The Beautiful Brutal: Tarot and Talk with Elle Nash
by Kawai Shen
Witch Craft Magazine was one of the first indie lit magazines I discovered that made me want to dig into its past issues. I was drawn in by its departure from the bourgeois literary styles I’d encountered in mainstream journals—including the still-bourgeois attempts to subvert those styles—and its frank and unabashed approaches to subjects like suicide, corporeality, and mental illness. And lest I misrepresent the magazine as a broody goth read, I also discovered plenty of playfulness in its pages, whether it was in prose that toyed with form or stories told by shrewd, self-aware voices.
In addition to its mischievousness, I think one of the reasons Witch Craft made such a strong impression on me was because of its embrace of the darker underbelly of femininity—all the pain, fury, longing, and bodily chaos—alongside girlish rituals and accouterments. Whether it was Samantha Kennedy’s poem about romantic pressures via recipe in Issue 1, or O F Cieri’s prose detailing kink and fashion in Issue 8, I came to know Witch Craft as the place that serves press-on nails with hexes, online malaise with processed sugar. When I saw Witch Craft’s call for submissions to its Erotica issue, I knew my more confrontational prose piece on sexual arousal and Covid-19 would be in good hands with its editors. They were so encouraging that I’ve since placed yet another story about sex in a pandemic with them.
I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to learn more about Witch Craft through the following conversation with its founding editor, Elle Nash. I'd heard from assistant editor Genevieve Jagger that Elle has been working with Tarot for two decades, so I thought it’d be fitting for my interview questions to be guided by the cards. I pulled a seven-card spread from the Thoth deck, basing this number on the seven-pointed star of Venus, as featured in the Star. (Indeed, those familiar with Thoth's system of astrological correspondences will note multiple ties between Venus and the cards I drew.) —Kawai Shen
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Kawai Shen: (1) Three of Cups / ABUNDANCE: The threes are a set of dynamic and generative cards in Tarot. With the Three of Cups, we find mutual joy, creativity, and camaraderie. This card immediately brings to mind the Witch Craft editorial team, a literary coven. Can you describe your relationships to other members of the Witch Craft team and how you all work together?
Elle Nash: First, thank you so much for the wonderful things you’ve said! I first met Genevieve in a writing workshop I was running during the first year of Covid-19 lockdown, and from there we connected when I moved to Glasgow. Sometimes you just have chemistry with a friend and it works. I met Julia through Gen and from there we began to collaborate together. I loved the eagerness and energy they brought to working on a podcast that revisited work from past issues, as well as the care they gave for reading submissions in the past year. This past issue we also had Alice M. guest editing from Body Fluids Lit. Alice and I are in talks to have them come on as a permanent editor, too, which I’m really excited about.
KS: (2+3) Nine of Swords / CRUELTY + Seven of Cups / DEBAUCHERY: The Nine of Swords and Seven of Cups direct us in a more decidedly sinister direction. The Nine of Swords suggest the use of sharp language—the energy has become untrammeled, combative even. These are twisted words that wound and defeat. The Seven of Cups also gives the impression of unbridled energies. In this case, there is a sense of wallowing in turbid emotional waters, an embrace of corruption and contamination, perhaps even of vulgarity and obscenity. Both of these cards capture the magazine's vibe to me. Could you speak to the kind of pieces Witch Craft's editors are looking for and why?
EN: I have always aimed my eye at work that moves me viscerally, from within the body. I’m looking for work that reaches into the sore spots of human existence. The cadence of the prose is also important to me. I don’t tend to enjoy work where someone is just wanting to tell a story just to be shocking or just to tell the story. It needs heart, it needs a little soreness, and it needs to be said in the way that only that writer can say it.
KS: (4) Knight of Swords: The court cards typically describe personalities and figures. The Knight of Swords (known as the King of Swords in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck) depicts a figure who demonstrates a fierce intellect and mastery of language, possibly as a captivating orator. Witch Craft recently released a podcast, Inside the Coffin, that cheekily exhumes pieces from its archives to be read aloud. Can you tell us more about this project and Witch Craft's approach to literary readings?
EN: Inside the Coffin was the brainchild of Gen and Julia wanting to explore the archives of the magazine. Oftentimes when a story is published, it gets celebrated when it’s published but then never really achieves that level of attention again. Gen and Julia wanted to revive the stories they loved most from the magazine and invite the original writers to read a little eulogy, or say a bit about the story, now that so much time had passed between publication and the present.
KS: (5) Prince of Cups: The Prince of Cups (known as the Knight of Cups in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck) describes someone who presents an affable, charming surface, perhaps to conceal their underlying motivations, ambitions, and emotions. This M.O. reminds me of the work involved in maintaining an online presence in order to successfully promote one's literary efforts. The naive authenticity we found in the early days of YouTube, Twitter, and other “web 2.0” platforms have given way to a highly surveilled, curated, and promotional approach to using social media. How do you avoid online obsolescence as dictated by these corporate algorithms while maintaining a sense of authenticity and integrity?
