Our Universe, Ourselves
As we embark on the literary journey that is Issue 42 of our beloved magazine, we can’t resist the temptation to pay homage to the cosmic wit of Douglas Adams and his magnum opus, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, remains a mystery.
But in life and the very best of stories, isn’t that sometimes the way? Back here on planet Pulp, we love work that reminds us of the serendipity, coincidence, and interconnectedness of all things — those literary adventures that invite us to suspend disbelief and venture into worlds (galaxies?) where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, where the mundane becomes magical.
Questions without answers; answers without questions. If we’re up for it, that’s where we find the room to explore, ponder, and play in the delicious uncertainties of being human. And in these pages, there’s a controlled — dare we say — chaos in the variety of stories and voices, each of which beautifully captures a small corner of the cosmos.
So, dear readers, immerse yourself in the magic, embrace the absurd, revel in the uncertainty, and delight in the infinite possibility of life, the universe, and everything. After all, the journey, literary and otherwise, is surely as important as the destination. And the answer may very well be found right here, in 42.
Happy reading, fellow cosmic travellers!
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 42, Spring 2024
The Next Chapter
Winter is the bookend season of our yearly calendar. In the northern hemisphere, January opens in winter, and with winter again, each spent year closes. At the toll of midnight on New Year’s Eve, in that suspended moment between ending and beginning, we stare into the two faces of ‘resolution’: something is solved; something is promised.
With this issue we are celebrating not just the start of a new year, but a new decade as well. In our previous edition, we tipped our hat to the first forty (forty!) issues. And now we begin again with the first of whatever the future has in store. All of this got me to thinking about beginnings and, not endings per se, but continuings. So, in preparation for this editorial, I surveyed a few members of the Pulp team: What got you started with the magazine? What keeps you going?
For our OGs, it was, and still is, all about the magic of curation and creation. As Mel told me, her Pulp inspo began and continues with “printing the stories we like to read.” And for Jen, “the thrill of holding the new print proof, of having birthed something that is beautiful, never gets old.”
For two of our newer members, the now fully birthed magazine was itself the draw. Brooklynn joined us while the world was neck deep in a pandemic, and engaging with the magazine’s “fabulous, weird, and absorbing works” was a wonderful way to learn the ins and outs of publishing. For Sierra, it was the opportunity to co-create a magazine she became a fan of in high school (thanks, lunch money!).
And for me? I joined the magazine around its midway-to-now point: five years ago. What got me started was the opportunity to dive deep into the world of editing. What keeps me going? The incredible community of Pulp Literature writers, editors, and readers.
This magazine began when three women, united in their shared love of the written word, created a space where both emerging and established writers could find a home for their work. All of us, founders and newbies alike, continue to delight in stumbling upon a hidden gem of a story from a first-time writer, and in introducing a noted author to a whole new audience. And to witness and support an author’s journey from ‘emerging’ to ‘established’? There’s nothing quite like it.
As so many of these developing writers remind us, whatever your newfound passion, it doesn’t matter when you start; it matters that you start. Ten years and forty issues later, we’re so glad they did.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature, Issue 41, Winter 2024
Perchance to Write
Franz Kafka, in a letter to his fiancée, told her, “One can never be alone enough when one writes … there can never be enough silence around one when one writes … even night is not enough.” I may be more of a morning person, but I get it. He meets her offer of company with much the same attitude as the sentiment on my coffee mug greets those who deign to enter my writer’s cave: F*** off, I’m writing.
But even after wrangling the necessary solitude, the writer’s battle is only half-won. There’s still the fact of basic biology to wrestle with. In a diary entry dated November 15, 1910, Kafka, ever the night owl, vowed, “I won’t let myself get tired. I will jump into my novella even if it should cut up my face.” Talk about dedication to the craft!
Writers can surely relate, or at least aspire, to this hunger, but many readers understand it too. The desire to remain in the magical web cast by a well-spun story. To better know a newfound literary companion. To stay lost in a faraway land as long as the clock and tiring eyes will allow. I think of the cartoon characters of my childhood, their eyes bloodshot and propped open by toothpicks. Cutting up the face, indeed.
