Christopher Lettera is the founding president of Jenny Magazine and former President of the YSU Student Literary Arts Association.
How and why did Jenny Mag come into existence? What role did you play in it? What motivated you to be a part of creating an online literary magazine for and out of Youngstown?
The short answer: myself and other students wanted to create a celebratory, inheritable publication that honored Youngstown’s spirit of creativity by showcasing stories, poems, and visual art from makers in our city and beyond. The longer answer – the one I find myself exploring in writing this – is that I was influenced by a subconscious yearning for community. Even with the hyper-connectivity that social media and our devices impose on our lives, I still believe most writers will and should have a Letters to a Young Poet period of isolation – a time to “go into yourself” as Rilke told Franz Xaver Kappus. That’s necessary and very beneficial. To a point. For me, the creation of Jenny came at a time when I wanted and needed connection and collaboration. Sometimes you have to create your own space for that. With friends and the guidance of Chris Barzak, I built that space I craved, and to this day the chance to experience that process remains my wish for all young people and especially undergraduate liberal arts majors: to share in the making and production of art, to join your creative spirit with others, and to feel at home for at least a little while. Let me tell you about some of my friends – the people who built Jenny, the friends I met as an English Major. Why become an English major? The experience will crack your soul wide open and expand your consciousness. You’ll have a shot at meeting good people like these.
When I met Dave Drogowski as an undergraduate – Dave being Jenny’s literal architect and web designer to this day – he contextualized the relative comfort of my own work experiences. I had lifeguarded through high school and my early years of college. Is that work if you don’t rescue someone? I plucked a kid from the water once. Beyond that, I sat in the sun and listened to CDs I burned. Dave – he worked third shift at General Motors while maintaining a full schedule of classes and then some at YSU. We’d talk after class on the campus side of DeBartolo. Dave would always have a Monster Energy drink in hand. It was his indefatigable spirit and not the potentially dangerous levels of caffeine and taurine in his drinks that kept him not only standing but regularly delivering laughter, support, and an empathetic but intensely practical approach to site construction and design. If you want to get something done, call Dave. He is the embodiment of reliability. For years, when I see Dave in public, we invoke a time-worn greeting ritual in which we stamp our feet like bulls for some time before charging each other, leaping, and slamming our bellies together. This will hospitalize me one day and I don’t give a damn.
I met Amber Pence through multicultural lit classes taught by Dr. Gail Okawa. Amber was an encouraging voice who modeled for all of us a blend of artistic and entrepreneurial energies. She came from the Yellow Springs area – one of the most beautiful, arts-oriented towns I’ve yet to visit. Creativity was central to her identity, as were here senses of business and social networking. She owned a jewelry shop at the time. As part of the Artists of the Rust Belt, she conducted outreach with her fellow local creators to raise awareness and sponsorship for our magazine. Amber had a way of finding people on the fringes of a room and welcoming them into the fold. That ambassadorial quality, paired with her advocacy for LGBT+ equality and other righteous fights, informed greatly on Jenny’s identity as a publication meant for everyone and rooted in a constructive, community-oriented, activist spirit.
Andrew Whitmer once pulled me back into his Jeep when I attempted to crawl out the passenger window at 2 AM to retrieve a fry I’d dropped at the Austintown Wendy’s. In addition to saving me from the pavement, he is a man of exceptional intelligence, bravery, and compassion. We became friends in part because he liked the Bruce Springsteen references I placed in story in our Fiction Workshop class. I told him we should get a beer together sometime. “Yes we should!” he said. We drank many beers. More importantly, as students and friends, we navigated literature, films, music, relationships, and our developing understandings of masculinity and the elusive meaning of life. I am mercurial – an unfortunate trait I try each day to shake that may explain why, at 33, I’m generally alone. Andrew has endured my shifting ideologies and moods throughout the years and, without his wild energy and vision to match my own, I am certain Jenny would not exist.
There are many, many other students, friends, and residents of Youngstown responsible for Jenny’s creation and progression through its early years, including Sarah Burnett, Couri Johnson, and our dear friend Matt Lattanzi. Matt would laugh if he read that and introduce himself as “your dear friend Matt Lattanzi” for some time.
