Mandolin Says Hello

Hey y’all,

This is Mandolin. Amp has invited me to guest blog for a month or two. In real life, my name is Rachel Swirsky. I’m a fiction writer and I just finished up the first year of my master’s degree at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

I write literary fiction sometimes, but I’m very interested in how narratives that include the non-real (science fiction, magical realism, fabulism, slipstream) can create a heightened sense of reality and social commentary. I’m fairly active in the science fiction community. I used to describe my work as trying to write like surrealists paint, although I’ve been publishing more mundane stuff as I learn.

You can read more about my writing at my needs-to-be-revamped website. I’m also a poster at a new blog on feminism and science fiction called Ambling Along the Aqueduct, and I even have my own personal blog where I post memes, rant incoherently about politics, and whine about writing. My first published short story is online in Subterranean Magazine #4 which was edited by John Scalzi of the Whatever; it’s a meta-fictional piece considering the embedded class and gender assumptions in dystopic novels.

And that should be about it, in terms of introduction. :) I’ll throw up the post I’m working on as soon as it’s done.