Last Tuesday 17 February was a busy one in the calendar. You might have been celebrating the Lunar New Year, maybe you were enjoying some extravagant pancakes to celebrate Pancake Tuesday, but if you stopped by Massimo from 8pm onwards you would have stumbled upon a different celebration.
Among candlelit tables, in front of a stage bathed in green light, patrons were wating for the start of the very first open mic hosted by The Medusa, Galway’s newest literary journal.
The editors and founders of The Medusa are Anna Kabel, Marah Mallm and Sophie Schulze, three friends and University of Galway students currently undertaking the MA in Creative Writing.
Before coming to Galway, they all lived, studied and worked variously in Denmark, Germany and the U.S. From those different corners of the world, they were all drawn to Galway for different reasons, but together The Medusa was created.
The day before their first open mic I sat down with The Medusa to learn more about this new endeavour. My first question being, what prompted them to start a literary journal in the first place?
Sophie – “Marah and I had spoken about job opportunities and how we were worried about that, and curious about literary magazines and Marah had said, ‘well I would just like to maybe create my own’, but that seemed so out there. Then over time, we kind of thought about it more and were like, let’s just do it. So, we met up and we were like, well, would Anna be interested? Maybe she can join us in the library and that’s when it got serious and we came up with the name.”
The name Medusa is certainly an iconic one that recalls the snake haired ‘monster’ of ancient Greek myth, who in more recent years has been reclaimed as a feminist symbol. This choice made sense for the team on a personal level as well representing the type of genre heavy work they would like to attract.
Anna: “It fit well because you guys [Marah and Sophie] have the curly hair and she’s such a symbol for strength in women.”
Marah: “And resilience.”
Sophie: “We wanted a strong sense of womanhood, because we are three women, and we really wanted also a place for women to write, I guess, things that might be more so, hush hush, because obviously we know the story of Medusa and we wanted to bring a place where women felt safe, whether it’s sharing stories about sexuality or just being a woman, and it’s just an open space.”
The team also drew inspiration from other literary journals based in, or started in, University of Galway.
Anna: “I wanted more photography and visual art in there, I know, for example, ROPES has a middle section, of art, and we want to showcase that as well alongside the writing.”
Sophie: “I think one of the journals that probably inspired us the most, because of how they came to be, is Ragaire, because Elaine [Feeney] had spoken to us in poetry class last semester and told us that students from this programme [Creative Writing MA] had made their own journal, and we were just like, so it’s possible.”
The Medusa will also focus on visual art and the interplay between literature and different artistic mediums.
Anna: “Well, because the journal started here, we wanted the first issue to have a lot of Irish photography of Galway, of Ireland in general. Then for the visual art, I’m taking some influence from the New Yorker, they just have on every page, art incorporated with the writing, and I want to take some influence from them and just make it cool, I guess, just mix it up a bit.”
Sophie: “Especially because art is so interwoven in so many things. The amount of times I’ve seen writing inspired by music or other artwork, or artwork inspired by music or writing. I just think it should all be together.”
The Medusa team followed their inspiration to make their own journal possible and now submissions are rolling in, and are encouraged until the 1 March closing date.
The launch date for the first edition of The Medusa has also been set for the 17 April at 6pm in Charlie Byrnes.
Marah: “We are very thankful to, Charlie Byrnes, they were the first ones who said that they would take us and also take the most copies to distribute. So that’s been really nice. We’ve been to so many book launches there that we were like, oh, it has to be here.”
One of the positive surprises the team has found in launching The Medusa, has been the encouragement and support they have received all over Ireland.
Anna: “Yes, we infiltrated Cork, we sure did. We’ve already gotten some submissions from there, which has been great and few places were already open to distributing the magazine, so that was also very nice.”
Marah: “In Ireland, in my experience, if you just ask someone, ‘do you know someone? Where can I go and who can I talk to?’ They’ll tell you.”
The scope of their work does not stop at the publication of their first magazine however; they have big plans for events and their online blog too.
Adding to the open mic community and providing space for reading fiction and non-fiction as opposed to mainly poetry were motivating factors in their decision to host an open mic. They also have experienced how reading in public can assist the creative process.
Marah: “For writers sometimes just trying out your work in public helps them with the process. Where do people laugh? You know, if people come up to them afterwards and say this was brilliant, but I didn’t get this thing, what did you mean by that? It’s just part of the process and it can help you just to go out there and show people what it is that you do.”
With big plans in the works The Medusa is also looking to expand their team.
Anna: “Right now we are thinking mainly for the blog, which we think is a really important part of the company. We are looking for a content creator for the blog, handling like the book reviews, which we hope to produce two of those per week and then we are also looking for a transcriber to sit in on the interviews with us and really polish those.”
Marah: “It will be on an internship basis because also, part of it is us wanting to give back to the community because it’s so hard to get into the publishing community. We want to offer people the first stepping stone as an intern.”
Community is clearly integral to the plans of The Medusa and they are well on their way to creating one of their own.
Stepping onto the stage of Massimo the open mic contributors read a mix of poetry, fiction and non-fiction on topics ranging from the merits of straight men watching Heated Rivalry, to scenes of high fantasy politicking and poetry as gaeilge. To anyone considering submitting The Medusa team encourage you to do so, submissions for the first edition of The Medusa are open until 1 March and if their first open mic is anything to go by it will be full of interesting and thought-provoking pieces.