I brought to the table the name, the concept, and my hunger for connection. Prior to Jenny, there had been an aching gap in which I didn’t interact with or collaborate with anyone on any creative project. That wasn’t always the case. My foundational experiences with literature were familial, participatory, communal. My earliest sense memories involve my mother reading stories aloud to me from books. Brer Rabbit. Brother Eagle, Sister Sky. My parents enrolled me in library programming at Hubbard Public Library. Thanks to some very dedicated teachers, middle school at Liberty felt like an extended creative writing and literary studies experience interspersed with rigorous detours into algebra. I joined Power of the Pen, a fiction writing league that allowed me to travel to other schools and write competitively. I picked up awards at regionals and state. I workshopped with classmates well beyond what was required for English courses. I was always the academic achiever type, sure, but I was having fun and finding myself as part of a community of very young writers.
When I got to high school, that train slowed to a crawl. No more Power of the Pen. I’d talk to Terry Murcko, my English teacher, and ask him for book and film recommendations after class. That felt like coming up for air. I watched a lot of films. I picked away unsuccessfully at a gothic romance novel set at Conneaut Lake. I wanted to be a filmmaker but beyond the dream itself, I wasn’t sure how to go about that. My parents enrolled me in a filmmaking camp at Wooster that made for the best week of my young adulthood. I lived with fellow students in a beautiful house at Wooster College, conceptualized a film, then wrote, shot, edited, and screened it for an audience of our families. I’d never felt better. When I came back down to Earth, I reentered a high school environment that was pleasant but not necessarily home to any arts community beyond what I was getting in English class and in Art.
My initial year and a half at YSU felt similar. As a University Scholar, I felt welcomed and empowered to be a student leader. I lived (on and off), ate, and volunteered on campus. I was still chasing that feeling, though – that need for a community that shared a language of influence, inspiration, and healthy obsession with the consumption and crafting of films and literature.
Chris Barzak provided the framework for that community in his Intro to Fiction Writing class that I took in 2007. The physical set-up in his classroom was unlike others. We arranged our desks in a circle. Everyone’s face was visible. Chris instilled in us a process for workshop that made us all feel like worthy voices around the fire. The class did not feel like work, though I was doing more critical thinking and writing than I had in some time, asking why stories make me feel the way they do, how writers achieve certain effects, and how I might do the same in my own fiction. I recognized Chris immediately as a kindred spirit – a feeling I confirmed when I learned his story.
Chris grew up in Kinsman – a very rural area and one in which a career in the arts was not necessarily seen as viable or even possible. Chris attended YSU and traveled to Japan where he lived for two years and taught English abroad. Chris can speak more accurately to the chronology of this, but on returning home, he published two books with Bantam: One for Sorrow, a novel, and The Love We Share Without Knowing, an interwoven series of narratives set in Japan. Those are beautiful books – haunting in both subject matter (read: ghosts) and the right-at-the-surface humanity and empathy in Chris’s voice. His success was far from accidental. He channeled his voice and dreams through the various social and commercial aspects of the writing industry – publishing in lit mags, obtaining an agent, working with publishers, networking with other writers, participating in readings and conferences, and of course teaching. I remember Chris arriving to class one day more excited than usual. He had just bought his first house in Youngstown. By then, months into the semester, he’d already become a role model to me and a man to whose success I aspired. He was working hard and making a living on his art and teaching. I could do that, I thought. I remain grateful for his friendship and guidance in that ongoing endeavor.
I took as many classes from Chris as I could. Fiction Workshop both times. During those semesters, he encouraged me and other students to form YSU SLAA (Student Literary Arts Association). He allowed us to plan and host the Youngstown Reading Series, a recurring event in which published writers from out of the area visited Youngstown to read their work. Each event also featured an open mic where anyone in the university and community could read their creative work. I not only learned how to perform in public. I learned how to host and plan an event. I learned marketing – both in print and digital media. I finally felt in motion and I wanted to step on the gas pedal. That led to the creation of Jenny.
What role did I play? I was President of Student Literary Arts Association and Editor of the first 4 issues of Jenny. I named the magazine. I felt and still feel very strongly about the name and concept.
