Alabama writer Bradley Sides is set to have an exciting end to the year. His debut collection, Those Fantastic Lives: And Other Strange Stories, releases this October and has already earned some kind early notice, with Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters, comparing Sides’ stories to “the best of Joe Hill and Ray Bradbury.”

Sides’ collection, containing monsters, ghosts, and aliens, is the ideal kind of book for readers to explore as they prepare for Halloween. I was recently able to ask Bradley about his interest in magical realism, his work as a fiction editor at a literary magazine, and, of course, his upcoming release of Those Fantastic Lives.

Alina Stefanescu: Those Fantastic Lives: And Other Strange Stories is full of magical realism and weird fiction stories. What draws you to the fantastic?

Bradley Sides: As strange as it sounds, I think it’s because of my childhood on a farm. I grew up surrounded by animals and quietness and the stars. I can remember being in my bedroom at night, and I’d, from the total silence, begin to hear bullfrogs warbling from the pond. When my father sold cows or separated the mother from her calves, there would be nights of crying. There’s a lot of room for an imagination to run wild with these kinds of happenings surrounding you, especially as you look up from your bed and see the clear, dark, sparkling sky and think about what else is out there—what else might be waiting to haunt you.

AS: As an early writer, did you already know this would be your space?

BS: Sometimes I wish I would’ve known earlier, but I didn’t. I spent some time working on southern stories and YA novels, but they never felt real to me. (I needed magic and the fantastic to find truth.) I’m grateful, though, that I was writing. I learned a lot from my early drafts; I realized what worked and what didn’t.

I was in my mid-twenties before I started really getting into magical realism short fiction—both as a reader and as I writer. When I finished my first magical realism piece (“Restored” at the end of 2013), I knew I’d found where I was supposed to be.  All of the weirdness made me feel at home. It made me feel found.

AS: Title origins are interesting. How did you arrive at Those Fantastic Lives? 

BS: Someone once asked me what I’m worst at in writing. My answer was simple: titles. I can’t begin to even guess how much time I spend on the titles I give my stories.

But back to your question. I had no idea what my collection was going to be called. Seriously. I was nearing the end of the collection’s cycle, so I knew I needed something. I was working on a story about a boy who wants to be a psychic like his grandmother, and I wrote a line near the end that I was really proud of. The titular phrase was in that sentence, so I titled that story “Those Fantastic Lives.” Even after I sat with it for a few weeks, it still felt right.

After the story came out, I realized that there are a lot of fantastic, magical lives in the other stories I had, so I went with it. I think it fits perfectly, and it’s the best title, I think, that I’ve ever come up with.

AS: Do you have a favorite story in the collection? 

BS: “The Mooneaters” is the first story I wrote that made me feel like I could really write. I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but it was my first love. It’s special to me.

AS: For readers, what themes can they expect to see explored as they dive into your book?

BS: I’m a very large guy. I’m as introverted, though, as I am large. I oftentimes want to hide, but my body won’t allow it. I think this makes me naturally feel like a bit of an outsider. Like I don’t belong or something. I’m drawn to the idea of what it means to be different—to be different and to search for comfort that you’ll never find. So, that’s a natural pull for me. Growing up on a farm with lots of animals makes one reflect on loss, so that’s definitely in the book, too. I think, also, I’m interested in the idea of transformation. Flight. Escape. There are a lot of birds and wings in these stories.

AS: Here’s a tough question, but I’ll ask it anyway: Why do you write?

BS: I write because it’s the only tool I have to help me understand myself.

AS: I know you currently serve as Fiction Editor of Qu, which is the literary magazine put out by the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. What has that experience taught you?

BS: This experience, along with previously being an editorial assistant at Qu, has taught me more than I would’ve ever thought was possible. When I read through submissions, I see what works and what doesn’t. I see how important the beginning of a piece is. The whole experience makes me closely—very, very closely—observe my own writing. I look at my own stories now as not only a writer, but I also have the additional knowledge of reading like an editor. I would strongly encourage writers to read for a magazine if they can. What I’ve taken away is truly invaluable.

AS: I always love reading recommendations. What are some recent books you’ve enjoyed?

BS: My favorite books of the year are Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Andrew Siegrist’s We Imagined It Was Rain, and Becky Hagenston’s The Age of Discovery. Each one has a balanced and beautiful weirdness.

