Zine-Scene

At AWP, I talked to Richard Mocarski, who runs an excellent literary website called Zine-Scene. He told me that he wanted to do an issue focused on remixing existing works. He asked if I had any interest in doing something like that, and I immediately tried to think of stories that I would like to play with. I decided to pick a story that I thought was perfect and without any need for change, which was Adam Peterson's story "Hope's Dancing Fancy". I first read it in the Southeast Review, and I heard Adam read it at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and I thought it was incredible; I also think everything else Adam writes is incredible. I've searched out nearly every story he's written, and I'm always changed for the better when I finish them. "Hope's Dancing Fancy" was so precise and yet suggested an entire world of weirdness for the characters he introduced.

To remix it, I decided that I would completely change the intent of the piece. I would make it sappy, a kind of love story from a parent to a child. So I took the character in Adam's story, Hope, and focused on her parents, who are not in Adam's story. I don't know if it worked, but I liked brushing up against Adam's story for a few weeks. You can read both stories here. Thanks to Adam for letting me mess around with his work and thanks to Richard for pushing me in this direction.