What was the original mission you envisioned for Jenny? What was it like to begin producing the magazine and introducing it through public celebrations over those first few years? Were there challenges? How did the public receive it?
I wanted to honor Youngstown’s history and further our city’s spirit of creation. Jenny’s mission its derived entirely from its name and concept. Maybe someone reading this is thrown off by the use of “its” rather than “her.” That’s good. The first poster I designed for the Issue 001 premiere asked, “What is Jenny?” Not who. What. I like marketing that asks questions and invites interpretation. I also like mystery. My favorite blend of all of the above remains David Lynch advocating for Laura Dern to be nominated for an Oscar for Inland Empire by sitting on a corner of Hollywood Boulevard with a live cow and a sign that read: “WITHOUT CHEESE, THERE WOULDN’T BE AN INLAND EMPIRE.” What does that mean? Jenny’s marketing was comparatively more straightforward but still, I hope, very participatory in spirit. What is Jenny? Come to the first issue premiere and find out.
The literal answer to that question is the Jeanette Blast Furnace that once stood along the Mahoning River. Brier Hill Works. Youngstown Sheet & Tube. Though I was born in Youngstown and I grew up in Liberty, I first heard of the furnace in Bruce Springsteen’s song “Youngstown” from “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” which remains for me one of the greatest storytelling albums – a collection of sparse and evocative short stories of souls on the chopping block, as Bruce says, as much as it is an album of music. Bruce sings from the perspective of a laid-off millworker in Youngstown: “My sweet Jenny, I’m sinking down.” You’d imagine Jenny to be a woman. When I learned the character was referring to a furnace, I began to ask questions about what Youngstown’s history meant, what it’s present then was, and what its future could be.
What did it mean to live in and attend college in a Rust Belt city ravaged by deindustrialization? What did my connections to my family’s own working-class history mean? Youngstown was down but not out. In 2007, Kelly Pavlik won the middleweight titles. That was a great for the city, and around that time, there seemed to be a mounting wave of good people and organizations asking questions similar to my own and finding answers in ways that contributed to real, ground-level attempts and successes at revitalization of not only physical structures but the city’s fighting spirt and sense of community.
I can’t look at the image of Jenny in our original logo and not feel a similar passion to rebuild stronger, both as an individual and as someone born in Youngstown and forever harboring in my soul a deep love for the place. When Student Literary Arts Association wanted to create a lit mag, there was no question for me that it should be called Jenny. There is such possibility in that image – in the way it evokes heat, fire, industry, femininity even, and of course creation. The image of Jenny is also a question. What does it mean to you? If you’re a student working on a new issue of Jenny, it’s your job to investigate that question and pose it to your audience – perhaps presenting some of the answers you found along the way as you sought and read submissions to the magazine.
Producing the first issue of Jenny was a joy. For an entire semester, I met regularly with Chris Barzak, Dave, Amber, Andrew, and others on our team to conceptualize, plan, market, build, edit, and ultimately publicly release our debut issue at a premiere event held at Dorian Books. I cannot stress how much work this was and yet how fun every minute of it felt. The community was deeply supportive during production and release. Our concept and the image of Jenny spoke to people in the way I’d hoped and reached audiences who might not usually attend literary magazine premieres – mostly, in my belief, because they weren’t asked to. I think of Robert Pinksy’s Favorite Poem Project. Literature is for everyone. You don’t write poetry? You don’t write short stories? That’s okay. You don’t identify as a reader? That’s okay too. Come to the premiere. Have some free food. See if you aren’t moved one way or another. Chances are you will be.
How do you feel literary magazines have changed (or not) over the last decade, since you introduced this one?
Putting it mildly, the delivery methods and speeds at which we can access and process art have changed. I went to Borders in Niles in high school once a week at least. I’d sit on the floor in the lit mag section and read Glimmer Train. There is no more lit mag section. There is no more Borders. Now it’s an Ulta Beauty. I like Ulta. That doesn’t soften the tragicomic phenomenon common to people who remain in one region for their entire life: storefronts change in odd ways. Bookstores become cosmetic hubs. Furniture outlets morph into megachurches.
