Meet the Interns: Jason Wright

Web Designer Jason Wright is an ASU senior majoring in Creative Writing. He is also a self-taught web developer and currently helps maintain multiple websites originating around his hometown in Phoenix, Arizona. While finding balance between intricate expression through poetry and hard-coded website and computer manipulation, he flourishes when given the opportunity to utilize both. This is his second semester as an intern with Superstition Review.

1. What is your position with Superstition Review and what are your responsibilities?

As the Web Designer for Superstition Review, some of my responsibilities include maintaining the website, creating the basis for new issues, managing data, and editing/formatting contributions for publishing on the web.

2. Why did you decide to get involved with Superstition Review ?

I was the Poetry Editor last semester and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Web Design position seemed like a great fit for me, as well, because it gives me the opportunity to integrate my knowledge of web development with my love for literature.

3. How do you like to spend your free time?

I typically spend my free time teaching myself various computing languages, building computers/websites, gaming, or reading poetry by the fire with a glass of scotch (I’m missing the robe and cigar, I know).

4. What other position(s) for Superstition Review would you like to try out?

The Fiction or Non-Fiction Editor positions would be fun. Being able to read so many authors was a great perk of the Poetry Editor position and I feel it did great things to my experience as a poet.

5. Describe one of your favorite literary works.

Despite how long it’s taken me to get through it, Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been an enticing trip through Greek Mythology.

6. What are you currently reading?

I am currently reading a compilation of poems by E.E. Cummings.

7. Creatively, what are you currently working on?

Using Cummings’ playful relationship with syntax and punctuation as a basis for study, I’ve been working on incorporating thick punctuation as a means to articulate meaning in alternative ways within my poems.

8. What inspires you?

I’ve found that the most inspiring people in my life are those with passions so intense that they become consumed often with one singular hobby or idea.

9. What are you most proud of?

I am most proud of myself after I accomplish something I’ve invested an immense amount of time in.

10. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

All I hope for is that, in 10 years, I’ll be working a solid job, making decent money, and doing what I love.

Meet the Interns: Mike Tomzik, Web Designer

Mike Tomzik is a Creative Writing major.

Superstition Review: What is your position with Superstition Review and what are your responsibilities?

Mike Tomzik: I am a Web Designer for Superstition Review. Being that the Review is an online literary publication, I design and form an orderly layout of the professional work featured within the magazine.

SR: How did you hear about Superstition Review and what made you decide to get involved?

MT: I tend to sporadically search for online publications and journals that could possibly feature my work, and as I was going through the Arizona State website I came across Superstition Review. The name was familiar to me and the internship appealed to my interests. I’ve been looking to get involved with a literary publication for some time and the dynamics of the Review seemed like something that would be conducive to my progression as not only a writer and editor, but as a person interested in working in the writing world.

SR: What are you hoping to take away from your Superstition Review experience?

MT: I want to get an inside look at how a magazine operates, and I would like to learn the techniques that will allow me to successfully publish and edit professional work in the future.

SR: Describe one of your favorite literary or artistic works.

MT: In terms of literary fiction, my favorite writer is John Steinbeck. My favorite book by him is East of Eden, which–logically–is my favorite book. I tend to like novels that have a sense of the epic, and East of Eden is an epic look at multiple generations of a family. The themes involving good and evil are themes that I recognize as being an integral part of Steinbeck’s writing and are important factors in my own writing. I think that life is composed of literary characters and Steinbeck really captured wholesome, human people in this novel.

One of my favorite American poems is Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. I love the unconventional vision created from his mind and spirit, and I believe that much of what he wrote in his lifetime masterpiece is considered unconventional because it is the naked truth. People are afraid of bare absolutes and Whitman does a good job at exposing these spiritual necessities.

SR: What are you currently reading?

MT: I am currently reading A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

SR: What other position(s) for Superstition Review would you like to try out?

MT: I would definitely like to try out editing. In regards to my own personal writing, editing is the hardest part for me. I enjoy the initial composition of a piece but it is very difficult for me to rearrange what I have so carefully composed. I need work on it, and I think that both poetry and fiction editing would strengthen not only my editing abilities but sharpen my writing and reading skills as well.

SR: Do you prefer reading literary magazines online or in print?

MT: I prefer to read everything in print. Reading on the computer is a very different experience. After a while my eyes become out of focus and my world dizzies to the point of paranoia. Books were written for the tangible page. The physical book is an essential part of the art of writing. The cover, the pages, the font, the pictures, the smell, the texture; all these factors give the actual book character and meaning. To open a book is to enter a world, and that book in your hand is the vehicle that transports you there. To see the author’s words on the page is to feel his or her mind thinking. Reading words on the computer is not only a modern practice that exempts the art of book-binding and selling, but is very capable of driving me mad. For me, minimal technology in art is the best. The mind is all we need.