Whether we rise with the robins or stay up late with the nightingales, the rhythm of darkness and light patterns our days and our seasons. And, let’s be honest: our moods too. At least for now, summer is here and daylight lingers long. So, to the writers seeking inspiration for the next line and the readers ready to turn the next page, thank you for choosing to spend some of your time and precious solitude with us.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 39, Summer 2023
Again, for the First Time
Three years ago, I wrote my first editorial for Pulp Literature. It was for Issue 27, a summer release. As I was writing, it was March 2020, and we (the global we) were staring down a new virus, the cut of whose swathe we couldn’t predict and wouldn’t fathom for a long while. At the time, though, I wondered if the virus was even worth mentioning. Would it, and all that it entailed, still be a thing when the issue went to press? Well, as we all know, it was — and still is — a thing.
Truth be told, I wondered once more, here on my post-pandemic perch in early 2023, whether it was even worth mentioning again. But the eternal optimist in me suggested that now might be just the right time to offer a follow-up, a bookend of sorts. Because, although so very much was lost, some was gained. Absent regular contact (except, of course, for those ever-present Zoom meetings), we realized we do need each other — quite a lot, in fact.
Folks explored long-quieted hobbies and discovered new interests, writing chief among them. Publications saw an unprecedented (ah yes, that word again!) number of submissions. Unable to share physical space, people shared their stories. And it wasn’t just that we all suddenly had more time to think; we had more time to think things through.
Like generations past, indelibly marked by their own age, we’ll never be able to fully wipe clean our pandemic goggles. The world is a fragile place, and we are fragile creatures. And as I learned in 2020, we may not always read the future accurately, but we can continue to step into it one day — one page — at a time. As I said then, we hope these words find you safe and well and reassured in knowing that as one season ends, a new one always begins.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 38, Spring 2023
On Time
Whether by default or design, publishing a quarterly magazine is necessarily seasonal. And four times a year, at write-the-editorial time, the current season is on proud display just outside my window. Meanwhile, the publication date of the upcoming issue beckons me forward to the next.
As seems to be the case for many publishers these days, those duelling seasons are not only beginning to nuzzle against one another, but are, in fact, becoming aligned. As I write this, there’s snow on the ground, and ice on the sidewalks, and a fire in the fireplace. It is entirely possible that you, dear reader, are holding this, our winter issue, while spring’s first buds begin to bloom.
Yes, we could cite the pandemic or paper shortages or printing delays, but, really, it no longer matters. Quite simply, we are glad to be with you now. The stories and poems and art with which we have spent many months are here, and they are yours. We are delighted to meet you in this shared space, where all things become possible.
Speaking of the four seasons, within this issue, we’ve got a few more: there’s tax season and bear season and the holiday season. There’s a season each for magic and muscles and superheroes. And our feature story reminds us that, in the wake of climate change, there remain unknown seasons yet to come.
As writers and readers know, stories don’t just have their own meaning. Like seasons, they have their own momentum. We’re so glad you are along for the ride.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 37, Winter 2023
Daydream Big
Think of a few stations of solitude: a comfy chair beside the fireplace, a well-worn writing table, a cabin window opening onto a pastoral scene. You can practically hear the hush. And with these tableaux come a most delicious thrill for writers and readers alike — the psychological sovereignty to let one’s mind drift and wander, come what may.
Ah, the daydream, and its companion question, ‘What if?’ What if this happens? Or what if that happens? Or what if — heaven forbid! — nothing happens? Because once you begin to answer, you are, by necessity, eliminating countless other possibilities. That first step may be a gesture, but the second is surely a commitment.
And so the pendulum swings: from idleness to activity; from wonder to logic; from mystery to reason. From self to world and back again. If the work of the writer is daydreaming, edited, it is the fortunate reader who receives this daydream at secondhand, invited into their own private reveries.
In both writing and reading, we get to try on other selves. We get to figure out what we are about. Without our daydreams, we are likely to be narrowed to not much more than what the world is commanding us to be. Life may at times feel like a go-along, but, in daydreaming, rebellion escalates.
And so, dear reader, we offer you the daydreams of our writers. They asked, ‘What if?’ Read on to see how they answered.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 36, Autumn 2022
Ordinary Magic
Have you ever danced the Macarena? Done the Running Man? Surely you’ve tickled Elmo or talked to the hand. Done up your ’do in a scrunchie or a flattop or the Rachel? Was it Nirvana or the Spice Girls in your Discman? And just how big was your Beanie Babies collection? Whatever your nineties style — or current retro version thereof — no trip through the decade of Docs and flannel would be complete without a solid three-minute stare at a Magic Eye poster.