In contemplating this question – and it is a good question – I find it difficult to speak about literary magazines as a cohesive whole. I’d encourage anyone reading this to sign up for Duotrope, a search engine for literary magazines on the web. If you’re a creative writing student, I encourage and urge you to do this – especially if you’re in my Spring 2021 Fiction Workshop. You’ll find a wide variety of lit mags on Duotrope – many of them fully online – and you’ll get a wide sense of what is out there, where you can find stories and art you will enjoy, and where you can place your own work for publication. Here, I’ll talk about some of the changes Jenny has gone through and reflect by suggestion on similar developments in other lit mags and broadly on how we consume art.
Our choice to publish Issue 001 fully online was necessary from a financial standpoint. Print publication costs money. We had no money. Beyond that, the choice to run fully online was rooted in our mission. We wanted to share Youngstown’s story and the art we published with as many people as possible. To this day, readers can access all 17 issues of Jenny anywhere there’s an internet connection. Our audience was not limited to those who could make it to a reading on campus. We had readers in Korea as well as Struthers. If this doesn’t sound revelatory, it was. If you didn’t snag a print copy of the latest Penguin Review at a reading or as a random offering on the free book table outside the English Department – well, good luck tracking one down.
The lit mags that thrive are those that embrace the multimodal nature of technology and art. Issue 001 of Jenny remains reflective of my desire to do achieve that multi-modality as both an Editor and a reader of the magazine. We were online. We weren’t bound by page count. We could use sound. We could use sound. Image. Video. We could use layout to evoke ideas and feelings. Issue 001 is large but curated, meant to be explored and enjoyed in multiple sittings. 8 short fiction stories. 5 nonfiction stories. 17 poems. Visual art with a short essay by photographer Sean Posey. Two extended interviews – one with poet William Greenway and another with Sherry Linkon, then-director of our Center for Working Class Studies – both featuring audio. Three forewords from our staff.
With Issue 001 being well-received, it would have been tempting to stick to that model and say, “Alright, this is the mold. We’re publishing two interviews per issue, one visual artist, this many poems, etc.” Through sponsorship efforts and the support of the community, the Jenny crew eventually did raise money and published a print version inspired by local Eddie Loves Debbie lore in addition to an online issue. I was so proud to hold that print book in my hands. I had nothing to do with it. That may have been the first or second semester after I graduated and it was my first sense that Jenny had become what I’d always hoped: a magazine not owned by any one person or graduating class, but a living, evolving project to be inherited and ferried forward by new teams of writers and creatives. Since then, there have been other print versions of Jenny, including smaller zine versions rather than full books.
I hope that current and future staffs of Jenny embrace the idea to experiment with a variety of media and delivery methods. I look to my own music listening as a model. I alternate between streaming music on Spotify or Apple Music and listening to vinyl records. Ignoring the debate over sound quality, I don’t find streaming better than physical media or vice versa. The experiences are simply different. Streaming or digital remains the most practical in terms of accessibility. I can drive around the lake and listen to The Gaslight Anthem’s “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts” as many times as I want. I can’t put a turntable in my car. If I want a different experience, I’ll go home, I’ll find my out-of-print 45 of “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts,” and I’ll have a more meditative listening. Now apply that to the production of Jenny. I firmly believe that every issue should be released primarily online, but why not supplement that every now and then with a limited-run zine or even a full chapbook that audiences can hold in their hands and house on their shelves?
I’d encourage current and future staffs of Jenny to apply that spirit of flexibility, variety, and multi-modality to incorporation of multi-media in each issue as well. Bring back audio interviews. Produce a themed, limited-run podcast for a semester or two. Publish a short film in an issue of Jenny. Fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will remain the central content, but embrace all art and the ways, consciously and subconsciously, that spectrum of art influences us. When writing fiction and poetry, I draw influence and inspiration from everywhere. Literature. Films. Video games. The game Life is Strange and its prequel Before the Storm impacted and influenced me as much as any work of literature. Why not publish a small game or interactive experience in Jenny? Games obviously have writers. Be that lit mag. Be that staff of a lit mag. Explore. Investigate. Inspire.
What makes Jenny stand out among other literary magazines for you?
