Mile High Writers Share Their Stance on Social Justice in New Collection

It's the end of an era, but perhaps the beginning of another: The late, lamented BookBar's final project was its own press, and that has now transitioned to the Bookies Press. Its latest project, We Can See into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice, is a collaboration with Bower Books that was published this year.

We Can See Into Another Place is the product of the Mile High Low-Residency MFA at Regis University and spotlights many graduates and their work. The collection of fiction, poetry, essays and even comics will be the focus of an upcoming event at the Bookies on Friday, October 25, starting at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, and will feature authors from the collection reading and discussing their work as well as the project overall.

The Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing at Regis was founded in 2015 by David Hicks and the late Marty McGovern. In 2021, the program reached its peak; meanwhile, faculty and grads alike were producing significant works: Hillary Leftwich, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Whiting Award winner Steven Dunn, R. Alan Brooks, Tameca L. Coleman and many others.

We reached out to Bookies Press publishing director Heather Garbo and Regis professor and program director for the Mile High MFA  Andrea Rexilius to talk about the book, the program that produced it and what it means for both writer and reader alike.

Westword: How did this project came to life for each of you? When did you get involved in the development process, and what drew you to the project in the first place?

Heather Garbo: Andrea first approached us in Fall 2022. ... She didn’t at first intend it to be focused on social justice issues, but rather a collection of local authors. Yet once she started reviewing the submissions, she noticed nearly every piece had a social justice theme at its heart. I was immediately intrigued.

Andrea Rexilius: I've had the privilege of working closely with each of the writers over the course of nearly a decade and wanted to highlight the rich and multifaceted creative work they engage in. The anthology was a way to create an artifact of the stellar writing coming from the mentors at the Mile High MFA program at Regis over the last nine years.

Garbo: Once Andrea started naming the contributors, I got a little thrill of excitement. I knew it would be an honor to work on such a project. The writing was so powerful, and each of the pieces resonated with me for a different reason. Like Jenny Shank, I, too, have a child with sensory processing disorder. And like Rachel Weaver, I’ve recently navigated the challenges of the medical system while dealing with a debilitating and misunderstood health condition.

But one moment that felt particularly poignant for me came after we’d already acquired the collection and were in the editorial process. I’m sure you remember the tragic shooting of the East High School teachers by a student who then took his own life. The next day, DPS canceled all schools in the district for a mental health day, and I had a lot of mixed feelings about them being home for the day. I hated that it felt like we were sending the message that they weren’t safe at school, and at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling like maybe they weren’t safe. So I dove into work for a distraction, and I opened right to Alan’s incredibly affecting graphic short story "A Tragedy in the Snow," which depicts a school shooting he experienced when he was younger. I was struck by how deeply moving it was to read Alan’s words in that moment as I grappled with my own emotions.

Where did the title come from?

Rexilius: Early on, the subtitle Mile-High Writers on Social Justice was the full title, but we wanted a primary title to open the book a bit more creatively. I read through the collection to see if a title might arise from within the lines of someone’s essay, short story or poem. That’s typically how I discover titles when I’m organizing and finalizing a poetry/hybrid collection of my own. The line We Can See into Another Place came from Carolina Ebeid’s poem “Punctum / The Transom.” The full line is: “There is a quality about the rectangular shape of a stanza that is suggestive of a window pane / a sheet of glass through which we can see into another place.” Of the many lines from various pieces that I highlighted, this line most clearly held the vision of the overall anthology. Social justice-related topics can be very heavy in content,
and we wanted to also emphasize looking toward future possibilities and using the social justice lens to re-envision the present into a more hopeful future for all.

Garbo: As soon as Andrea proposed the title — truly, as soon as the words came out of her mouth — I loved it immediately. It just sounded right. As she says, we felt a responsibility to put forth a collection that left readers feeling optimistic, and also a sense of their own agency, rather than disheartened by the subject matter. I think this title perfectly encapsulates that hope.

What was the philosophy to doing a multi-genre anthology? This casts a pretty wide net in terms of form. It's impressive, but must also have been an editorial challenge, no?

