Email
PrintLiterary aspirations
Columbus’s new literary magazine, Filigree, had its inception a year ago when Tyler Hively went to a bar with a friend who told him about a local publisher, Periodisa. The next day, Hively sent the owners, who included Lori Gum, an e-mail with his résumé and some short stories.
“I had just graduated from Otterbein and I was looking for work,” Hively, who’s 24, recalls. “Lori read my stories and I was brought in for an interview.”
Until then, Periodisa had released nothing. But all that was about to change. Three months after Hively was hired, Periodisa released the novel Jackson Falls, a thriller by Terry Bowman. Then, calling the new journal Filigree, Hively, now the editor, set about attracting Columbus writers. Many were unknown, drawn to Filigree by word of mouth or workshops. But soon Hively had enough writing, from short stories to essays to poetry, to put out a first issue.
Hively says it’s hard to explain to many people what a literary magazine (or journal, as it’s sometimes called) is and does. “A lot of people aren’t even familiar with the concept of a non-academic essay,” he says.
For the record, a literary magazine is not like most magazines. It’s not composed of topical articles spun out of recent headlines. Instead, it’s given over to fairly timeless essays, short stories, poetry, drawings and graphics. It’s most often avowedly non-academic and alive to the spirit of the times. But it also can limn the past.
Filigree, for instance, has a long, gonzo essay in its third and most recent issue about Arlus Stitch, an outrageous, larger-than-life lesbian scenester and druggie who created her own legend in Columbus punk circles in the 1980s before she died of a drug overdose.
The magazine also includes a somewhat surreal piece that imagines what it would be like if orchestral instruments were wild animals. And there’s a captivating graphic novel vignette, “The Ripping Wood,” about a girl who takes LSD. In between are stories of dogs and sudden death—the last told with hard-won wisdom by the deceased in a kind of American Beauty narration.
There’s poetry, too, including an interesting poem about belly dancing that reaches for and attains bold, soaring metaphors. Meanwhile, each cover is designed by a different Columbus artist. An artist named Wince, who also wrote the Stitch epic, did Issue 3.
If Filigree is both streetwise and lofty, it’s because of Hively’s own literary sensibilities. “I had a dream several years ago. In the dream, Jay Gatsby was introducing me to a prostitute,” Hively says with a smile. “So I try to emulate the vulgarity of Charles Bukowski, my favorite writer, while bringing in the class of Fitzgerald.”
Hively mostly reads writers of this time, such as Dave Eggers and Chuck Palahniuk. But he loves Edgar Allan Poe and any writer who can spin a great yarn. He particularly loves short stories.
Asked what he wants in Filigree, he pauses a moment before saying, “I’m looking for style, consistency and intelligence. But I really want something unexpected. I think we’re tired of reading the same stories with different names. I’m looking for something new.”
The goal with Filigree has been to seek out writers who could show what Columbus is capable of. Hively thinks the journal is accomplishing that already. And though local for now, Hively can foresee when the journal might go national. “As much as we want to display local and regional talent, I would love for Filigree to have a national readership and draw on national writers.”
But that’s a ways off. At the moment, the journal, which sells for $10, doesn’t pay its contributors, which is typical of fledgling literary enterprises.
Meanwhile, Hively wants to use Filigree to build a literary community in Columbus. In August, to celebrate the journal’s third issue, there was a meet-and-greet at a pop-up gallery in the Short North.
“It was good for what it was. We had the writers,” Hively says. And he pauses. “But we needed the readers.”
Jory Farr can be reached at joryfarr@gmail.com.