Stereograms weren’t new to the nineties. Binocular stereopsis — the visual sense of depth we perceive from having two eyes spaced apart — was discovered in the nineteenth century. The stereogram trend of that era was the Victorian stereoscope. And, beginning in 1939, it was the View-Master. But the colourful Magic Eye posters let us do the work ourselves, no device required. They take advantage of the slightly different image received by each eye, and from a two-dimensional image, we get a three-dimensional scene.
The trick is to soften your focus. Relax your gaze. Stay present. Reading, whether with your fingers, your ears, or your eyes, asks this of us too. Take in some sensory detail, translate it (neurologically and psychologically), and let the images come alive in your very own mind. Of course, sometimes the thing we expect to see isn’t the thing we end up seeing. But a crack in the expected might just invite us into a whole new world.
Here at Pulp, we delight in bringing you a glimpse of the timeless beyond the trends. This issue is full of friends and family, magic and mermaids. Familiar themes, yes, but in the hands of our authors, brought to new and enchanting life. In storytelling, writers make something from nothing (ah, the dreaded blank page!). Of course, nothing is ever truly nothing. Blank space, white space, dark matter. Creative inspiration. There is a there there. It is the lucky reader who gets to discover it. Sometimes all you have to do is trust in the magic.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 35, Summer 2022
Have Space, Will Travel
There’s a running joke here in south-western British Columbia. How many seasons are there in the Lower Mainland? Two: winter — and roadwork. Roadwork season begins when there’s still enough frost on the grass and snap in the air to make you remember your gloves, but just enough warmth to abandon those gloves for about an hour each day at noon. Popping up everywhere like so many brave crocuses, flaggers are flagging, diggers are digging, levellers are levelling, and pavers are paving. And most of their attention is turned to filling in the umpteen potholes with which winter scarred the city streets.
The original potholes are circles; the filled-in patches are squares. To make the road whole again, the crew excises just enough space to make for an easier repair. And while those early-morning road crews are busy squaring their circles, you can find me hunched over my coffee and crosswords, trying to circle so many puzzling squares. Will Shortz, the long-time New York Times crossword puzzle editor, believes that when people see an empty square, they long to fill it. Surely, too, when a writer sees a blank page, they feel the urge to fill it. I’ve stared down enough blank pages and driven over enough of my own literary potholes to know this to be true.
The seeds of my writing life were planted early. Books and reading — and the spaces of reading — are giants of my childhood memories. Visiting the children’s section of our local library, with its alphabet carpet, tiered steps for storytime, kid-height shelves and orderly books. (You could spot the Blumes from the Clearys an LMNOP carpet-row away!) Standing still and quiet with my fellow kindergarten-soldiers in the hallway of our elementary school, waiting for the school librarian to open the doors to the land of lending cards and limitless wonder. Sitting in the back seat of the family station wagon as we barrelled through the Rockies, me paying more attention to my mountain of books than, well, the mountains of rock. I saw spaces in which to read, and I most definitely filled them.
To me, spring is the most spacious of seasons. It is the promise of the new, yes, but it is also the season in which things begin again to take up space. Animals away from hibernation. Buds away from branches. And we humans, hopefully, toward each other.
So, whether you are a city engineer filling yet another pothole, a writer fixing yet another plot-hole, or a young-at-heart reader who still craves books to feel whole, we salute you.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 34, Spring 2022
A Walk in the Words
Recently I learned that holoholo is the Hawaiian word for walking with no destination in mind. A delightful experience, that. Setting forth on a journey with no predetermined endpoint, meandering through one’s thoughts according to whatever push or pull arises, not knowing what waits on the flip side of the next leaf … Sounds a bit like reading, doesn’t it?
Or maybe reading is more of an ‘all roads lead to Rome’ situation: mille viae ducunt homines per sæcula Romam. Literally, ‘a thousand roads lead people through the centuries to Rome’. No matter the path we choose, no matter our navigation, so long as we keep walking, we will, somehow, arrive.
A sæculum is the length of time equivalent to one’s potential lifetime. It is a connection to those who’ve come before us and to those who will come after. Whichever of the thousand roads we choose, we journey to the centre of things — and to ourselves and to each other. Reading helps with that, too.
