Sheila
Olivia, I was introduced to your press when one of your authors, Sandi Sonnenfeld, asked me to write a blurb about her book, This Is How I Speak, which is a memoir in diary form. I have been intrigued ever since with your idea of committing your press to publishing what you call fragmentary writing. Tell us about the genre and your commitment to it.

Olivia
Fragmentary writing has been a focus of mine for several decades now. As a writer, anthologist and publisher, I’m hoping to bring more attention and respect to fragments as a genre. As part of this effort, I have published two anthologies of fragmentary writing and shared my ideas in the introductions I’ve written for both of them.

Here’s some history: Though fragmentation is a characteristic of our current times and is also reflected in modern literature, published fragments are not entirely new. The ancient writings of Sappho and Heraclitus, for example, have become classics, as well as such 18th and 19th century writings as Lichtenberg’s aphorisms and Joseph Joubert’s notebooks. More recently, the 20th century fragments of Fernando Pessoa, in his The Book of Disquiet, are fine examples of fragmentary writing. But Pessoa’s fragments are more than that: they are fragmentations he actually lived. One who writes in a notebook isn’t concerned with plot or an overriding structure; hence the writing can take whatever shape and direction the author wishes.

In 1798, Friedrich Schlegel wrote: “Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are already fragments at the time of their origin.” I value fragments whether they were intentionally written or exist only as scraps of larger works written hundreds of years ago.

Sheila
I like thinking this way. So much of what we treasure from the writings of antiquity were probably part of something larger, yet the fragments we have are themselves whole thoughts and descriptions of desire. Why wouldn’t some of what we write today, whether it is part of a larger whole or a short snippet of experience carry as weighty an essence?

 Olivia
One quality of fragmentary writing is the lack of a traditional beginning or end. Instead, the two are merged into a brief and concentrated middle. A fragment is a “slice of life,” a short expression or description of a thought, memory, insight, mood, perception, image, or experience. When reading a fragment, one can jump into a paragraph or even a few lines and feel an immediate involvement. Fragments can stand alone, separate from one another; they are written (and can be read) in quick, illuminating bursts and can feel complete just as they are. There’s an energy within a fragment that gives the writer and reader a sense of freedom, leaving much to the imagination.

Sheila
How did you decide to become a publisher of fragmentary writing?

Olivia
In 1998, a few years before I began Impassio Press, I created the Diaries, Journals and Notebooks Collection for the library at the Richard Hugo House literary center in Seattle. As a collector of journals and diaries (my large journal library is in a separate room of my house), I’ve always been drawn to the journal form, but was frustrated when I searched for published diaries and journals in bookstores. Rarely do they even carry this form of writing, and if I do happen to find a few diaries and journals in used bookstores, they’re hidden away, filed by subject or by the author’s last name under poetry, novels, etc.

When I heard that the Hugo House literary center was opening in my city, I decided to submit a proposal for a Diaries, Journals and Notebooks Collection for their library. The building was undergoing extensive renovations at the time, and the library was a construction zone, but while the work was going on my proposal was accepted and I began to search for journals and diaries for the library (I used my personal collection as a guide for the titles I chose).

For the first three years of Hugo House’s existence, I worked as a library volunteer and curator of my collection. I labeled, organized and arranged displays of the books, and I created printed lists of all the titles in the Diaries, Journals and Notebooks Collection. I was very happy to see over 150 journals and diaries together in their own section, in a library that was more than a private library. As well as individual journals and diaries (by such writers as Anais Nin, May Sarton, Virginia Woolf, Kafka, Camus), the collection included anthologies and books about journal writing.

Eventually, I established Impassio Press as an independent literary press devoted to publishing a variety of fragmentary writing, with special emphasis on establishing journals, diaries, and notebooks as a valid literary art form (as valid as the established, accepted forms of novels, short stories, poetry, etc.). Impassio is a venue for bringing a new dimension to publishing by recognizing, honoring, and uniting a range of fragmentary writing so that new or silenced voices can be heard. The fragmentary forms we publish include journals, diaries, notebooks, letters, fiction in diary or letter form, aphorisms, essay-fragments, short poetic prose, philosophical fragments, and vignettes. Impassio also publishes anthologies of fragmentary writing.

In my dedication to fragmentary writing, I’ve edited two anthologies: Darkness and Light: Private Writing as Art (with Victor Muñoz) and In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing.

Darkness and Light (which was put together in the early 1990s and published in 2000) is an anthology of contemporary journals, diaries and notebooks. It brings together substantial excerpts from the private writings of 14 sensitive and reflective women and men. The book also includes two essays that address questions surrounding the journal as art.

