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Every Story Tells a Picture or How to Vignette

By Maryann Henck

Angelia Velosa & Cristo­pher Gomez, Door 95 in the Rua San­ta Maria — The arT of oPEn doORs/Projecto aRTe pORtes abEr­tas, Fun­chal, Madeira; Pho­to cred­it: Maryann Henck

In the age of social media, it’s the image that rules. Insta­gram is the per­fect exam­ple: It not only feeds some people’s insa­tiable need to doc­u­ment and offer glimpses into their pri­vate lives but also caters to a cer­tain audience’s desire to con­sume and expe­ri­ence these slices of life vic­ar­i­ous­ly. Insta­gram refers to the images post­ed as “sto­ries,” a des­ig­na­tion that fits in per­fect­ly with the proverb: Every pic­ture tells a sto­ry. And sto­ries are almost always subject(ed) to inter­pre­ta­tion. In the case of these Insta­gram pic­ture sto­ries, often the only clue is a brief cap­tion or hashtag.

But what if the focus were to be shift­ed and that proverb were to be reversed? Read more »

We Need a Break or We’ll Break or Why to Vignette

By Kai-Arne Zimny

 

”Lose your mind and come to your sens­es.” Fritz Perls

 

In an age of nev­er-end­ing par­al­lel con­ver­sa­tions, screens and sec­ond screens, and an even more inter­est­ing sto­ry just one swift move away from your fin­ger­tips, the most nat­ur­al and human­ly intu­itive things sud­den­ly don’t come easy any­more. It’s not easy to just go for a walk. To feel the earth give way under your feet. To lis­ten to the wind whis­per­ing cold gib­ber­ish into your ears. To feel the sun on your skin, that warm yel­low mas­sage of light. To smell the green of the trees, to grate­ful­ly breathe in what they so lov­ing­ly breathe out.

Since our feet are already in ‘vignetty’ waters, let’s go for a dive!

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Findians: A Journey to Distant Cousins

By Dagmar Mißfeldt

In their 2016 book, Fin­ti­aanien Mail­la, three Finnish women take read­ers on a jour­ney into unknown ter­ri­to­ry. Meeri Koutanie­mi (pho­to jour­nal­ist), Maria Sep­pälä (jour­nal­ist and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er), and Kat­ja Ket­tu (best­selling author) intro­duce us to Find­i­ans, a group of peo­ple who prac­ti­cal­ly nobody has heard of, at least until now.

Between 1860 and 1940, approx­i­mate­ly 400,000 Finnish emi­grants left their home­land for North Amer­i­ca in search of a bet­ter life. They main­ly set­tled in Min­neso­ta, Michi­gan, and Ontario. 400,000 is an amaz­ing­ly high num­ber, espe­cial­ly when one con­sid­ers that Fin­land only had a pop­u­la­tion of about three mil­lion peo­ple in 1900. In their new home­land, the Finnish came in con­tact with the Ojib­wa peo­ple. Rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly, the indige­nous peo­ple and the Finns noticed that they had much in common:

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An Interview with Award-Winning Author Jayne Anne Phillips

By Sabrina Völz

Pho­to cred­it: Ele­na Seibert

After par­tic­i­pat­ing in an inspir­ing writ­ing work­shop with Jayne Anne Phillips as part of The 15th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on the Short Sto­ry in Eng­lish in Lis­bon this past June, Jayne Anne kind­ly agreed to answer a few ques­tions for the ASB. The result­ing email inter­view gives our read­ers a glimpse into the many roles that Jayne Anne plays and her take on cre­ative writ­ing in a post-lit­er­ate society.

 

Sab­ri­na: Please use three adjec­tives to describe yourself.

Jayne Anne: Three words: these might change day to day, but today I’d say: Deter­mined. Ques­tion­ing. Hyper-sen­so­ry aware.

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Improving Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

By Maria Moss

f course the title is face­tious: I cer­tain­ly don’t want to – even if I could, which I can’t – improve one of the best and most anthol­o­gized poems in the Eng­lish lan­guage writ­ten by one of the great­est lyri­cal voic­es of all times. What I ‘do’ want to do, how­ev­er, is write about a teach­ing tool that ini­tial­ly sends shiv­ers up every student’s back: con­tin­u­ing a poem, using the same rhyme scheme and meter. Once they’ve mas­tered the task, how­ev­er, they’re quite proud of them­selves – and right­ful­ly so.
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Thoughts of a Digital Alternative

By Maria Moss

Since tomor­row is the Nation­al Day of Unplug­ging, we thought it only made sense to relaunch the “Thoughts of a Dig­i­tal Alternative.” Here’s our advice: Use your phone today and “tell a friend.” If you still need assis­tance, down­load the unplug­ging kit: www.nationaldayofunplugging.com.

 

Pho­to cred­it: Mike Mozart on Flickr

Believe it or not, I’ve nev­er owned a cell phone. This sen­tence com­ing from a tod­dler might not be that astound­ing, but com­ing from a mid­dle-aged woman who tremen­dous­ly enjoys the com­pa­ny of friends, col­leagues, and stu­dents, is rather sur­pris­ing. Why wouldn’t any­one – with the excep­tion of her­mits and strict tech­no refuseniks – want to enjoy being and stay­ing in touch all the time. Well, maybe it is exact­ly the “all the time” that I find dis­turb­ing. Of course, peo­ple tell me that you could just turn your phone off, that you don’t need to be online con­tin­u­ous­ly, that it’s o.k. to be unavail­able at times. And appar­ent­ly, I’m not alone.
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