There are clues to the mystery everywhere. The short sound of the first letter of the English language is that of a sigh. A sigh of relief, perhaps, or of recognition or sadness or joy. You take one breath, and then another, and then — big release. Another of reading’s offerings.
To journey with books is to travel through love and loss, pleasure and pain, innocence and experience, disillusionment and (if we’re lucky) awakening. We encounter what Zorba, in Zorba the Greek, refers to as ‘the full catastrophe’: in reading, and reading widely, we confront and embrace it all. Big-breath reading, you might say.
May the stories in your life catch your breath — and may they take it away.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 33, Winter 2022
Of Pulp and Pumpkins
Ah, autumn, we’re ready for you. Ready for the cooling air, the glowing sunlight, the brilliant red and orange leaves, the noisy geese in their southward-bound vees. And, of course, for the pumpkins.
While the cafés fill with the heady scent of spiced lattes, the pumpkins wait. They wait in fields and grocery stores and farmers’ markets. They wait for the carvers, Michelangelos all, to test their heft, scrutinize their surfaces, and imagine the possibilities. To paraphrase the master, the carvers see the face in the gourd and will carve until they set it free. Freed not as Davids in white marble, but as jack-o’-lanterns in orange flesh.
Yes, orange might be the preferred Jack, but out beyond the ubiquitous cardboard bins exists a veritable pumpkin rainbow: red, yellow, green, blue, grey, black, white, blush, and brown. And not just round and smooth, but squat, slumped, stout, knobby, pocked, goose-necked, deep-ridged, pear-shaped, palm-sized, and wagon worthy.
And such fantastic names! Batwing, Baby Boo, Cotton Candy, Goosebumps, Harvest Moon, Jack-Be-Little, Jack-B-Quick, Knucklehead, Long Island Cheese, Magic Lantern, Moonshine, Scheherazade, Snack Jack, Super Moon, Speckled Hound, Sweetie Pie, Warty Goblin. And, the best to end this endless list: One Too Many.
Here at Pulp Literature we delight in bringing you a cross-genre cornucopia of literary cucurbits. Stories and poems of many shapes and sizes, tastes and textures, all have a home in the Pulp Lit pumpkin patch. And what a bounty it is! So set down the carving knife, pick up a spiced latte or hot chocolate or apple cider, and spend a little time with us.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 32, Autumn 2021
Welcome to British Columbia!
Here in the northern hemisphere, the sun is high in the sky, the days are long and languid, the fruit is plump — and most of us aren’t going anywhere. Yes, dear reader, it’s time for another staycation summer.
And so, in the spirit of local living, I wandered around my memory and spent some time with my BC summers past.
The highlights? Drinking well water for the first time and stalking ghosts on DeCourcy Island. Eating peaches fresh from the orchard and delivered by jalopy to an Okanagan campground. Building architecturally suspect sandcastles at Rathtrevor Beach. Camping on a seaside cliff top on Salt Spring Island, under giant red Mars. Introducing my kids to the kids in Coombs (Goats on the Roof — oh, please google this!). Buying a real-deal cowboy hat at a rodeo in Barriere. And so, so many more. My local summer-love list could fill this issue.
For many of us, summer season is road-trip season. Back roads, open roads, country roads, and pavement. And with me always, a book — my very own, portable roadside attraction. But well before the last page is turned, I’m already on the hunt for the next one. (Okay, who are we kidding? I’m always on the hunt for the next one.)
Fortunately, on every road trip, books abound. On rickety wire racks stuffed with cheap paperbacks at small-town pharmacies. In lovely independent bookstores in Tofino and Sechelt and Fort Langley. In used bookstores in Nanaimo and Victoria and Penticton. And on the creaking shelves of every town’s church thrift shop.
So however near or far the winds of summer take you, we wish you great adventure — and happy reading. Because, as the bibliophiles among us know, when all else fails, have book, will travel.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 31, Summer 2021
The Great Do-Over
Springtime lessons abound: it is the season of rebirth, renewal, hope. It is a growing season. And in my writer’s mind, it is the revising season. A reminder that all of life is a rough draft and we often figure things out by saying or doing them badly the first time. But with the flick of a calendar page — or an eraser — transformation is in the offing.