Many stories and themes fill this collection, including reflections while riding buses, the personal meaning of literature or a painting, the painful and dramatic dissolution of a relationship, philosophical isolation from others, the humor and sadness of the minutely mundane, the struggle to convey in dance an intimate trauma, a spiritual re-evaluation spurred by involvement in an alien culture, and a father and child’s visit to a mother’s grave.

Sheila
I know this isn’t a fair question, but do you have a favorite from the book?

Olivia
One of my favorite pieces in the book is Ja Luoma’s “Selections from Three Journals.” In the introduction to her “Gray Area Journals,” she writes:

The “Gray Area” is what occupies the mind while staring off into space, preoccupied with another task, or a daydream-thought that gets censored before consciously considered. My passion for journal keeping has traveled between the covers of forty or fifty notebooks, and half as many purposes, styles and titles. That none of them were satisfying enough was the feeling that led me to want to begin the Gray Area Journals. I wanted to capture and then admit the secrets. Often it is a surprising reflection that completes the puzzle of the day, clarifies a dream fragment, pinpoints how I feel about a yes-no decision. But mainly I keep the journal of the Gray Area because it is another good avenue to finding the root of my passion. Unburying that root is what motivates me as an individual, is my purpose in all the journals written.

It is often said that there is an inherent contradiction between the revelatory aspect of the diary or journal and the artifices of craft and inspiration. Darkness and Light challenges that view. The collection illustrates that the domain of private literature can encompass much more than the typically historical or voyeuristic (to which most journal anthologies are devoted), and shows that journals can be an open testament to the full and mysterious variety of human life and thought.

Sheila
Tell us more about In Pieces.

Olivia
In Pieces, which was published last year, celebrates the diversity of contemporary fragmentary writing by offering a sampling of fragments written by 37 different writers — those who are known as well as new voices. Selections from diaries, notebooks and letters, as well as aphorisms, short prose pieces and vignettes, are some of the fragmentary forms represented. The majority of the pieces are non-fiction and personal, written in the first person. A few are fictional. Stylistically, they range from semi-formal to experimental and cover a variety of subjects. Some of the writings are psychological, others are philosophical, poetic, spiritual or political, or a mix of these. Some are inspired by abstract thought, others by nature, travel, or the tangible aspects of the moment. A few simply play with words. Many are serious in tone, some are light, while others contain humor or irony. Written by both known and lesser-known writers, many of the contributions are published in this anthology for the first time.

I arranged the pieces in the book according to length, mood, style and subject so they’d contrast with one another. I placed the only essay in the book, a piece about postcards as fragmentary writing (it’s also the longest piece in the collection), at the very end. But the final ordering of the contributions was decided more through intuition than any set plan. What I noticed, when rereading the contributions as I was ordering them, is that this form of writing can be read and reread, always feeling fresh and new.

Poet and critic Geof Huth described the anthology this way:

In Pieces suggests that the smallest scraps of writing can be the most powerful — and how could it be otherwise? In a movie, isn’t it the tiniest glimmer in an actor’s eye that makes the film? In a book, doesn’t a single turn of phrase capture our imaginations forever?

Within these pages, we discover an unexpectedly wide variety of fragmentary writing: diary entries, aphorisms, notes, micro-essays, autobiographies, fictions. Each allows a slightly different magic to occur, and each sends us on the same quest. We search for the sweetest nuggets.

For each reader, a different string of words will captivate — some words by their sounds, some by their meaning, some by the story they tell. On different days, a different set of words will cause a burst of insight, a twinge of joy, a gasp. These words are minnows: They swim together, yet (depending on our perspective on any particular day) the silvery body of a different fish will catch our attention with a tiny flickering light just beneath the surface of the lake.

From this book, we learn to imagine the world “in all possible shades of rain.” We can finally experience “a damp richness that verges on decay.” We can see clearly (and even hear) “a lip of light over the long ridge.” We understand that “no sentence wishes entirely to complete itself.” We come to accept that “the end is a place to stop.”

We realize, finally, that there are no fragments, only wholes.

Although the number of women and men in the collection are about evenly divided, the book includes authors ranging in age from late teens to over 70. Most of the contributors live in the United States, though a few live elsewhere, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Italy. All but two are still living. For some of the writers, it was the first time their fragments had been published, hence there was an excitement and enthusiasm surrounding the publication of this book. At one of the In Pieces readings held last fall in New York City, many contributors came together to celebrate fragmentary writing, some of them driving hundreds of miles in order to participate in the reading.

