Meet Serene of Damazine!
Serene Taleb-Agha is a short story author, sometime poet, and the
editor/publisher of Damazine.com - The Literary Magazine of the Muslim
World. She gets literary behind her computer screen in Damascus, Syria,
where she lives with her husband and three children.
When
she's not at the keyboard, Serene goes hiking in the mountains that
separate Damascus from Lebanon. She is known for her striking ability
to describe places and set moods in her stories, and I suspect these
hikes are where some of that inspiration comes from. I interviewed her
earlier this month for An-Najm.
You can
find Serene's short story "Beyond the Viewfinder" in Azizah magazine
and the story of her courtship in a forthcoming anthology of Muslim
love stories.
Serene: I have always loved to write but wasn't able to devote as much time as I wanted to it because my children are still young. Writing needs a lot of focus and it just does not work when you have someone interrupting you every five minutes because they want a snack or need to go to the bathroom. So I was looking for a project that would unite what I love, writing, with interruptibility.
Najiyah: What does the name Damazine mean?
Serene: It's from a combination of the two words, "Damascus" and "magazine". I had been toying with the name "Damascus Review" (because I would be editing the journal from Damascus) but it was too boring. I recruited my friends to brainstorm with me, and my friend Aziza Marini came up with the name "Damazine".
Najiyah: What genres do you publish?
Serene: As of now, we publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I'm thinking of publishing reviews eventualy, and am also toying with the idea of expanding to the visual arts. (I'm not skilled enough to judge art, so let me know if you know someone I can team up with on that!)
Najiyah: What do you look for in your submissions?
Serene: I look for a lot of things. Originality. Powerful theme. Beauty of language. I favor authors with connections to the Muslim world (either traditionally Muslim countries or the Muslim diaspora), that being the focus of the journal, but beyond that I'm open to any theme so long as it's handled skilfully.
Najiyah: Do you ever receive submissions that are disparaging of Islam or Muslims?
Serene: Very few. What's more common is just plain bad writing.
Najiyah: Tell us about some of your poets, authors.
Serene: I've published some lovely poetry from writers whose native language, as far as I can tell, isn't English. (See Shakeel Abedi of Malaysia and Anjum Dar of Pakistan in Winter 2008, and Maryam Amir of Malaysia in Spring 2008.) I find it amazing that their poetic impulse is so strong they can channel it through a second language. I have trouble sometimes expressing myself in my first language!
I had a short story contributor, Fatima Martin, go on to win a Novel Prize in the Muslim Writers Awards held annually for British writers in the UK. And a certain staff writer for An-Najm contributed a moving short story just after having published her first novel. It makes me happy to be publishing writers who are going on to contribute their work in other venues. We are broadening the Muslim literary scene and it's exciting.
Najiyah: Your college major was computer science, and that was back when even to talk online required knowledge of html. Writing and publishing are a far cry from that kind of thinking. Were you always interested in writing or did you develop that talent as you went along?
Serene: Well, it wasn't quite that bad. J I've always been interested in writing since I was a kid, but I have this analytical side of me that loves logic, mathematics, and design. I went into computer science honestly enjoying it. I was employed during the dotcom bust, and I spent hours and hours painstakingly coding web applications that no one ended up using. Now maybe that wasn't inevitable, but I ultimately decided that the kind of success the business world is chasing isn't necessarily the kind of success I want. Writing to me is much more meaningful, it deals with the big questions of what existence is and how we fit ourselves into it.
That said, my analytical side definitely has a role when it comes to editing a literary work. And my computer science background definitely came in handy when setting up the Damazine website.
Najiyah: What advice do you have for aspiring poets and authors who dream of submitting to Damazine and of writing in general?
Serene: I would say, learn your craft well. It takes more than talent to produce a work of beauty. Take the time to read poets and writers you admire, study what they do that makes their work successful. Do what you can to learn from other writers, including reading books on writing, and attending workshops. Most importantly, write everyday - good writing takes practice. Part of why I didn't go into writing as a college student was that I knew I had talent, and I told myself that when I felt like it, I could drop what I was doing and write my breathtaking novel. It would be easy. Then I actually tried writing a short story and it was miserable. Even now I don't have the stomach to read it again. That dose of humility got me reaching out to whatever source of writing advice I could find. I've learned a lot and am positive I still have a lot more to learn.
'Meet Serene of Damazine!' was posted on July 30, 2008 by Najiyah Diana Helwani under Writers' Showcase , and tagged with Damazine, interview, literary journals, Serene Taleb-Agha
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