Interview of Mar Prax

Welcome to the dogyard! This is Mar Prax, managing editor aka "da Big Dog" of dogyard mag. Thanks for checking out our scrappy new lit mag! We're excited to debut the hard work our staff has put in to make dogyard mag happen! dogyard mag aims to prioritize our readers and writers, accepting and publishing spirited work that bites and keeps you coming back to read and submit. We are currently open for submissions for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art/graphic narrative with publishing of said genres to begin in October. In the meantime, keep checking back in as we publish interviews, book reviews, stories in "The Boneyard," and a weekly horoscope (brought to you by our very own Mariya Kurbatova). Each week, we will release an interview of a staff member at dogyard so you can get to know the journal and us a little better! I'm ecstatic to get dogyard mag started and excited for our readers get to know me!

Make sure to check out our submissions page and all of dogyard mag's other content!

Disclaimer: Despite the amount of dog doodles you will find on this website, it is not strictly a dog-themed journal. We're here to celebrate writing in all of is forms, topics, and personality!

First question, what is your spirit dog and why?

I’m gonna say a border collie. They’re energetic, outdoorsy, and hardworking, and I feel like those descriptors all fit me. I’m a very go go go person, and they’re very go go go dogs. I could also be pretty content chilling up on the mountains hanging out with sheep. 

Who are some of your favorite authors who are not Mark Twain or Karen Russell?

My favorite living author, by far, is Lynda Barry. Everything she writes is just filled with so much humanity. I also love Maxine Hong Kingston, Jack London, Keith Giffen, Anne McCaffery, Zora Neale Hurston, and Percival Everett. 

What are your favorite pieces of creative work?

My favorite novel is To Kill A Mockingbird. I also love Exit West by Hamid Mohsin, 100 Demons by Lynda Barry, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, Connecticut Yankee by Mark Twain, Superman: For All Seasons by Jeff Loeb and Tim Sale, Superman: Warworld by PK Johnson (I’m a big Superman fan), “The Emissary” by Ray Bradbury, “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler, and “Ha Ha Hu Hu” by Viswanatha Satyanaryana. I also believe that everyone needs to read Moby Dick. 

Just as certain authors stay with us and influence some of our writing decisions and sensibilities, there must be a novel or two that have exerted a staying power in your writing life. What would you say are the top three novels that have stayed with you?

Obvious Mark Twain would be a bit of a blanket answer. The Innocents Abroad is the book I draw the most inspiration from. To Kill a Mockingbird is the book that stayed with me the most, and Scout certainly inspired a lot of my earlier writing. 100 Demons and The Woman Warrior rotate in and out of that last spot. They both radically changed how I think about storytelling and genre conventions. 

You’re from Alaska, but would you consider yourself an Alaska writer? What does it mean to be an Alaskan writer to you?

I was born and raised in Alaska, which certainly influenced my personality and writing style. Even when I’m not writing stories about Alaska, I feel like the person and writer I learned to be in Alaska rubs off a bit whether it’s in the way community is portrayed or how certain characters think. Being an “Alaskan” writer is a little funny. What’s considered “Alaskan Literature” is largely characterized by non-Alaskan writers like Jack London. I love Jack London, but he’s not Alaskan. Most books by Alaskan authors are nonfiction accounts of some daring back-country adventure or have covers with soaring mountains, sled dogs, and lots of snow. While these are all fair portrayals of Alaska, the publishing industry certainly leans into its more marketable traits. I like to think Alaska’s more than ice and isolation and reality TV pilots. So to me, as an Alaskan writer, I think it’s important to try to represent Alaska as the diverse, complicated, and beautiful place it is. And don’t get me wrong, there are so many amazing Alaskan writers doing this. Overall, I think being an Alaskan writer means trying to add to the body of great work coming from the state and saying, “Hey look, we can write.” 

How would you describe your own writing? What do you draw inspiration from?

I love taking a fun concept and just running with it as far as I can. A lot of my work kind of dances on the line between absurdist and magical realism. I’m certainly interested in interrogating humanity and different relationships in my writing. I’m definitely an overthinker, so a lot of the inspiration I get for stories is going down random rabbit holes, which Wikipedia is great for. 

What are your favorite journals to submit to and/or read? 

Moon City Review, Laurel Review, Split Lip, Ninth Letter, One Story, Smokelong Quarterly, StreetLit, Molotov Cocktail, Flash Frog, Silly Goose Press, and Atticus Review.

What story of yours is your favorite or closest to your heart? 

“The Cycle of Death, Life, and Strawberries” is about a ghost with an identity crisis—short, melancholic, and with very little plot. I wrote it in one sitting and it didn’t change much from start to finish. In my experience, it’s been a story people either love or hate. It was in New Plain Review’s Fall 2023 issue. 

You did a presentation at Missouri State about Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court during your undergrad. You spent a portion of that presentation talking about “self insertion” and how Twain employs this technique in the novel. If you were to insert yourself into any of your stories or novels, which one would it be and why?