SR: Do you write or create art? What are you currently working on?

MT: I like to think that I write like a feverish young Hemingway with a dedication to the art similar to that of Norman Mailer. I tell people that I have lived before as the great Leo Tolstoy due to our similar vision of human nature and writing style, but in reality I write minimally and sporadically. I am pleased with what I write and have written a few good works catalogued in my own personal repertoire. I am satisfied with one of my short stories, an epic poem I wrote for class, and a short screenplay that I have written. My desk is filled with pages of philosophical ramble, short beginnings to works I once deemed masterpieces, song lyrics, movie ideas, dialogues, and clips of my mind that I was lucky enough to find a pen to record. I figure that I should record as much of my mind as I can while I still have it. I love writing love poetry.

Besides writing, I am a musician. I’ve been blessed with the soul of music and it is up to me what I will do with it and how far I will evolve it. Right now, in the twenty second year of my existence, I figure that it would be foolish not to use the strings that I have been given, and I see music as the medium that most effectively expresses my love and happiness. I’ve noticed that life functions off the former to produce the latter, so this avenue seems to be my true path to enlightenment.

But that is a bold claim that I as a human shouldn’t have the authority to utter, though I still do. This is not to say my writing is not important or that it will not be involved in my professional life. Music is writing and writing is music. Hell, outside is inside and the sky is part of the grass. Everything is everything and it all connects and truthfully, in my moments of true artistic desire and longing to express that which I carry within, I want to completely represent myself by any and all means possible, whether it is with a pen, a guitar, a brush, or a smile.

SR: Besides interning for Superstition Review, how do you spend your time?

MT: I honestly spend my time quite prodigally and extravagantly. I’m sporadic and random. I start many things and finish about half of them. I’m interested in nearly everything. I want to grow exponentially but my tendency to dawdle is detrimental. I read and write and sing and dance and drink and eat and talk and listen and laugh and smoke mostly.

SR: What is your favorite mode of relaxation?

MT: I like to meditate. I climb atop my roof and look out over the dusk. I enjoy swimming and golfing and riding my bicycle. I like to play Frisbee with my friends. I enjoy lighting candles and I enjoy planting vegetables and flowers. I love playing the guitar and listening to music. I hate to say it but I do sit on the couch a lot and that is pretty relaxing. Sleeping is amazing. Eating good food is essential.

SR: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

MT: On a plane with many devices on hand.

Meet the Interns: Christelle Hobby, Web Designer

Christelle Hobby is an ASU senior pursuing concurrent degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Creative Writing.

Superstition Review: What is your position with Superstition Review and what are your responsibilities?

Christelle Hobby: I am one of two Web Designers, and we are basically responsible for creating, uploading, and organizing all elements necessary for getting the website up and running.

SR: How did you hear about Superstition Review and what made you decide to get involved?

CH: I received an email telling me about internship opportunities at SR and I immediately went onto the website and knew it was something I had to get involved in. It has all of the subjects I am studying, as well as the areas I hope to find myself working in some day.

SR: What are you hoping to take away from your Superstition Review experience?

CH: I am hoping to improve my skills as a web designer, and I would also like to really understand all of the elements that go into publishing. It is the career I hope to find myself in one day and I just feel like this semester with SR will put me closer to that dream.

SR: Describe one of your favorite literary or artistic works.

CH: My favorite book ever is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I have read it quite a few times and I never get sick of it. It is brutal and romantic at the same time and you find a reason to hate every character as much as you love them. It is a classic that transcends time.

SR: What are you currently reading?

CH: I am currently reading The Shack by William Paul Young. It is a fairly religious piece, which is not a style I typically read, so I am still trying to get accustomed to the prose and the somewhat predictably perfect plot.

SR: What is your favorite Superstition Review section, and why?

CH: I am a Creative Writing Fiction major, so fiction always takes the cake. I never get sick of reading a new story and the writers who have contributed to SR in the past have shown that we can only expect good things from the writers in this edition.

SR: What other position(s) for Superstition Review would you like to try out?

CH: I would absolutely love to be one of the Fiction Editors. While I am excited by the idea of putting together the whole site, like I said, I love my fiction.

SR: Do you prefer reading literary magazines online or in print?

CH: I typically visit literary magazines online, however I don’t think it ever really compares to print. There is just something traditional and wonderful about holding the pages in your hands.

SR: Do you write or create art? What are you currently working on?

CH: I am a writer, and I am currently working to improve my skills by inundating myself with the written word. While I try to continuously produce short stories I am focusing primarily on reading and studying a variety of modern day writers.

SR: What is your favorite mode of relaxation?

CH: It may sound cliché, but a glass of wine, a good book, and fuzzy slippers put me in my favorite state of relaxation.

SR: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

CH: In 10 years I hope to be working for a publishing company and have my own writing be an ever-present side project.