Go Forth (Vol. 12)

This installment of Go Forth (which is our column about indie and mainstream writers, editors, publishers, agents, booksellers and anybody else in any facet of publishing we can get to talk to us, in an effort to tell you just what all of this is like in case you should want to fly, fly into your own, dear reader) this, this episode is about a specific project.

Writer (and literary journal Monkeybicycle co-founder) Shya Scanlon once told me over dollar cans of beer in a bar in the Lower East Side that all writers of all kinds start out by writing poetry. Actually, we had already left the bar and before walking away Shya just said, “Well we all started as poets, right?” and like, walked off into the mist and this felt really profound and true to me in a way.

Indie writer and publisher Ryan W. Bradley is publishing Shya’s novel Border Run through his publishing outfit Artistically Declined Press and the novel is in part about immigration and a part of what makes the project so interesting is that they are donating some of the proceeds to the Immigration Advocates Network and I think that is really just swell of them. Indie should always do great things in addition to adding beautiful things to literature as a whole, no? Love, Nicolle

Nicolle: What is Border Run, what is it about?

Shya: Thanks for asking! The titular “Border Run” is a theme park at which visitors watch people re-create an illegal border crossing, and help border patrol capture them. Largely set on the grounds of this theme park, the book itself is about a three day period in which a lot happens: the owner’s ex-girlfriend comes back into town after being away for a couple years to ask a big favor; a community event is staged on the park’s grounds against the wishes of protesting local tribes; and the clone of Che Guevara tunnels into the country from Mexico. It’s a love story, basically.

Ryan: I think what’s really interesting to me about Border Run is the sense that the premise really isn’t that far off. Our society finds entertainment in many ways that are confusing, that wouldn’t be normally thought of as something that could be exploited for tourism or entertainment. Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation deals with this in a nonfiction sense, but I think what Shya shows is a bleak sense that rather than question our approach to immigration we are the kind of society that would rather find a way transform it into a form of entertainment. Maybe that’s not what Shya was going for,...