Wandering Worlds with Practical Fantasists Publishing
A conversation with Erin Scothorn, Karin Murray-Bergquist, and Mary Thaler, the editors, artists, and writers of Practical Fantasists Publishing, masterminds behind The Compendium of Enigmatic Species.
Interviewed for Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre by Lezlie Kinyon
Coreopsis Journal: First: please tell us a bit about yourselves.
Practical Fantasists: Karin is a PhD student in folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, as well as a writer, actor, and artist. Mary works as a science editor and translator in Quebec. The two of them met when they both had a staged reading of short plays they’d written, on the same night. Mary’s play was about humans and robots, Karin’s was about Arctic explorers, and when they got to talking afterward it turned out they shared a lot of the same interests. Meanwhile Erin is another jack-of-all-arts who worked with Karin at the Haunted Walk of Ottawa for several years, but it wasn’t until a mutual friend invited them to a party that they realised the connection and started spending time together! And we all came together for the anthology project, as it overlapped with a lot of our mutual loves – weird creatures, speculative fiction, and the element of surprise.
CJMT: What was the inspiration behind Practical Fantasists?
Murray-Bergquist: The way I remember it, Erin and I were chatting one day and first realised that we were both into Marie de France, the twelfth-century writer of Breton narrative poems. I’d written a short story inspired by Lanval, she was adapting Le Fresne into a screenplay. I jumped into the idea of an adaptation, and we ended up turning it into a stage production, so when we had that staged, we decided to give ourselves a name for future projects. Practical, because we don’t want to sound too vague and aimless, Fantasists, because we work mostly in that genre.
Scothorn: We actually took quite a bit of time trying to find a name that would fit anything we’d do together, since we already knew that our ideas spanned art, stories, and performing. We’re Fantasists, because we’re dreamers, but we’re also Practical because we make our dreams real. Fun fact, our double bookwyrm logo was inspired by a blog post that I made in response to an event featuring Cornelia Funke. I was supposed to be writing a review, but managed to convince the Writers’ Festival team that an image was worth a thousand words.
CMJT: I had so much fun writing up my entry for the Compendium of Enigmatic Species. How is that going? Do you plan to do more things like it? Please include info for our readers to find this and your other projects.
Murray-Bergquist: It’s still uncertain at this stage. I’d like to, but I’m currently involved in several other projects, which include my PhD thesis. We did talk about doing an anthology about lost cities, though. That may have to be a 2024 project!
CMJT: What is your “grand vision” for Practical Fantasists?
Practical Fantasists: All of us are attracted to projects that bend the categories of forms and genres, and so whatever we do next, we want it to be something new that we haven’t done before—though what exactly that is remains to be seen! It would be cool if we could become a self-sustaining creative enterprise for launching stories, but, well, see challenges below.
CMJT: What have you found most challenging in creating an independent publishing enterprise?
Practical Fantasists: Marketing and sales, without a question. As artists and writers, we want to share what we create with as many people as possible, but self-promotion is the kind of work that feels the least enjoyable compared to writing and creating.
CMJT: What would you like to share about your individual or collaborative writing/art projects?
Practical Fantasists: At the moment, the three of us are living in widely-spaced parts of the world and pursuing our own paths, though we hope that these will converge again in the future!
Murray-Bergquist: I’m trying to finish the scripts for a radio play of Dracula, in three episodes, which we’re planning to air this autumn. As well, I occasionally do art fairs and markets in St. John’s, and I just gave a talk aboard the HMS Unicorn in Dundee, about ghost ship legends.
Thaler: I have a poetry chapbook coming out with Untimely Books, and illustrated by the gifted Niv Sekar. It consists of a single long narrative poem about a very ambiguous heroine, written in Anglo-Saxon meter —a kind of feminist answer to Beowulf. I also write short, self-published comics (or “zines”) that I sell at fairs throughout eastern Canada.
CJMT: What’s next for you?
Murray-Bergquist: It’s vampires for me for the next couple of months! But then I’d like to turn my attention back to a fantasy novel I’ve been working on, a play about the Antarctic, and a ghost story I’m eager to finish. One thing I’d like to do is to establish a small travelling theatre company, which performs in unusual spaces and on board tall ships. There is a wealth of exciting ways to tell stories, and there are so many stories to tell!
Scothorn: Finishing my novels… some days it feels like I’m going to die before I get through them. Also, I threatened to run away to the other side of the world and become a comedian. I then ran away to the other side of the world, but I still haven’t figured out how to get paid by the laugh…
Thaler: I too have a novel that I’ve been working on for many years! If all goes well, I will be querying it to publishers this fall. It’s based on a historic expedition to the Arctic, and grew out of my own experiences working on ships in that region when I was a science grad student.
CJMT: Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers about?
Murray-Bergquist: Another thing I love is maps! I made a map of ghost ship legends of Newfoundland and Labrador, publicly available, and of my travel poetry, by subscription. While on the topic, I made a digital map of locations mentioned in Corentin in Quarantine, the radio play Erin and I made during the early part of the pandemic, and based on that first play that we wrote together.
Scothorn: Also, we have Patreon, where you can support our future projects by enjoying perks such as Detective Mittens: Probable Claws, a short-ish story featuring felonious felines and two intertwined mysteries: who killed Sir Snuggles, and what happened to Fluffypants’ purloined toys?
Practical Fantasists
Lezlie Kinyon is the Editor of Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre and Roses & Wildflowers Magazine of Mythopoeia. She holds a Ph.D in Human Science and writes poetry, fantasy fiction. She can be found on linktree at: https://linktr.ee/