Folio – Winter 2005

This slim slick-paged journal contains, along with stories and poems, the interesting “On Writing, Stubbornness, and Food: An Interview with Leslie Pietrzyk.”

This slim slick-paged journal contains, along with stories and poems, the interesting “On Writing, Stubbornness, and Food: An Interview with Leslie Pietrzyk.” In this interview with Leslie, one of the founding editors of Folio, by the current fiction editor, Amina Hafiz, the following appears: “In the John Hopkins graduate class, I had everyone read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and what is amazing to me is that any question that comes up in class—plot, introducing characters, point of view, flashbacks—can be answered or looked at to see how Fitzgerald did it in The Great Gatsby,” an observation worth noting. “Becoming Coretta Davis” by I. Bennett Capers is an engaging story of a young black attorney’s struggle to remake her values – perhaps, given the serious subject matter, with a few too many enjoyable puns. Jacob M. Appel’s “Fata Morgana” affirms the difficulty of giving up cigarettes [but I say it can be done] and describes the fascinating mirage of the arctic, the fata morgana. I enjoyed many of the fifteen poems, especially this from “Besieged” by Ellen Wehle: “Young, I had intended / behold their burning corpses so many sword-bright things.” And, from “Persephone: The E! True Hollywood Story” by Melanie Dusseau: “I want you at that fertility rite by midnight! / And wear the deerskin mini from Artemis.” [www.foliojournal.org] – Anna Sidak