WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2010 PAGE 7
Local Magazine Harnesses Fayetteville Creativity
by ERIN ROBERTSON
Assistant Features Editor
It was a moment of fate when Sam Slaton, co-founder of the Fayetteville literary magazine Wolf Review opened a dictionary to peruse the meaning of the word “wolf.” A lesser-known definition struck Slaton as perfectly off- beat. Usually connoting an animal, the definition of wolf means the actual pelt of a wolf, or meanness of living. “It is also defined as an instance of dissonance, as when an instrument is broken or tuned incorrectly, you would say there is a ‘wolf ’ in the music,” Slaton said. “While it was, in a way, an excuse for us not thinking of an over-arching theme for the publication, it was a way to make it as open as possible to whatever we deem good that comes our way. It allowed us to take it in whatever direction; it allowed us to define the aesthetic, but not restrict the theme.” Slaton is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetry at Brooklyn College in New York City. In a phone interview, he spoke highly of his time at the University of Arkansas, even though at first he was dead-set against following in his older brother’s academic footsteps. However, as in many cases, scholarship money speaks louder than autonomy. “I started in small business management, but that quickly threatened to destroy my soul,” Slaton said. “I always liked writing, so I became an English-Creative Writing major in Fall 2006, and ended up adding a philosophy major.” Rewind to June 2009, before the birth of Wolf Review, and imagine Slaton and his “partner-in-crime-cum-cofounder and co-editor” Nick Claro deep in thought, sipping whiskey and reading poetry. The friends had been mulling
COURTESY PHOTO over the strange contrast between the inspiration ripe for the taking in Fayetteville and the amount of creativity actually producing results in the area. “We had been discussing for a little while the weirdness of the fact that Fayetteville was like this think tank where people buddied up and got inspired, and then left the area and went to places like New York City, Portland or Providence to do what they were dreaming of,” Slaton said. “We thought there was no reason for people not to be doing those things while in Fayetteville.” And so they did the things they dreamed of and began taking steps towards Wolf Review. The duo created a Facebook page (“Which is indispensable these days when you want to make a mass market,” Slaton said.) and started up a blog for the fledgling publication. “Surprising enough, people started submitting things,” Slaton said, “but we also had to solicit.” The first team behind Wolf consisted only of Slaton, Claro, and graphic design/ artist friend Mike Anderson, the man responsible for the layout and technological details. “For the first issue, Nick and I talked it up as much as possible, read through submissions, chose submissions… for the second one we tried to build off of whatever momentum we had,” Slaton said. “We got a grant from Art Amiss for a couple hundred dollars, and we started printing and selling shirts and totes with the Wolf logo to supplement some of the costs.” Personal funding plus a great deal of generosity from talented friends and family helped to launch the first issue, and since the first two publications, the Wolf Review team has grown and changed
considerably. Kirstin Cauldwell, a UA graphic design student, designed the second issue. Jason Wilkins, Joel Eikenberry and Brett Shook of Workspace designed the Wolf logo, and Wilkins of Workspace will design the third issue, to be released in the upcoming fall/ winter. Slaton described the first issue as “all Arkansans.” To compile the second issue, Slaton sent emails to department heads of Universities around the country, asking them to forward the call for submissions to their undergraduate and graduate students, from which five non-Arkansan artists were featured and eight locals were published. The Wolf Team plans to feature at least three visual artists in every issue, and want to keep that category strictly within Arkansas. “We’ve asked ourselves: what are we trying to do? We want to provide a vehicle for Arkansan voices and artists to be heard and seen,” Slaton said. When asked about his dreams for the future of Wolf Review, Slaton was humble and optimistic. “I think as long as I can feasibly do this and people are interested, we’ll keep doing it. My hope would be that it would bring attention to otherwise relatively unknown writers. Or even if it doesn’t, that it might show people that there’s no reason not to do the things you think are cool and think you can’t do yet – you can do what you want to do.” “If Wolf can inspire other people to do more things that they get excited about,” Slaton said, “then it would be totally worth it.” Submissions for the fall/ winter issue will be accepted until midnight Sunday, Oct. 10 and the loose theme of the upcoming issue is set as “translation.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF WOLF REVIEW & WORKSPACE
For more information, find Wolf Review on Facebook or at
www.wolfreview.com.
Larry Ash PHOTO EDITOR Megan Zachary of Fort Smith and Nick Stewart of Arkansas Tech University joined hundreds of other fans to cheer on the Hogs at Razorback Stadium Saturday.
Larry Ash PHOTO EDITOR Outside Razorback Stadium, hundreds of fans without tickets gathered to watch the Arkansas-Alabama game on the Jumbotron and cheer on the Hogs.
COURTESY PHOTO