacks, along with goodbye gifts and farewell cards from coworkers. He’d held the job for many years.
Edward walked me around the office introducing me to the recruiters and support staff, and it was obvious he was well-loved. Each of the recruiters gushed about his efforts on their behalf, said he saved them from ruin every week.
The focus of the gig was placing advertisements for job openings into various publications by their individual deadlines. Edward talked me through the process for The Seattle Times, The Stranger, The Seattle Weekly, The University of Washington’s job board, and others.
“We can start with The Seattle Weekly. Their deadline happens to be today,” Edward said. “For them, I used to have to make sure everything was formatted a specific way, and they would only accept the ads via fax with one listing per page. It used to take forever,” he said. “Often I’d be typing up and faxing 20 or 30 pages just for one weekly paper.”
“Okay,” I said. “And now?”
“Yes, well, thankfully now I just email the listings over,” Edward said, “and formatting’s super fast. I can cut and paste from what the recruiters send me. Let me show you.” He opened up his inbox, copied all the text from one message, pasted it into a new one, made the font uniform with a simple ‘select all’, and pressed send. “See, easy. It used to take half a day for The Seattle Weekly alone.”
“In my early days here,” Edward said, “I had to deliver listings to The Seattle Times by courier,” he said. “They had their own strange formatting requirements, too, but now they’ve got this great web portal, very simple to use.”
He went through a few more publications. Same story: used to be time-intensive, now push-button. He gave me a tour of the cubicle. “This is where we used to store paper copies of the ads and stuff,” he said, pointing to the grid of filing cabinets that served as the back wall of the workspace. “Filing took forever. Now, I just file the emails. Much easier.”
“So, it seems like the job used to be way more complicated?” I said.
“Big time,” Edward said. “I really had to hustle to get everything done each week.”
“But now,” I said, searching him for a hint, a tell. “With the computer? The internet?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Much simpler.”
“And,” I said, using my hands and my eyes and my eyebrows to indicate the whole of the office, “they haven’t figured out that now…”
“Correct,” Edward said, putting his index finger to his shush-shaped lips.
I don’t think companies were tracking or spying too much yet in ’99, but if someone were clocking my time inside that cubicle, they’d find about 32 hours a week spent on Hotmail and Instant Messenger, and I was most certainly working on the early editions of this magazine as well. Issue Nine makes five new ones since the relaunch, which is one more than the original four I made back then. Stretch goal achieved!
KYLE SEIBEL opens the issue with a new short story showcasing his singular humor and wide sensitivity. When I sent the piece to the artist-in-residence for this issue, KAMI BAERGEN, my only guideline was that she shouldn’t paint the erection. I’ve still got some prudish impulses leftover from Central Indiana.
Although I was in personal conflict with short-short stories while reading submissions, BETHANY BALL’s pair of magic minis broke me down and snuck in. They’re ambiguous fables; parables without the pesky moralizing.
You know KEVIN MORBY for his music, but here he contributes a striking essay in review of one of his own shows. This is the third time a client from my day job in music has shown up in the mag with writing. I didn’t set out to cross-pollinate that directly, but now that it’s happened a few times, I hope it’ll happen again. I’m hounding one of the artists I work for about their unpublished poems on the regular.
I’m an unqualified poetry editor because I don’t know or read enough poetry, but when I opened BOB HICOK’s submissions, I said: Oh shit I looooove poems. I looked him up, and discovered a lot of people love his poems. Two are included here, but one is only available with the print edition. Request your copy, and I’ll send it straight to your mailbox for zero dollars. In each package, I’m including a copy of the newest Little Engines Loosie, MIKE NAGEL’s The Unintentionalist (Abridged), because I care for you.
Best,
Adam
Nashville, November 2023
ISSUE NINE’S
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE:
KAMI BAERGEN
Kami’s work explores the complexities of the mundane, life and death, and other opposites. Working primarily as a painter using acrylic gouache, Baergen is heavily influenced by Dutch Still Life and the Metaphysical art movement. Born in Chicago, based in Tennessee. Find more at kbaergen.com and instagram.com/kbaergen.
Fascinating to think how jobs have changed since then, and how they've always been changing.