EN: I’m not really sure if the magazine has avoided online obsolescence honestly, as I’m not ever sure how people view the magazine. I just try to keep it going and be flexible with myself if I can’t meet the deadlines I’ve set, and people keep submitting great work, and I’m grateful for that. My life has changed a lot since the magazine’s inception—I’ve moved four times, across two continents, gotten married, had a baby, gotten divorced. Through all of it, the magazine has been online, then print only, and now online again, based on whatever I can afford both cash and time-wise, adapting to make sure the pieces find readership.
KS: (6) Nine of Disks / GAIN: The Nine of Disks shows three clusters of three coins, referencing the earlier Three of Cups. This card suggests to me the practical work of maintaining or expanding Witch Craft. Disks traditionally reference finances, which in this case might include your recent decision to offer compensation to contributors, but I am also thinking of other practical means of supporting Witch Craft alumni, such as Inside the Coffin. In what ways are you trying to contribute—or not—to a literary community? What does a thriving literary community look like to you and what kind of role would you like Witch Craft to play in that? The Nines in Tarot also signify a certain level of differentiation and complexity from the purity of the Aces. In the Nine of Disks, there is an undercurrent of independence and satisfaction taken in work managed and completed well, but also a potential weariness from minding the details. Do you have a sense of needing to draw boundaries around such a community to keep it from becoming too large, diffuse, or fractious, and if so, where would you draw these lines?
EN: When I first started Witch Craft, the literary community as I knew it looked very different to me, and I was very interested in contributing to a vibrant ecosystem of independent literature. Over the last almost-decade I have watched the landscape and the conversation around that community change a lot, for the better and the worse. What I want Witch Craft to do is provide a platform for writers, emerging or not, that has a specific feel to it—work that creates a sense of atmosphere, trudges into darker or emotionally difficult places, and pays attention to form and language. I tend to love work, whether it’s fiction, prose, nonfiction, or poetry, where all of the components work together to create that sense of total oneness—that is, when you sort of forget you’re reading something at all and are held aloft in what the work is giving you. It’s transcendent, and it’s what I love most about literature in general: being able to escape yourself for just a moment and inhabit a different plane. I don’t feel the need to draw boundaries or anything. I really just think if reading something moves you and you want to reach out to a writer about that, then that’s creating community. That’s really all I’ve ever done and wanted to do: read good shit and share it and talk about it. Making connections from that is special.
KS: (7) Four of Disks / POWER: With the Four of Disks, we may consider the consolidation of form—of the crystallization of plans and foundations. Could you tell us more about moving the magazine to Substack and how that has affected the magazine's format and publishing schedule? What are the main benefits and concerns that you saw before making the move? Do you feel like the magazine is in a more secure space financially with Substack or are you concerned about losing the autonomy of running your own website? Do you have any future plans with Substack that you’d like to share?
EN: I decided to move the magazine to Substack because the main social platforms seemed to deprioritise any outside links, and it was hard to get readership. I like that Substack makes pieces discoverable to people across the platform. We’re nearing 10,000 views alone on the pieces published in the last 30 days, which is incredible. I’m not concerned about securing the financial future of the magazine, just because it’s always been something I do out of pocket because I love to do it. So if it ends up being less financially viable, I just have to make adjustments, which I’ve always done. Because of the option for readers to subscribe, it does now give me the ability to pay contributors for the first time ever, which I’d always wanted to do but never knew how to swing it financially with the print magazine, especially because printing and postage got so expensive. If it grows more I’ll be able to pay more, which excites me. Aside from publishing pieces to Witch Craft (which will always be free to read), paid subscribers get access to a monthly book club chat called Goth Book Club and a once-a-month writing retreat called Brute Force, both of which are recorded and archived so they can always be accessed. I also plan to explore more author interviews related to work around female rage and to write pieces on craft or literature on the subject, too.
Elle Nash is the author of four novels, most recently Deliver Me, and the short story collection Nudes (404 Ink). Her work appears in Guernica, BOMB, Lit Hub, New York Tyrant, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine, teaches the creative writing workshop Knife Party, and runs Goth Book Club. All can be found online at femalerage.substack.com.
Witch Craft Magazine was founded in 2015 with the aim of publishing the beautiful brutal. It ran an annual print magazine for Issues 1-8 and has since moved to publishing online. Submission calls are generally open once a year and go out via Substack.
Kawai Shen is a writer based in Toronto.
This conversation is part of Peach's Indie Lit series, which spotlights the creative, experimental, often brief, often shoestring, and always underreported-upon projects in independent publishing. We are now open to pitches of interviews and profiles for this series. Learn more here.
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