Well. I made this one! With my friends and with Chris Barzak’s guidance – we made this lit mag. It’s very difficult for me to detach and view the magazine as anything other than a labor of love and an intentional, very personal statement on the power and role of the creative arts in Youngstown and beyond. I land on the word “personal” now. I served as Editor for the first four issues of Jenny. Though each issue remains the product of a shared rather than singular vision, my own tastes, preferences, and developing understandings are reflected to large degrees in the authorship of each issue, as are the voices and visions of everyone on the staff – sometimes in cohesion, sometimes in competition. If you’re working in a new issue of Jenny, what is your individual vision and the collective, democratically achieved vision of your staff? What does Jenny mean to you? Where can you take it? How can you expand, evolve, and further achieve its mission? If you’re operating with goodwill and respect for your staff and the artists you read and eventually publish, then I encourage you to answer those questions, professionally, in the most personal way possible.
When he won his Oscar for Parasite, Bong Joon Ho quoted Martin Scorsese: “What is most personal is most creative.” Jenny began as an intensely personal statement and creative offering to our city and the world. Keep it that way. Make it your own. Are you considering using stock clip art in an issue? Are you considering an issue theme that is painfully general? Take that clip art. Take that bland theme. Write them down on a piece of paper. Then tear the paper up and feed it to a campus recycling bin. What is most personal is most creative.
When did you know that Jenny Magazine was picking up speed and becoming a cornerstone of Youngstown’s literary culture?
The Spring 2011 premiere of Issue 002 at the Oakland Theater downtown exceeded my expectations for crowd size by any reasonable measure. 60 or so people had attended our debut issue premiere at Dorian Books. Word of mouth was strong. I designed and printed a run of flyers advertising the premiere and I was hanging them up anywhere I could on campus and around the city. We were promoting the second issue premiere consistently on Facebook and in person. We weren’t posting an invite or a hashtag and getting 5-10 likes from the 5-10 people we knew for sure would show up. We were personally reaching out to friends, family, faculty, and strangers on the sidewalk and saying, “There will be art. There will be free food. There will be beer.” Still, I never could have anticipated the crowd and the atmosphere of that night.
I had been to the Oakland previously for a show celebrating the release of Chris Barzak’s second book, The Love We Share Without Knowing. The space was not foreign to me. The theater itself was fairly large and had ample seating. Big stage. There was a reception space – it really felt like a big living room – just outside the theater. Our editorial staff gathered there before the premiere to plan the show. I remember Amber playing piano in the reception area. There was a sense – a strong feeling – that we were going to have a big show on our hands. Though we’d planned for it, I’d never run a show of that size. We were ready to the degree we could be based on our awareness and experience. I left the Oakland that day and went to Geo’s next door to thumb through records. I left my $500 digital camera on top of a stack of jazz. Geo got it back to me. That’s how I often got by in those days: my head in the clouds, my earthly self subsisting on the kindness of those I encountered.
The day of the show, someone had brought a comically small CD player to play music in the reception area. Andrew put on Springsteen’s early version of “Factory” from “The Promise” that’s re-titled “Come on (Let’s Go Tonight)”: “Put on your black dress, baby, and put your hair up right / There’s a party way down in Factory Town tonight / I’ll be going down there if you need a ride / Come on, come on, let’s go tonight.” More celebratory foreboding. People were starting to arrive. Dan Poppke and I drove up to Federal to pick up a full keg of Rust Belt that Jacob Harver from the Lemon Grove had donated. I drove over a nail on the way on got a flat. At one point – I don’t remember why – we took the keg out of the car and rolled it down the sidewalk by hand to the Oakland. Andrew was thrilled to help when he learned I got a flat. He went to his Jeep and got the biggest jack I have to this day ever seen. He had just bought it. He cranked my Cobalt up like it weighed nothing and installed the donut. He could have elevated a WRTA bus with that jack.
When we finished admiring the jack, we returned to the Oakland and there were between 120 and 140 people inside.
They were just there.
Rebecca Barnhouse, my Medieval Lit and History of the English Language instructor, had just published The Book of the Maidservant and was our featured author for the issue. There was a line of people (a line!) waiting to buy her book and speak with her. Phil Brady – who I had interned for with Etruscan Press and who is one of the most brilliant minds and performers I’ve ever met – walked in, took his hat off, and amidst the steady din of the crowd, quietly asked, “How did you do this?” The local news media asked me the same.
