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Wandering Worlds with Practical Fantasists Publishing<\/p>\n
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<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Interviewed for Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre<\/i> by Lezlie Kinyon<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_4,3_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”4.22.2″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”]
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Coreopsis Journal<\/b>: First: please tell us a bit about yourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n Practical Fantasists:<\/b> 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\u2019d written, on the same night. Mary\u2019s play was about humans and robots, Karin\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2013 weird creatures, speculative fiction, and the element of surprise.<\/p>\n CJMT<\/b>: What was the inspiration behind Practical Fantasists?<\/p>\n Murray-Bergquist<\/b>: 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\u2019d written a short story inspired by Lanval<\/i>, she was adapting Le Fresne<\/i> 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\u2019t want to sound too vague and aimless, Fantasists, because we work mostly in that genre.<\/p>\n Scothorn<\/b>: We actually took quite a bit of time trying to find a name that would fit anything we\u2019d do together, since we already knew that our ideas spanned art, stories, and performing. We\u2019re Fantasists, because we\u2019re dreamers, but we\u2019re 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\u2019 Festival team that an image was worth a thousand words.<\/p>\n CMJT<\/b>: I had so much fun writing up my entry for the Compendium of Enigmatic Species<\/i>. 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.<\/p>\n Murray-Bergquist<\/b>: It\u2019s still uncertain at this stage. I\u2019d like to, but I\u2019m 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!<\/p>\n CMJT<\/b>: What is your “grand vision” for Practical Fantasists?<\/p>\n Practical Fantasists:<\/b> 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\u2019t done before\u2014though 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.<\/p>\n CMJT<\/b>: What have you found most challenging in creating an independent publishing enterprise?<\/p>\n Practical Fantasists<\/b>: 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.<\/p>\n CMJT<\/b>: What would you like to share about your individual or collaborative writing\/art projects?<\/p>\n Practical Fantasists<\/b>: 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!<\/p>\n Murray-Bergquist<\/b>: I\u2019m trying to finish the scripts for a radio play of Dracula<\/i>, in three episodes, which we\u2019re planning to air this autumn<\/a>. As well, I occasionally do art fairs and markets in St. John\u2019s, and I just gave a talk aboard the HMS Unicorn<\/i> in Dundee, about ghost ship legends.<\/p>\n CJMT<\/b>: What’s next for you?<\/p>\n Murray-Bergquist<\/b>: It\u2019s vampires for me for the next couple of months! But then I\u2019d like to turn my attention back to a fantasy novel I\u2019ve been working on, a play about the Antarctic, and a ghost story I\u2019m eager to finish. One thing I\u2019d 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!<\/p>\n Scothorn<\/b>: Finishing my novels\u2026 some days it feels like I\u2019m 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\u2019t figured out how to get paid by the laugh\u2026<\/p>\n Thaler<\/b>: I too have a novel that I\u2019ve been working on for many years! If all goes well, I will be querying it to publishers this fall. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n CJMT<\/b>: Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers about?<\/p>\n Murray-Bergquist<\/b>: Another thing I love is maps! I made a map of ghost ship legends of Newfoundland and Labrador<\/a>, publicly available, and of my travel poetry<\/a>, by subscription. While on the topic, I made a digital map of locations<\/a> mentioned in Corentin in Quarantine<\/a>, the radio play Erin and I made during the early part of the pandemic, and based on that first play that we wrote together.<\/p>\n Scothorn<\/b>: 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\u2019 purloined toys?<\/p>\n Practical Fantasists<\/p>\n https:\/\/practicalfantasists.wordpress.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n practicalfantasists@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2023-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ulfhildr-FrontCover-1609x2048-1-236x300.jpg\")
Thaler<\/b>: I have a poetry chapbook<\/a> coming out with Untimely Books, and illustrated by the gifted Niv Sekar<\/a>. It consists of a single long narrative poem about a very ambiguous heroine, written in Anglo-Saxon meter \u2014a kind of feminist answer to Beowulf<\/i>. I also write short, self-published comics (or \u201czines\u201d) that I sell at fairs throughout eastern Canada.<\/p>\n
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Lezlie Kinyon is the Editor of<\/span>