Rexilius: The Mile High MFA’s philosophy [is] that we hold equally any genre expression a writer chooses to give to their work and vision. Many writing spaces create hierarchies or separations around genre. Our program and this book encourage conversations between and across genres. The perspectives of poetry, fiction (literary, speculative, YA) and creative nonfiction have unique things to say in relation to social justice issues, so we wanted to include each of those expressions in this collection.

Garbo: And from the perspective of the publisher, we were very intrigued by the idea of a multi-genre anthology. You
don’t see that very often. But it felt so right for this subject matter. The term “social justice” can be defined in so many ways, so there are a lot of ways to consider these topics and how they impact an individual and community. I love that contributors were able to choose their medium of expression for this collection and didn’t feel constrained, but in hindsight, I also think it makes this collection much more accessible for a reader. Essays, short stories, plays, poetry, graphic short story, interviews…you can find whatever speaks to you in this collection. We didn’t start out with this intention, but I think it just goes to show that sometimes you should follow where the art takes you rather than try to wrestle it into what you think it should be.

Was there any discussion as to the definition of "social justice" for this project? It's one of those terms that feels definitive, but everyone must come at it from very different angles, don't they? Just from this book as an example, the quilt of this collection shows some very different fabric.

Rexilius: We cast a wide descriptive net in how we defined topics of social justice. These arise organically in the writing based on each author’s experience in the world and their decisions about what matters in literature. As I arranged the collection, I noticed issues of cultural and linguistic erasure, dehumanization based on physical and neurological difference, issues of socioeconomic discrimination and/or reckoning, and concerns about our collective environmental and socioeconomic futures. One of the things I was drawn to in each of these pieces was their emphasis on complication in relation to social justice topics (there are no easy answers here) and empathy. For instance, in “Carlisle Longings,” David Heska Wanbli Weiden writes into his discomfort with his grandmother’s nostalgia for the Native American Boarding School she attended. Steven Dunn reflects on how he is both right and wrong about his dismissal of English and literature in “Intro / An Excerpt from Travel with Nas.” And Lori Ostlund grapples with intention and complicity in “The Bus Driver.”

Garbo: "Social justice" is one of those terms where everyone thinks they know what it means, but if you ask a dozen people, you’ll get a dozen different answers. What’s meaningful and significant to one person might not be for another. I remember researching to see how various organizations defined it so we could thoughtfully consider our approach. I like that the collection covers not only some of the more expected topics, like systemic racism, gender equity and gun violence, but also some that might not immediately come to mind, like health-care access and neurodiversity.

This book includes so many great Colorado writers/artists/creatives. Did that require a lot of cat-wrangling in getting all these creative folks on the same schedule?

Rexilius: A primary part of my job as program director is cat-wrangling! And the authors in this collection are all cats I know and love, who were all already in my repertoire as faculty/visiting writers, so we had a rapport and communication system in place that was easy to expand upon for this project.

Now that this collection is an artifact out in the world, any thoughts of doing it again? Getting the band back together?

Rexilius: I would love to do this again. The authors in this collection are phenomenal writers, thinkers and teachers. They are also a delight to work with in every capacity.

Garbo: When Nicole [Sullivan, owner of BookBar and BookBar Press] and I first began brainstorming about launching the press, this is exactly the type of work we hoped to put out…a book that centers important issues and amplifies the voices
of local creatives. Back then we couldn’t have imagined we’d be so fortunate to work with such a talented group of writers. I still feel awestruck when I look at the contributor list…the talent is immense. And now that I’ve met many of the contributors, I can also say these are some of the warmest, most genuine people who truly want to have a positive impact on the world, and to amplify that feels even more gratifying. We were so lucky that Derek Lawrence of Bower House, a
fantastic Colorado small press, generously agreed to co-publish the anthology with us, so it will continue to be available in distribution. I know I can speak for Nicole when I say we’re proud of all the titles we were able to publish, and we
are both happy to be able to continue our work with authors.

We Can See into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice is available now; the free reading event at the Bookies is 7 p.m. Friday, October 25, 2085 South Holly Street. For more information, see the Bookies website.