The theater itself was almost seated to capacity. There’s a great photo – it may still be on Facebook – of Chris Barzak walking by the front row in the moments before the show began with a “Here we go!” expression that communicated equal measures skepticism and confidence. Chris keeps it real. All the guys wore suits and ties that night. Chris wore jeans, a nice t shirt, and a flannel. He was ready for Bob Evans. No pretense. The look on his face grounded me and made me realize – hey, these people are here for us and we have a show to put on.
We put a show on, alright. I’m not sure how long it was. 3 hours? Maybe 4. For the writers we published and for their friends and families that came to hear their work, it was a joy. That remains my proudest accomplishment in working on Jenny: securing a stage for a diverse range of poets and writers to physically deliver their art from the mind and body from whence it came sonically to a crowd, and to see in return measures of reaction, confirmation, and recognition in the eyes of their loved ones and strangers alike. For the audience as a whole though, even with refreshments, the show may have run long and could have benefited from a tighter structure. No matter how meaningful the performances, no matter how entertaining or moving the art is, audiences have a varying and finite capacity for intake of art in a single sitting, even with an intermission.
If new staff is planning a Jenny premiere, how long should the show be? A well-planned, 3-4 hour show is possible. A crisp 2-3 hour show seems ideal. Consider the venue. Then let the work you’re publishing be your guide. Build a set of readers as you would a playlist. Include everyone as much as reasonably possible but advise readers well beforehand of time limits. Ask them to bring a focused selection to read on stage. Potency over quantity. Keep the show moving. Keep the audience engaged.
If you’re publishing art, if you’re hosting a lit mag premiere, if you’re leading a workshop in a local coffee house, try with all your heart and ability to design a mode, a culture, and an inclusive space to serve the art and development of others before you serve yourself or your own preconceived notion of how the publication or event should operate. Serve others. Showcase their work. Champion their voices. You’ll be paid back ten-fold.
Are you hosting a lit mag premiere? Are you leading a local writing workshop? If you’ve never done that before, if you don’t execute to your standards or if you’re long-winded, that’s okay. Give yourself time to develop. Are you nervous? Are you long-winded? That gets better. Show up. Work on it. You’ll improve. Just don’t be a self-appointed messiah. Don’t be that guy. He’s usually a guy. No one elected him. He self publishes on Amazon. He’ll sit at the head of the table, probably with his shirt wide open. He’ll offer you validation you don’t need unless you don’t know any better. Don’t be that guy. Be the alternative to that guy. Borrow or buy a microphone. Find a small restaurant or coffee shop or a big living room or basement and be the alternative to that guy. Notice the person who comes to your reading or workshop alone. Invite them to read. Introduce yourself. Sit by them. Ask them their story. Let them know they are welcome.
If people do read for too long, though, a gong is very useful. Invest in a in a literal gong. People ask all the time, “What does the Secretary in Student Literary Arts Association do?” The Secretary takes minutes. The Secretary should also bang the gong.
What is your favorite memory from your time creating and establishing Jenny?
The stillness and sense of accomplishment and comradery in the immediate moments and hours after the first issue premiere in Fall 2010 is a full-body sense memory that I can still tap into in times when I need comfort or inspiration.
Jack and Rod, the owners of Dorian Books and Edward’s Flowers where we held the premiere – their shop was such a beautiful space for our show. Our stage and seating were in the center of the shop, tucked between stacks of books – some titles visible on the spines, some bathed in shadow. The audience had filtered out and offered the last of their thanks for the show and the big spread of food we’d arranged. It was Barzak, Dave, Amber, Andrew, Sarah Burnett, and a few other staff members. We were all buzzing and filled to the brim with a “We did it” energy – all in that quiet gem of an independent bookstore with its dreamily soft lighting. What started as a concept on the back porch of the Lemon Grove became a vision that became a publication and a well-attended, happy event.
