By Jeremiah O’Hagan Co-editor for prose We sat and smoked in the 2 a.m. December cold. It was windy and clear at the edge of Gasworks Park, and across Lake Union’s chop, Seattle blazed, a constellation of lights and lives arranged into a cityscape. High cloud cover glowed silky silver-yellow, the city’s reflection smeared across […]
Continue reading… "Words Taking on the World"Writing is an adventure. We often start out heading in one direction with a piece and, many drafts later, find ourselves moving down another completely undreamed of path. Reading is another kind of adventure. When we begin, we might think we know where the writer is taking us and, again, wonderfully, end up going down
Continue reading… "Adventures in Reading and Writing"We’re literary geeks and love the chance to read almost anything crafted with care. So, in late night sessions, we greedily consume submissions which had voyaged through East Coast sloughs, paddled Pacific bays, and trickled down backwoods Alabama creeks and which came via internet from all over the U.S. and a few other countries
Continue reading… "Why Read a Literary Journal?"Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of SHARK REEF, where you’ll visit a wedding party in the Andes; join a group of elderly women in a communal bath in Japan; or watch as a nurse midwife deftly knits Mexico to Seattle and drops more than a few stitches in the process. Consider Hiking Naked. What happens will surprise you.
Continue reading… "Intro"SHARK REEF was launched in June of 2001 to give voice to emerging as well as established writers of the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Now, on the eve of its tenth anniversary and in collaboration with Heron Moon Press, SHARK REEF offers the same opportunity to all serious writers committed to producing original writing of high quality — regardless of where they live.
Continue reading… "Still Evolving"As writers, we are inspired by just about anything under the sun – and moon – because we know our writing will take us places. Often, we don’t know where we’re going when we start but we stay along for the ride, moved to explore new terrain or dig deeply into old places. If we do think we know where we’re going when we begin, it’s not at all unusual to be surprised at where we actually end up.
Continue reading… "Writing as Exploration"When we launched SHARK REEF in June of 2001, we saw it as a new millenium online zine from a rural grassroots community. We had no thought of how it might evolve or grow up but simply wanted to give serious local writers a place where they could see their work
Continue reading… "Mission Accomplished"If the writers featured in the spring 2009 edition of SHARK REEF didn’t write fifty drafts of their work, at least they kept at it until their work shone like polished stones. As you read these offerings, you’ll notice,
Continue reading… "Getting It Right"Now and again thousands of memories converge, harmonize, arrange themselves around a central idea in a coherent form, and I write a story.”
-Katherine Anne Porter
Writing the stories in our heads takes us into our souls. It lets us dive into the deep waters of the unconsciousness to plumb whatever it is that lives there, lets us find out what needs attention as well as what we can leave to lie still forever. Writing our stories takes us on a profound inner journey where we learn about our world and ourselves. Writing our stories also opens windows into other lives. Writing our stories connects us.
Continue reading… "Write On!"