Sheila
Again, do you have a favorite passage you can excerpt for us?

Olivia
One of the more fragmentary contributions in the book is Guy Gauthier’s piece, “Journal Fragments.” I’ve corresponded with him on the topic of fragmentary writing and we’ve exchanged many thoughts.

Gauthier writes:

Some fragments were intended to be fragments, and some are ‘unintentional,’ i.e., they were meant to be a completed work, or maybe a completed paragraph, but the writer wasn’t able to finish them. But even when there is the intention to write fragments, we must let them happen naturally, we must let them break off, so to speak, at a point of their own choosing. The fragments should happen by themselves.

He also writes:

I doubt if any writers start their careers with the idea of writing fragments or unfinished works. It’s something you come to realize about yourself. You learn by experience that you are incapable of larger construction, i.e., something like War and Peace, because you can’t control or direct the flow of your creative energy. You realize that you are better suited to fragmentary writing — or in my case, a journal.

Many of the writers in the anthology have also published works in other genres (poetry, plays, novels, etc.); a few of them only write fragments. Whether or not the fragmentary form was a contributor’s main form, the writings included in the collection were gathered together as a tribute to the diversity of fragmentary writing.

Sheila
I am very impressed with the work you have seen through to completion. I have a copy of In Pieces and love reading the work in that book. I will be offering Writing it Real subscribers a review of the book next week, with some ideas for how they might view their own fragmentary writing.

Should people send manuscripts to Impassio?

Olivia
Not at this time. Our publication schedule is currently filled and we won’t be accepting new submissions for a few years, but we now sponsor two additional projects the Life Writing Connection and FragLit Magazine.

Because of my interest in diaries, journals and letters, and my feeling that they have inherent value, I’m also interested in helping people preserve and gain access to unpublished life writings. A few years ago, along with writer and academic Audrey Borenstein, I co-founded the Life Writing Connection. I’m the director of this project, and I also edit the Life Writing Directory.

The Life Writing Connection functions as a resource by offering an innovative approach to preserving and accessing privately-held, unpublished American life writings from the 20th century. By collecting and publishing information about these writings in an annotated, online directory that may be used by researchers and anyone interested in life writing, the LWC helps readers gain access to personal writings that have remained, until now, a hidden wealth of life experience.

Anyone can register their own life writings (diaries and journals, letters, memoirs) or the life writings they are custodian of, and we’re always seeking new listings. There is no cost to register writings or to use the online directory. Through registration and readers’ support and appreciation, these writings can be kept alive. To read the work is to preserve it, and in building this bridge between writer and reader, the Life Writing Connection brings them both the opportunity of granting the work new and extended life.

Sheila
I am very impressed with that idea. I work with people who have inherited letters and journals from ancestors and feel they must write a book from them so the information will reach a larger audience than the family. Having a registry means they can get the work in front of others without feeling they must write a book. And if they wish to write a book, they can certainly do that and register the letters.

What if people have pithy passages from these letters or journals or from their own reflections?

Olivia
This year I began my most recent project, which is also sponsored by Impassio Press: FragLit Magazine (www.fraglit.com), an online literary publication of fragmentary writing. I decided to launch this new project because of my desire to publish more writers than I was able to publish by operating a very small publishing company on a limited budget. Also, for years now I’ve been attracted to the idea of a magazine that focuses on fragmentary writing. With the growing popularity of Internet publishing, and with Impassio acting as the foundation, this seemed to be the right time for FragLit.

The first issue will come out in September 2007. The magazine will be published online twice a year (Spring and Fall) and each issue will be centered on a theme. The themes for the first issues include Travel Fragments, Meditations on Love, and Philosophical Notebooks. Possible themes for upcoming issues include unsent letters, poem fragments, solitude, childhood memories, commonplace books, and nature. (It’s possible that future issues will contain more than one theme per issue.)

I’ve received quite a few submissions for the first issue, a number of them from those who contributed to In Pieces. I hope the magazine will attract both new and regular contributors as well as fragmentary writers from all over the world.

Sheila
What would you say keeps you going right now?

Olivia
Behind all my publishing projects is the feeling that the fragmentary form, more than any other form, gives writers the opportunity to travel as far away from the boundaries of traditional genres as they feel they must in order to express their truths. And these individual truths can be found in the lived life, a continual source of inspiration and exploration.

Sheila
Thank you, Olivia, for this interview and for your commitment and energy in the publishing world. I am so pleased to know about what Impassio is doing and I hope Writing It Real subscribers participate in your projects and follow the publications.

I am going to delve into In Pieces again right now. Every page, like this interview, has much to savor.