We went downtown to the Precinct on Phelps. That’s where Suzie’s is now. The Precinct always seemed empty. There was an old phone booth on the first floor. The second floor was open to patrons. There wasn’t much up there. A couch. Some chairs. We sat and wound down as best we could together. We talked about the next issue and what we hoped Jenny would be. Sometimes you’re aware that you’re living in a moment that will stand with the best of your memories. I was very aware. I remember exhaling a lot. I was part of a team. These were my friends, and they were very good people. We had created together. At the same time, there was the melancholy knowledge that our collaboration, at least in that form and to that degree, was not permanent. Fall 2010 was my first semester of grad school. That left me with 3 more issues to edit and plan. Others on our team were graduating and leaving sooner. As all students do, we had lives beyond – in addition to – Jenny.
If you pour yourself into the making of art with a team, the collaboration may end, but those connections don’t go away so easily. Sometimes those memories come back in your life as a chorus. I see Dave once or twice a year, maybe. He invited me to his home in 2019. We went to Home Depot. I watched him build a shelf in his garage for an entire afternoon. On a map of Time, you could have folded that night after the premiere in 2010 to that summer day in Dave’s garage in 2019.
Are you working on a new issue of Jenny? Maybe you know your fellow issue staff. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you need to recruit more staff. Reserve a big table somewhere and invite your team to join you one night. Get to know them. Commit. Discuss. Debate. Laugh. Form connections outside of the detached arena of social media. Bond. Build something together. Make some memories. See if those memories don’t come calling to you well after your undergraduate years. Find yourself on a garage couch, maybe, sharing your woes while your buddy operates a majestic electric table saw.
Tell us about your Youngstown. The Youngstown from ten years ago, when a crew of undergraduate students decided to make a literary magazine and present it to the community here? What was Youngstown and life at YSU like then? What does it appear to be now, whether you are still nearby, or whether you have drifted further afield.
Thank you for asking these questions. Thank you for this interview.
My Youngstown has always been large parts historical and mythic. My parents were older when they had me – my father was 50 – and through their inherited memories, I’ve been fortunate to connect with eras of Youngstown that reach further into the past then my birth year suggests. I carry with me stories of my father’s Brier Hill. Brick ovens in the backyard. Boxing in the basement of a St. Anthony’s Catholic church. Walking everywhere. I carry with me stories of my mother’s Federal Street. Lustig’s. Abraham’s. Livington’s misting perfume on the streets. McKelvey’s. The State. The Warner. Strouss Malts. My grandfather’s Italian food store in Liberty Plaza on the North Side.
I’m very proud to have that DNA. I’m a first-generation college graduate from a working-class family.
I attended YSU from 2006 to 2010 as an undergraduate and from 2010 to 2012 as a grad student. My freshman and sophomore years, though I hadn’t yet found my home in the English Department, were made very welcoming, enjoyable, and productive thanks to the familial nature of YSU University Scholars. Amy Cossentino, Ron Shaklee, and every fellow Scholar provided me with fellowship, friendship, and no shortage of community-oriented volunteer opportunities during what was for me a very challenging time. My father passed in 2006 two weeks before I began college. We were very close. To this day I hope to honor him by working hard and living a good life. My tendency in grieving is to retreat to my work. The support I received from my mother and from my fellow University Scholars kept me engaged with my coursework and campus life and reminded me, simply, that it’s okay to live.
I remember campus during my undergraduate years as a place of great character and even better food. I spent a lot of time in Peaberry’s, which is now Dunkin Donuts. Peaberry’s had a bakery counter. You could order a cold bottle of Samuel Adams at 10 in the morning. I spent time in The Beat, which is now Pressed, and which then looked and felt like a haunted house. I’d bring a notebook and a pack of American Spirits (blues) and sit upstairs on torn upholstery in natural light, enjoying a $3 plate of eggs and toast. Inner Circle and University Pizzeria were hubs, of course, and Inner Circle was my hub. That it remains closed is a travesty. It is a regional treasure and should be preserved untouched for future generations and not left lonesome and empty for me to study my own reflection in passing in its windows, thinking back to the warmth and welcome absurdities of a generation passed. I remember sitting alone one October day, enjoying a dozen hot wings and a tall beer. Steve Reese, poet and poetry instructor, was sitting at the bar reading a newspaper. One of the Friday the 13th films was on – I think it was Part 7, where Jason throws down with telekinetic Lar Park Lincoln. Steve set his newspaper down, watched Jason ambling and groaning under his hockey mask for a moment on the screen, and then he turned to someone down the bar and said, “This is the pinnacle of human expression.” I remember moments like that.
