Read the whole article and see the other 8 lit mags featured HERE.
Inside the Authors Studio: Hypertrophic Press
by Jamie Stewart
What inspired the two of you to co-found Hypertrophic Press? What were your plans for the press when you first began it? What did you set out to create for the literary community?
[JEREMY] Lynsey and I were both editors before Hypertrophic Press and Hypertrophic Press was the perfect way to use our talents to help give other writers the voice we were looking for.
[LYNSEY] Jeremy says it like it was so natural and easy and it definitely wasn’t! Having been in school for publishing, I knew how little money publishing houses made, I knew the work that went into this job, and I NEVER had an intention of starting our own press. But Jeremy is one of those people who always has some huge dream he’s striving toward and he’s VERY convincing, so before I knew it we were going over business plans and applying for licences. Our goal, once we decided to be crazy and go for this, was just to make sure that we published and encouraged new and emerging voices in the literary community and to do it in a way that made the writer feel respected and valued.
Read the full interview here.
The Triangle: Interview with Christopher D. DiCicco
Late last year, author Christopher D. DiCicco came out with his first collection, published by Hypertrophic Press. This small press, spending as much time pairing the beautiful writing it accepts alongside equally staggering imagery, found DiCicco’s work after requesting he submit a piece or two to their lit mag.
Matthew Kabik: While this is both a generic but difficult question, I’m curious what you think your style is–what atmosphere or emotion do you find you’re most typically going for?
Chris DiCicco: To describe my style is to paint a picture of a serious man sketching a sad child coloring a dragon. Though, without a doubt, the man will later eat a marshmallow and seem much less serious.
Read the full interview HERE.
Interview with SR Alum Christopher D. DiCicco
by Jeremy Bronaugh of Hypertrophic Press
If you’ve never read a Christopher D. DiCicco story, we’ll forgive you. We hadn’t either a year ago when we were looking for content for the second issue of our start-up literary magazine, Hypertrophic. That’s when Lynsey, the better half of Hypertrophic, read “My Son,” on Flash Fiction Online.
“My Son,” if you can sum up any of DiCicco’s stories, is about being haunted by your dead son’s hamster. His writing was confident and emotional – just what we were looking for. And it’s weird as shit, which made us love it even more.
To read the full interview, click HERE.
A Depressed Cartoon Platypus Learning to Fly—An Interview with Christopher DiCicco
In the first of our new series of author interviews, DiCicco shares his thoughts about the collection with our head editor Chuck Augello.
CA: How would you describe your collection to readers unfamiliar with your work?
CD: Weird. Sad. Playful. Like a cartoon platypus who is ultimately depressed but learning to fly. The collection is an odd assortment. Some of the stories are entrenched in a kind of everyday realism while some of those same stories cross into absurdity—what I mean, is I’ll write a story about a missing mom through the lens of a boy who wants to be a dog or a story about a father yelling something funny as he falls to his unavoidable death. The stories are little walks in the Park of Coping with Loss and Dissatisfaction. I joke when I say that, but I think a lot people know the place, and my stories definitely travel there, skipping down different paths. It’s not all sad, though. The stories in the collection explore some fantastical things, and I hope some readers can enjoy that in the darkest moments there can be wonder.
Read the full interview HERE.
Contributor Interview:
Christopher D. DiCicco
It’s a tremendous collection of forty-five short, short stories. How did you choose the first story to place in the collection, and how did you select the title story?
I’m happy you asked that. The title story was my doing. The first story was not. The first story “Talk of Fire” is one I was actually apprehensive about because I’m a schoolteacher. Yeah, of course it’s metaphorical in nature, like a lot of my pieces, but like a lot of my pieces, there’s still a strong element of realism to it. The idea of starting my book with a college student who lights himself on fire because he wants to hear his words crackle, well, it made me uneasy. My editors though believed it was a piece that worked as a preface to the rest of the collection; that the metaphor, the realism, worked for what was to come next in the collection. And in the end, I agreed. I want to hear my words crackle too. As for the title story, I felt “So My Mother, She Lives in the Clouds” captured my offbeat, minimal approach. It’s a favorite story of mine. It has a lot of the elements I enjoy it, fantasy, realism, potential truths, no answers, big questions. I like that about fiction; that, like in real life where some of the biggest events go unexplained, unanswered, in fiction the fantastical elements can be just as crazy and real and unexplainable. It’s nuts and beautiful.
Read the rest HERE.
Ask an Editor Series: Lynsey Morandin of Hypertrophic Press
by Chris Tusa, Fiction Southeast
Lynsey Morandin is the Editor of Hypertrophic Press. Originally from Canada, Lynsey holds a degree and post-graduate certificate in book publishing. After working as an editor for an ad agency, a few national magazines, and two publishing houses, she decided to start her own press in order to publish what she loves and encourage up-and-coming writers. For this segment of our Ask an Editor Series, we asked Lynsey what she typically looks for when she considers stories for publication (as well as what tips she could provide for writers interested in publishing their work). Here’s what she said:
Tell us about So My Mother, She Lives in the Clouds.
The stories are told from the perspective of narrators learning to cope with absurd pain. Maybe a girlfriend floats away, maybe wolves steal a son, maybe the narrator mail-orders a new family to replace the one he’s lost. It’s a collection of short stories where most of the characters deal with loss and the what happens next. The same characters reappear throughout the collection in different versions—and I suppose they all suffer; they all heal. Or cope. Maybe that’s more it than anything else. The collection is weird. There’s no way around it. The prose reflects that, so there’s lots of variety. And the title story is actually based on something I used to tell one of my sons when we’d walk through the woods, and I guess that kind of sums the collection up, offbeat stories told casually.
To read the rest of the interview, click HERE.
Small Press, Big Opportunities – article in B-Metro Magazine
The Indie Publishing Revolution
by Lynsey Morandin
Last year, my New Year’s Resolution was to take more risks. Ever the cautious, compulsive planner, I knew I had to dive right in if I was ever going to join that very small club of people who actually complete their goals for the year, so, amid cries from digital readers and pretty much anyone who reads the news, I co-founded Hypertrophic, a literary magazine.
To read the rest of the article, click HERE.
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