The Western Magazine Awards Foundation The Magazine School

The Western Magazine Awards Foundation The Magazine School 2010 Bringing outstanding writing, design and photography to the classroom

Western Magazine Awards Foundation An annual awards program recognizing excellence in Western Canadian editorial work, and design. westernmagazineawards. ca TMS The Magazine School is a project of the Western Magazine Awards Foundation. It provides classroom material to writing and design instructors and professors.

The 2010 Western Magazine Awards Best Fiction Eat Fist! Andrew Mac. Donald Event, The Douglas College Review

Finalists: Fiction î Andrew Mac. Donald, Eat Fist!, Event î Ben Lof, When in the Field with Her at His Back, The Malahat Review î Bill Gaston, Petterick, The Malahat Review î Stephen Gauer, Hold Me Now, Prairie Fire î Laura Boudreau, The Dead Dad Game, Prism International

And the winner is… Andrew Mac. Donald “Eat Fist!” Event, The Douglas College Review arts. nationalpost. com/2010/09/28/the-journey-prizequestionnaire-andrew-macdonald

Event ● Event is a literary journal ● A “touchstone for writers seeking advice and critique. Our magazine aims to unite the writing and reading community, enriching the life of our readers. ” ● Published three times a year by Douglas College (New Westminster, B. C. ) ● douglas. bc. ca/visitors/event -magazine. html

Editor’s comment “Event has a traditional foundation in terms of what it publishes, but it has developed in a way that it combines traditional approaches to narrative with an eye to experimentation. ” – Rick Maddocks, editor when “Eat Fist!” was published

Editor Rick Maddocks on “Eat Fist!” “‘Eat Fist!’ is an interesting story because of how it’s structured. “The plot is rather traditional, but the subject matter is not at all. It’s about a love affair between a young girl who’s unsure about her sexuality and this female ex-body builder [who] becomes her teacher. ” – Rick Maddocks

Event considers the story “First of all, and this doesn’t always happen, it was entertaining. It had an entertaining factor largely through humour. . . and in terms of subject matter, it wasn’t something that we hadn’t come across. ” – Rick Maddocks î Event has three stages of assessment. “Eat Fist!” rose quickly through these levels.

The author on the story’s origins Andrew Mac. Donald wrote “Eat Fist” while studying creative writing at the University of Toronto. His professor in women’s studies said he could write a short story, instead of a research paper. î “And I can tell you right off it would have been easier to write a research paper. ”

Author Andrew Mac. Donald ● ● ● ● Technical writer, 26 Currently lives in Toronto Second-generation Ukrainian Canadian; mother's surname is Teodorowycz Grew up in Edmonton until age 18; moved to North Bay, Ont. for a year, then to London, Ont. Earned a BA in English literature Went to U of T for the master’s in creative writing program “I'm a closet sports buff, which I guess explains why I wrote my short story about weightlifting, since I do a lot of that myself. ”

The power of narrative “The advantage to doing something narrative is that it allows a kind of empathetic connection with whoever’s reading it. You’re not so concerned with proving a thesis as you are with drumming up or teasing out an emotional response. “A lot of what it means to be a person revolves around experience versus quantifying that experience. ” – Andrew Mac. Donald

A strategy for writing “One of my creative writing professor’s strategies for writing more compelling short stories or novels is that if you have two ideas and you think that they’re separate, try and combine them. ” – Andrew Mac. Donald

Three story themes Andrew Mac. Donald told the National Post (Sept. 28, 2010) that “Eat Fist!” grew out of “three disparate, terribly flawed” short stories. 1. “The first was a 10 -page narrative documenting my inability to master Ukrainian, the language of my forebears, and how incredibly depressing it feels to fall short of familial expectations. ”

Theme 2: The bodybuilder 2. “An old workout partner inspired the second story, which featured a lesbian bodybuilder and her attempts to whip a spindly armed kid into shape. ”

Theme 3: Comic books 3. “Finally, I always wanted to write something about comic books, so I worked on this whimsical story about a guy who falls in love with Wonder Woman. ” “I take a pen and scrawl the words Wonder Woman says whenever publishing evildoers: ‘Yisty Kulak. ’ ‘Eat fist. ’”

Opening paragraph “The picture of Angelina Jolie in my locker stares at the Marilyn Monroe I’ve taped next to her. Angelina’s lips are puckered half-moons ready to pull the tiny brown birthmark above Marilyn’s mouth into their orbit. Whenever I close my locker, I worry I’m missing something celestial, a big bang of tongues and cheeks, hips and breasts. I look at Angelina’s lips and feel their gravitational pull. Slamming the door, I whisper, ‘You want to be like them, not with them, Libby. Like them, not with them. ’”

Main characters 1. Libby (Libanka), who must learn Ukrainian to get money from her parents 2. Alana, the tutor, also a bodybuilder 3. Mom, who insists Libanka take Ukrainian lessons 4. Aunt Olga, who translates Libby’s love letters into Ukrainian

Storyline ● Libby reluctantly goes to learn Ukrainian from a tutor that her mother is paying. ● Later, her tutor also teaches her to lift weights, and more.

Effective imagery works with tone and voice “Her jeans cling to her thighs like plastic wrap stretched over a Buick. ” “Her extended hand is attached to a wrist thicker than a shampoo bottle. ” “If an image, metaphor or simile doesn’t work, there’s nothing as obvious that sticks out. It brings the sense of reality in the story crashing down. ” – Andrew Mac. Donald

Evoking the sense of smell “The steamy odour of boiled vegetables rubbing against the chemical-lemon scent of Pledge. There’s some incense in there too, and hints of the perfume Alana was wearing the last time I was here. ”

The editor on the ending “There was a rushed final paragraph and I asked him to make a short final scene with the parents. The idea being that might make the pacing more satisfying. I told him we flipped the last page and expected more. . . I appreciated how he was all ears and worked on it really diligently and I think together we probably made it even better although it was already a pretty great story. ” – Rick Maddocks

“Eat Fist!” ending “In the moment where pen meets paper, Wonder Woman folds her arms and gets into her invisible jet and there’s just me and Alana and the blank page in front of me. I try to think of something like poetry. Brodjachaja sobaka is the only thing that comes to mind. ”

The author on difference “On another level I think there a lot of ways of constituting or defining difference. There’s racial difference, there’s sexual difference, there’s all kinds of ways to be different. ” – Andrew Mac. Donald î The character Libby is doubly alienated by her family’s traditional Ukrainian value system as well as by her sexuality.

Discussion ● What themes does the author address? ● Did these three themes work well together? ● What would you have changed or tweaked?

Credits The Magazine School is a project of the Western Magazine Awards Foundation, which acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage for this project. The Magazine School content was prepared with the skilful assistance of Janice Paskey and students Doug Horner and Terence Yung, and with the generous co-operation of the winners of the 2010 Western Magazine Awards. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) of the Department of Canadian Heritage towards our project costs.