GLASS KITE ANTHOLOGY - Blog

GLASS KITE ANTHOLOGY

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Yvette Young, Ethereal Musician and Artist (ART/LIT #6)

6/26/2017

This installment of Artist Spotlight brings us Yvette Young, a musician with a uniquely brilliant compositional and playing style. Yvette is the guitarist and primary writer for Covet, a California-based math rock band. Covet’s intricate riffs create vivid soundscapes that transport listeners to another place, while her acoustic and vocal solo work contains darker, more personal themes.

In addition to being acquainted with a number of other instruments (including piano, violin, harp, and banjo), Yvette is also a skilled visual artist. She designs album covers, accepts art commissions, and paints custom guitars (including her own Strandberg).

In this interview, Yvette shares with us her experiences growing up as an artist in an area that emphasizes STEM, the therapeutic effects of music in her life, the roles teachers have played in her growth, her experiences being an Asian woman in music, and the projects she has been working on recently.

Friends of GKA: Introducing Ascend Magazine & An Interview with Malak Shahin

6/24/2017

We're constantly in awe of the writing community. Specifically, those in the community who are introducing new voices or building new platforms for these voices to appear. From featuring marginalized communities to highlighting underrepresented topics or ideas, GKA wants to spread the word about these new and very cool publications. We're excited to start a new blog series, featuring other literary journals that, like GKA, were founded by young writers and artists, and have their own bold and unique mission. Here are the stories of their founders, how they came to be, and why their existence is necessary.

Ascend Magazine is a recently-founded literary publication aimed towards providing a different--and necessary--perspective from people of color, as well as initiating self-acceptance for the marginalized through art. True to its name (Ascend’s founder, Malak Shahin, is Palestinian-American) the mission of the magazine is to allow women and nonbinary people of color to rise up in society through contributing their voices to the platform. The magazine officially launched on May 10th, 2017, and has already reached over five hundred followers, a monumental stepping stone to what Shahin hopes will allow Ascend to assume a more established presence within the canon of protest literature. I interviewed Shahin in order to find out more about Ascend’s main goals, structure, and hopes for development

Undefined: A Narrative on the Margins (ART/LIT #5)

5/10/2017

To be undefined in a binary is a terrifying thing. To be undefined in a predominantly black-and-white binary is even more terrifying, as terrifying as it is tragic. As an Asian American living in a community where Chinese-Americans are the majority, I’ve had the privilege of having my race spotlighted, especially in the narrative of politics. Here in Northern California, we have leading political personality Evan Low representing the 28th district. We have Kansen Chu, a first-generation immigrant from Taiwan, as assembly member of the 25th district. And when Kamala Harris, first Indian-American to serve in the United States, was elected, we all cheered. Here was a day in history where our race was being featured. Here was the day that our stories would start being told in not just the realm of public policy, but also in the way we lived our everyday lives. For those living on the margins, representation is a powerful, tangible, object--it changes the way we feel not just about the world, but also ourselves.

To Know the Difference (ART/LIT #4)

3/29/2017

The first time I was born was in a generically bedded, white-linen stretcher in a California hospital; the second was across a fake wood-topped table from a classmate whose sister had gone to Harvard, a finished softbound copy of a very famous American novel in my lap. The first time I was given all the normal constituents afforded an infant—arms, legs, two slivered excuses for human eyes—and the second, a purpose for which to use them.

A Letter from the Lesser Taste (ART/LIT #3)

2/17/2017

You don’t find poetry that rhymes nowadays.

I guess I’ve always been aware of that nuance, but I chose to ignore it in the dreamy light of postmodern aesthetics and its baroque aftertastes. It’s worthwhile to wonder if rhymelessness is even a problem. After all, free verse is the child of progression. Lose the shackles of stanza, the claustrophobia of meter, and the unholy reductionism of iambic nonsense; and behold a poetic jewel of a boundless, voidless voice. At least that’s the theory meandering about recently.

And people wonder why I’m a pessimist.

To Pieces Like Snow (ART/LIT #2)

2/6/2017

It was sitting over a plate of mushu pork pancakes that I first came to understand what was accountable for the night’s considerable and warming sort of success. It was a suburban Chinese restaurant lined in Spartan, oversized décor definitive of a certain excusable and unintended ugliness; clear glass cubes lent the space in between the restaurant’s respective rooms strange clear columns like children’s blocks piled out of uniform stacking; oversized photographic prints of Asian women looking out of dark eyes and kimonos composed of fire-truck red and salmon pink monopolized the walls; hangar-like windows looked out on the scenery of a suburban parking lot which in the summers birthed the triangles of barbecue and potato-rounds and beignet food tents.

For Minorities, Representation in Stories Matters (ART/LIT #1)

1/29/2017

Last year, a speaker came to our school for our bi-annual Development Day, a day in which the student body would participate in activities relating to personal development. This speaker was a filmmaker, a storyteller of women's stories. We listened to her discuss the oppression of girls, the misogyny present in everyday life, and the changes we could implement to enforce the concept of gender equality. When it was time for the Q&A session, a girl came up. "How," she asked, "can I, as a woman of color, become a part of the movement to advocate for the feminism you speak of when women of color face very different problems?" The question rang in the air; we waited for the speaker's response, expecting it to have a meaningful impact -- or at least, some sort of an acknowledgement of the very different category of marginalization.

Staff Spotlight: Meet Our Badass Editors!

3/31/2016

GKA likes badass things. This includes poetry, short fiction, food, dogs, playlists, random quotes found from the internet... but most importantly we love badass people. And who could be more badass than the two amazingly talented, hardworking, and inspirational editors that lead the GKA's prose and poetry team? It's been a long time coming, so without further ado, here are some of the coolest people in the entire (GKA) world: Lisa and Andy. AKA, our genre editors.

Keep reading to find out more about them, their relationship to writing, what they look for when evaluating pieces, and more!

On Poetry and the Value of Human Experience

1/20/2016

FAST FACTS

Name: Emelia Bleker
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Favorite Poets: Brendan Constantine, Elaina M. Ellis, Adrienne Rich, Sierra DeMulder, Meggie Royer, Louise Gluck... the list could go on for days!
Proudest accomplishment: Publishing my first book this past year!
Unusual hobbies: I'm an extreme pacifist who has been training as a boxer since I was 12 years old, if that counts! I also craft like nobody's business.
If you could be any animal, what would it be and why? I would like to say I would be a fox, but realistically speaking I would probably be one of those pandas that likes to sleep a lot.

The Iotas of Inspiration

10/6/2015

Sometimes, when you have pages of homework and essays to craft, leaving behind reality and entering the realm of poetry and imagination can seem both heavenly and a near impossible venture. I can completely relate to people who search in vain for topics to write about—some deep, metaphorical prompt that will fire off the entire writing piece. Yes, they are extremely elusive to catch, especially when you’re searching so hard that you sometimes forget why you’re even looking for substance to write about. Well… here I’m going to tell you a little bit about how I go about searching for material to write about, and how I overcome the horrible affliction that is a writer’s block.