Welcoming Aimee Voelz, our new Staff Assistant

Aimee Voelz has recently joined the Crab Creek Review team as a Staff Assistant.  She is a Seattle area writer and consultant working on her first book, a self-help guide for people seeking career changes.  Here are a few words from Aimee:

“My love for reading and writing started early and absorbed much of my attention.  Maybe too much – as a kindergartner I was reading so intently on the bus ride home from school that I didn’t get off at my stop.  I didn’t look up from my book until I heard my mother’s voice and realized that the bus had completed its route, parked at the bus barn, and the driver had phoned my mother to come pick me up!   Since then, I’ve enjoyed reading many genres and writing poetry, fiction, song lyrics, and creative non-fiction.

Each professional role that I’ve held also incorporated writing for marketing communications, print materials, reports, or social media.  Recently I left the corporate world to work as an independent consultant.  That career change allowed me to spend July of 2013 at the Summer Writing Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where the experimental approach to creativity took my poetry-writing up a notch.  Currently my non-fiction material is focused on my book and blog, where I write about doing meaningful work that is true to individual values: www.truthanddetails.com.

I’m very happy to join the Crab Creek Review staff as a volunteer assistant in its 31st year of publishing high-quality literary works.”

And we're pleased as punch to have you on board, Aimee!

In Which We Welcome our New Fiction Editor, Sayantani Dasgupta

Barely six months after my essay, Why My Mother Should Take Over the World, got published in Crab Creek Review, I was invited to join its editorial team as the fiction editor. I was delighted and honored, not only because of CCR’s fine reputation but because it would give me an opportunity to exercise my editorial muscle that had been dormant since I stepped away from the world of publishing in 2006 to pursue writing, both as a teacher and student. 

While Crab Creek Review has a history of publishing renowned writers, I am also hoping to find fresh, new voices. I am looking for stories that will stun me with their characters and conflicts, and those that will surprise me with the way they turn. One of my favorite short stories is Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs. Sen’s. I have read it countless times and each time I am heartbroken by Mrs. Sen’s loneliness, by her attachment to all the ordinary objects with which she surrounds herself and how they constantly remind her of home. Another favorite is Dan Chaon’s Bees where the father’s day to day existence is scarred by his son’s nightmares and the memory of a past he cannot forget. It’s a deeply haunting story and the author’s grip over its pacing and tension are its greatest strengths.

Since graduating with my MFA in 2006, I have had the privilege of meeting with a variety of writers, and talking to them about craft and process. I have learned about their daily writing practices, favorite books, and so on. I have met writers who prefer to talk only about what has been published and keep under wraps their current projects. And I have also met those who make changes to their manuscript only after discussing it at length with their writing groups. But if there is a way I can distill their collective wisdom and pass it on further, it will be to trust your instinct but not wait for the muse to strike.

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Born in Calcutta and raised in New Delhi, Sayantani Dasgupta’s writing has appeared in several American and Indian journals. In her writing, Sayantani likes to explore the intersection of personal story juxtaposed with political turmoil, popular culture, and religious fundamentalism, especially in the context of South Asia, along with answering the question as to what constitutes an Indian identity in an increasingly global world. She lives in Moscow and teaches writing and South Asian literature at the University of Idaho.


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Important FYI regarding fiction submissions: There are still five days left to submit your stories (and poetry) to Crab Creek Review. Our deadline ends 15 December. Send us your best! We'll read it with care.