Spring offers a change of scene and scenery. It reminds us that each of us is the author of our own life, and that how we describe and understand that life is an ongoing narrative. We can rewrite the plot and setting as we go. Because brave re-vision is both the act of revising and of seeing again — of being again.
Metamorphosis, a thread that runs through many of the stories in this issue, teaches us that we might make mistakes; the process is messy. To become a butterfly, that perennial symbol of metamorphosis, the caterpillar must digest itself, must literally melt, before it grows wings and takes flight.
Of this season of second drafts, Margaret Atwood reminds us: In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. Yes. Dig in the dirt. Trudge through the mud. Make a pencil-smudged, crossed-out mess of the page. Do. Do again. Melt. Fly.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 30, Spring 2021
Winter Wonder
When staring down the blank page, a writer might turn to a writing prompt for inspiration. For this issue’s editorial, that inspiration came from RH Blyth, who, when speaking of poetry, describes haiku as ‘an open door that looks shut’. Well, if that doesn’t beautifully capture the spirit of winter itself, I don’t know what does.
Of all the seasons, winter is the most like a shuttered door. Leaves are off the trees, migratory birds have departed, snow blankets much of the landscape. It is as if Earth has put a finger to her lips and gently sighed, Hush.
But, of course, all is not as quiet as it seems. The roots of those trees are resting but ready, the birds are chirping elsewhere, and the snow on the rooftops is a temporary veil on the life that continues to buzz in the homes beneath.
Whether of words or winter, an open door that looks shut invites us to share in the creative process. To seek inspiration where none first seems to exist. To remember that even though something looks barren, great promise dwells on the other side.
When facing a new page, a new season, or a new year, we make a leap of faith that life will open itself to us. That all we need is already there, waiting, however quiet it seems. As the world welcomes a new year, we wish you health and peace, and the courage to nudge the door and begin again.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 29, Winter 2021
Origin Stories
My father, born in Germany, immigrated with his family to Canada when he was nine. A childhood friend, born in Canada to Italian parents, moved to Italy when she was twelve. Another, born in India, came to Canada when she was eight. All of them, like so many, lived childhood in one language and later years in another.
Our first language is handed down by our parents. Through it we weave our personal, familial, and cultural narratives. It orients us in time and space; it is a foundation of self. For those with both a mother tongue and a linguistic stepparent, personal and cultural identity might seem to exist in a third space — in a liminal realm of (n)either/(n)or. A singular place where home and away aren’t easily pinned to any map.
The stories in this issue are alive with movement, migration, and memory. Through them we travel through time and space and place. They ask us to consider the limits of location and the challenges of dislocation. And many speak directly to the experience of discontinuity — and discovery — in language and culture.
Since its inception, Pulp Literature has been a literary home for many genres. Multiple voices meet and mingle, the familiar and the not-yet-known tucked beneath the same gorgeous cover. Whether in crossing genres or oceans, diverse narratives show us not only what is different, but also what is shared. Whatever one’s journey, for a few moments at least, ‘You Are Here’.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 28, Autumn 2020
A Time to Build Up
In magazine publishing, issues are planned months — even years — in advance. Peering deep into our editorial crystal ball, we look to the future, envisioning the final product that you will ultimately hold in your hands, the stories you will invite into your life, the fortunes you will want told.
Here at Pulp Lit we mark time by the steady tempo of the four seasons. An exercise in divination, we imagine the future while firmly planted in the present. And, as The Byrds remind us, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose.
As shufflers and gamblers of words, we selected these stories long before the portentous phrases — quarantine, social distancing, self-isolation, shelter in place — became our new deal with reality. We gazed into our crystal ball, cloudy and uncertain, and asked, What will summer bring?
In truth, not one of us ever really knows what the future holds. Publishing, like a crystal ball or shuffle of the deck, is all about taking a chance on the sweetness of life’s persistent unfolding. But whatever the fates decide, be it sweet or sour, great stories allow us to conjure our own escape. And perhaps that is the most comforting fortune of all.
We hope these words find you safe and well, and reassured in knowing that as one season ends, a new one always begins.
~ Genevieve Wynand, Pulp Literature Issue 27, Summer 2020
One day I will find the right words,
and they will be simple.
~ Jack Kerouac
Geneviève Wynand 