For books outside of my usual, two others I’ve enjoyed a lot are Cliff Garstang’s Oliver’s Travels, which is a humorous novel that looks deeply at memory and philosophy, and Margaret Renkl’s Graceland, At Last, which is a collection of deeply-felt essays about the complex and complicated South.

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Bradley Sides' writing appears at Chapter 16, Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Southern Review of Books. He holds an MA from the University of North Alabama and is an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte, where he serves as Fiction Editor of Qu. He lives in Florence, Alabama, with his wife, and he can be found on most days teaching creative writing and English in southern Tennessee. Those Fantastic Lives is his debut.

Ashley M. Jones is named Alabama’s first Black poet laureate

Although the news is everywhere now, we are still delighted to share that Ashley M. Jones has been named Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama. She will serve a four-year term from 2022-2026. She received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Steel Toe Review, Fjords Review, Quiet Lunch, Poets Respond to Race Anthology, Night Owl, The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, pluck!, Valley Voices: New York School Edition, Fjords Review: Black American Edition, PMSPoemMemoirStory (where her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016), Kinfolks Quarterly, Tough Times in America Anthology, and Lucid Moose Press’ Like a Girl: Perspectives on Femininity Anthology. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. She was an editor of PANK Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. Her third collection, REPARATIONS NOW! is forthcoming in Fall 2021 from Hub City Press. She won the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press, and she is the 2019 winner of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Jones is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and a 2020 Alabama Author award from the Alabama Library Association. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, board member of the Alabama Writers Cooperative and the Alabama Writers Forum, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Jones is also a member of the Core Faculty at the Converse College Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine.

The Alabama State Poet Laureate Selection Committee for this term included:

• Dr. Charlotte Pence, Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama

• Dr. Jacqueline Trimble, Alabama State University

• Jay Lamar, former Executive Director of the Alabama Bicentennial Commission

• Jason McCall, University of North Alabama

• Alina Stefanescu, AWC Board Member / Recent Past President of the Alabama State Poetry Society

The selection committee chose Ms. Jones from among a stellar group of worthy nominees from all across the state. The committee was, itself, populated by an extraordinarily accomplished group of Alabama poets and literary arts advocates.

Given an extremely qualified, talented pool of nominees, the selection committee voted unanimously to advance to Ashley M. Jones to the Alabama Writer’s Cooperative membership as the official candidate.

Dr. Charlotte Pence chaired the selection committee, and she had this to say of the decision:

“The selection committee chose Ashley Jones for a number of significant reasons. Through her directing of Magic City Poetry Festival, teaching a range of ages in high school and college, as well as publishing multiple award-winning books, she has proven the ability to sustain multiple roles of educator, poet, organizer, and visionary. Jones is a nationally recognized poet who has a vision for advancing poetry in the state, as seen with her recent guest editorship position at Poetry magazine. What's more, her vision of poetry is inclusive of slam poetry, oral traditions, and outsider art. Jones is already an ambassador of poetry for the state and will elevate the visibility of all Alabama writers, including those who have been under-represented in the state's literary history. The committee praised her poetry's broad range that invites in the reader, along with an engaging tone and searing specificity. Jones's poetry is grounded in the real world, and does not shy from its complexities, complications, and challenges. In sum, her work engages Southern history and provides us with a new vision of how to interact within the arts and within our communities."

The poet laureate serves as the ambassador of poetry for the state. Roles and responsibilities include touring the state to make appearances at schools, universities, libraries and other state institutions, as well as give lectures, read poetry and hold workshops on a local and national level. This is a position of advocacy and community-building.

"In her poetry, Ashley is brilliant at knowing how to artfully 'follow the rules' of a given form or tradition and when to create her own more ingenious and elegant forms and rules. That's the way she leads, the way she teaches, and the way she advocates, too. We're so lucky she's going to be Alabama's chief advocate for poetry for the next four years."

AWC President T. J. Beitelman

MEDIA

“Ashley M. Jones selected as state’s new poet laureate” (Al.com)

“Meet Ashley M. Jones, the first Black poet laureate of Alabama” by Tira Davis (Bham Now)

“Birmingham teacher named first Black Poet Laureate of Alabama” by Sumner Harrell (ABC 33/40)