I’m writing this from my home office at what I hope is the tail end of a terrible, global pandemic. I struggle to accurately express what YSU appears to be now. What will it be? As with any campus or organization, changes have come and changes are coming due to the historic nature of the last year. I can tell you what I hope YSU will be with an emphasis on hope over impending realities imposed by corporate-minded, political power structures. I hope YSU maintains and cultivates a sense of character and regional identity over sterility and homogeneity. I hope students from under-resourced backgrounds feel as at-home and empowered on campus as do those fortunate enough to be able to afford $1,000 a month, just-off-campus apartments. I hope the best of our faculty not only remain but want to remain at YSU, and at minimum I hope they aren’t terminated in a mass layoff that will further disempower and gut the Humanities. I hope adjunct faculty get a raise. I hope Inner Circle reopens. I hope Santa Claus lands his sleigh by my window as I’m writing this on a cool April day and hands me a steaming medium coffee. Black. No sugar. No cream. Thank you, Santa.
I mentioned Federal Street earlier. My understanding of Youngstown as a city 10 to 12 years ago was colored primarily by my knowledge of and enjoyment of that stretch of bars. First for me was karaoke at Rosetta Stone. Then the Draught Hause and for years, recurringly, the Draught Haus – for darts, pool, the ring game (“There’s a ring on a string and a hook on the wall.”), lots of Pabst and sometimes Two-Hearted Ale and me carving Bright Eyes lyrics onto the inside of their restroom door with my car keys. Always “We Are Nowhere, and It’s Now.” The Lemon Grove in its original incarnation was my true third place – my home away from home that I’d visit daily, nightly – entire nights on end back-to-back. In quarantine, I watched a lot of “Ghost Nation” on Discovery+. Those guys talk about residual vs. intelligent hauntings. I’m not dead (yet), but I’m pretty sure various selves of mine haunt the space of the old Lemon Grove that is now O’Donold’s. My very soul is imprinted upon that square footage. If you squint in the right light, you will see an apparition of me in a blazer and jeans croaking out “Thunder Road” at a mic at the front window stage or quickly eating a grilled cheese on the back porch or leaning against the Federal side of the building – one boot on the building, a cold tall boy in one hand and a Marlboro Light in the other.
Don’t be alarmed. Residual hauntings can’t communicate.
If you want to know a city beyond its bars and restaurants, walk its neighborhoods. Volunteer in its neighborhoods. My volunteerism as a canvasser on the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012 was instrumental in expanding my vision of Youngstown beyond a stretch of road reserved for entertainment. The campaign provided me with two extended occasions to walk most of the neighborhoods. “Most of the neighborhoods” is not an exaggeration. I knocked on a lot of doors. I met so many wonderful residents – some young, some old, some vibrant, many struggling. My image of the city of my birth evolved into a mosaic formed by many faces, each with a story. My understanding of the lack of investment in Youngstown’s neighborhoods was no longer theoretical.
I’m almost 6 years sober now. I typed the previous sentence with enormous gratitude. Outside of driving through, I haven’t visited Federal Street since late summer 2019. I stopped for a slice of pizza and a soda at Avalon. I walked a few laps around the downtown area afterward alone and listened to music on my headphones. I know every brick. Every crack in the sidewalk. I went on a date that summer and, at the end of the night, after an appetizer at Bistro 1907, we walked together back to our cars in the Lemon Grove / O’Donold’s lot, cutting through Phelps on the way. She asked if she could hold my arm. Something about the image recalled Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheelin’” cover and that moment in Cameron Crowe’s “Vanilla Sky” when Tom Cruise jumps off the building and his life flashes before him in images, each appearing more rapidly as he plummets. How many different versions of myself in how many different years, alone or with a girlfriend or alongside friends, did I walk down Phelps? My breath caught in my throat.
I’m unmoored. With that comes a tremendous sense of freedom. I don’t know where I’m going. When I get there, when I find my next place or project to pour my heart into, I plan to do what I urge the current staff of Jenny to do.
Invite people.