I write a lot of ghost stories, and as much as I want ghosts to be real, being a ghost in any of my stories would suck. I’m currently working on a story that’s based on true events from when I was a kid in my hometown, just with the ante upped. It follows a bunch of people trying to catch a giant fake fish blowing around and causing havoc. I think it would be immensely fun to hop in on that adventure. 

In this same presentation, you talk about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court as a form of Arthurian fan fiction. What is your relationship to fan fiction as a genre? Have you ever written fan fiction? If so, what kind of fan fiction have you written and why?

I once had to write a fan fiction story for my high school creative writing class. It was a MacGyver-Magnum PI crossover. I accidentally read Percy Jackson fan fiction in fifth grade when I tried to pirate a book in the series that wasn’t published yet. Beyond that, I haven’t read or written fan fiction. It’s not really my thing. I think it’s interesting from a research standpoint, but it isn't something I have the desire to create or consume. 

Many of your stories that I’ve read deal with down and out characters that strive for some sort of escape from their circumstances but ultimately fall short. Kurt Vonnegut once said that, among other things, a great short story should include “at least one character that [readers] can root for”,  that those characters “should want something even if it is only a glass of water”, and that the writer of the story should “be a sadist.” He goes on to say that “no matter how sweet and innocent your leading character [is] make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”  With Vonnegut’s words in mind, it seems that you see yourself, at least to a degree, as a sadist. What do you hope readers learn about your characters when bad things happen to them? Do you think your readers need to learn anything about your characters through their times of extremity?

It’s kind of fun to beat up your characters. Not only is it a little humorous, but there’s something compelling about a loser. Whether or not they’re getting back up or choosing to sit down, it’s very interesting to get into that mindset. My favorite stories are the ones in which characters get peeled apart and learn who they really are. What better way to do that than to put them through hell? 

In your story “The Quest,” you write from the perspective of a woman recalling her possibly misplaced ambitions as a young girl in becoming a “musher” and the fallout of her trying desperately to live with her mom and get the proper musher training only to be pushed aside when her mother gives up custody so she can achieve her goal of completing the Yukon Quest. Have you ever considered participating in a similar type of event like the Iditarod? Do these kinds of extreme races appeal to you in anyway?

Like most other kids growing up in Alaska, I dreamed about being a musher. I love dogs; having 12 and going on a cross-state adventure with them just seemed like a hell of a good time. The Iditarod and Yukon Quest are insanely compelling. They’re saga-like and just completing;the race is an incredible feat. People have dedicated themselves to completing this race for the sake of passion and adventure, not money. There’s something so magical and awesome about the mushers in this race who go “why the hell not?” and then pull off what can seem so impossible. 

What is the biggest fish you’ve ever caught? And what is the story behind it?

I caught a halibut that was a little over a hundred pounds. Not the most interesting story. It bit, I reeled it up, had some help gaffing it, and got it into the boat. One time a person on the same boat as me caught a shark—I helped with the harpoons—and my brother emptied a whole clip into the ocean trying to put it down. Not one bullet hit the shark. During that entire trip, the captain of that charter tried to set me up with the deck hand. It was an odd experience. 

Mark Twain once said in a letter to Joseph Twichell that he “admire[s] a man who can sit down & whale away with a pen just the same as if it was fishing -- or something else as full of pleasure & as void of labor.” Do you see writing the same way? To you, how is writing like fishing?

To me, writing can be a little more laborious than fishing because sometimes I wrongfully view writing as something that needs to get done and more tasklike, while fishing is something I do more for the low-stakes process of and not the product. I don’t really care what size fish I catch, but when I write I’m hoping it’s good writing that sticks on the page. I use my brain a lot more when I’m writing. Fishing is brain off, music on time. There are definitely a lot of similarities between the two. Both take a minute to set up and it’s not always fun, but once you’re there it’s a blast and you don’t want to leave. There’s that “last cast, last cast” and “last sentence” then “last paragraph” then “last page.” There’s some similarities between when you finally get that bite and you’re reeling and reeling to get that fish in before you lose it and when an idea strikes you when you’re writing and your fingers are blazing on the keyboard trying to get that down as you’re thinking of it. 

Why are you involved in dogyard mag?

I just really wanted to be involved on the ground floor of making a literary journal happen. I’ve been involved in literary journals for a few years now, and I've always enjoyed it, so I feel like I’ve got skills to contribute and help make this mag happen. I am stoked to be able to do this with people I enjoy being around. This is just such a fun opportunity and there are so many cool ideas being tossed around. I feel like dogyard has so much potential and I want to help that come to fruition. 

What is your envisioned future for dogyard mag? Do you have any goals you want this magazine to achieve? 

I want dogyard to feel like a concrete place that writers can come to. Something between a truck stop and theme park. It’ll be like a hub where writers can read, get inspired, submit, and publish. 

What are you most looking forward to as dogyard mag grows as a literary journal?

I’m looking forward to reading more awesome work and getting to share that amazing work with more people, getting to network and meet more people, and contributing to a writer support system. I just love the literary community and being actively involved, and making things happen is central to what I want to do. 

Interview questions by Jace Einfeldt