The team behind The Selkie have launched The Same Havoc, a collection of poetry, stories, fiction and creative non fiction on the theme of home. I caught up with them to learn more…
Where did the idea of The Selkie come from?
The Selkie founders all met while studying postgraduate degrees in Creative Writing at The University of Edinburgh. It turned out that they shared goals: all wanted more representation in the arts and decided that they would start The Selkie as a way of helping underrepresented artists and writers. The Selkie was then created, in 2018, to be a magazine with ‘representation’ as its core value that would extend across the boundaries of academia, culture, gender and race, and offer the works of underrepresented writers year-round to its readers.
Why the name?
Searching for what connects us in purpose, place and time, we were drawn to the image of a wild, untamed being emerging from the unseen depths of the ocean – the selkie, whose myth has been passed down through generations in Scotland – the place where we met and decided to create a literary website together.
Selkies are creatures of ancient lore, who swim in water as seals yet have the ability to transform into humans and walk on land, and thus reveal their dual nature. By shedding their skins, selkies give in to the joy and freedom of expression by singing and dancing on the coarse sand beneath their feet, underneath a full moon. However, when selkies first emerge from the waves, they make sure to hide their pelts in order to protect them – for without their seal skins, they would never be able to return to their native home.
Their story resonates today, for it is these ‘skins’ that underrepresented individuals wear and shed as our circumstances change – at times a burden, but mostly a gift that unfortunately is not always recognised. And this is how we must live, out in the world, every single day – attempting to express our dual natures and being careful not to lose an essential part of ourselves in the process.
What makes The Selkie different to other publications?
The Selkie not only publishes and promotes underrepresented voices exclusively, but we support them in endeavours such as free in-person writing workshops, and our New Voices Workshop which is a mentorship program that is offered by members of our editorial team to aspiring writers. There is no cost to apply or participate. Indeed, we never charge for submissions and all of our content is completely free to read and view, including our previous anthology Transformation. Additionally, our team are from all walks of life, and from all over the world.
It’s an international project – is that important to you?
It’s an international project – is that important to you? The fact that this an international project is incredibly important to us: we are always seeking the greatest breadth of stories, but it is especially prescient given the theme. What a ‘home’ is, from (in its basest interpretation) the building you grow up in to the people who mould and shape you, from the expectations and histories to the rejection and escape; all of this is so inextricably entwined with the various geographical, political and cultural contexts that make them that interrogating the notion of ‘home’ must be an international project, in order to fully appreciate the complexity and difference of our experiences. It is at the heart of the project, not least because a number of our stories explore explore the challenges of belonging and remaking home across international borders, and the effect on individual, familial and communal myth-making. It also presents a unifying lens across borders, drawing lines of similarity across what makes people feel at home, no matter where they are in the world: family, loved ones, and the safety to be who we are.
How do you choose what makes it into the magazine?
For this project, I think we were struck by the emotional rawness of the work. This was a theme that prompted such an outpouring of vulnerability and honesty that that became a guiding proponent of forming ‘The Same Havoc’. We were looking not only for nostalgic renderings of ‘how things were’, but for voices and experiences of difference, that complicated the notion of ‘home’ as simply an origin, or a static ideal, or of presumed safety. We were looking for stories of change and self-making, for viewpoints we hadn’t considered. We were astonished and touched by the responses we had.
For more information head to The Selkie.