Call & Response is a ‘zine of responsive art, dedicated to fostering creative collaboration. Originally conceived as a transatlantic literary ‘zine produced jointly by Sarah Lawrence College and Wadham College, Oxford, Call & Response is now opening its doors to a wider community of writers, musicians, and visual artists, in the hopes of creating lasting connections between artists of all kinds.
Every week, the Call & Response editors will issue a prompt or exercise designed to stimulate our readers’ imaginations. We invite readers to share their responses to these prompts, and we will publish a selection of the results in our quarterly print issue.
Further, we encourage our readers to use others’ work as a potential jumping off point for their own projects. Our work as artists doesn’t exist in a vacuum and we are never merely passive readers or observers of others’ art. By asking our readers to engaging creatively with other artist’s pieces, we hope to instigate a creative dialogue, in which ideas, images, and themes are exchanged freely.
So how does it work? Say Call & Response issues a prompt about apples and you submit a poem about an apple orchard to Call & Response. Someone reads this poem and is inspired to do a painting of the tree you described. Someone else sees this painting and writes a short play about two people meeting underneath a tree. Yet another person reads this play and writes a song about meeting someone under a tree. And suddenly there exists an unbroken chain of shared influences, a call to a response to a call to a response. Of course, we realize that inspiration can take many forms and the many responses to any given piece may shoot off in a wide variety of directions without explicitly citing the original “call.” We’re always happy to be surprised by the new interpretations readers give to prompts. Surprise us!
Call it what you like – collaboration, remixing, a game of telephone – our goal is to build a community of artists who consider one another not merely colleagues in the same field but partners in a joint endeavor.
To get a hands on feel for C&R, please check out our archives, follow us on twitter, like us on facebook, or, best yet, submit some of your own work! The magazine can’t exist without you guys, and we’re so glad you’re here.
About the Editors
Carlea Holl-Jensen and Kristin Maffei first met on the north lawn of Sarah Lawrence College, when Kristin tried to convince Carlea to let her see her dorm room. Carlea politely declined this and any other invitation to get together that fall. Typical. They re-met the following year, while studying the history of the English language. It wasn’t until they were housemates at Wadham College, Oxford when they became dear friends, bonding over long papers, trips to the chip shop, and crafternoons spent putting together paper chains and issues of Call & Response.
Carlea now lives in a library in Annapolis, MD. She holds a Masters in Folklore and her fiction has appeared in Pindeldyboz, WOMANZINE, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Carlea is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction at the University of Maryland. She also blogs at Hour of Gold, and tweets as CarleaCassyl.
Kristin keeps herself busy in New York. Her poetry has appeared in Quarrtsiluni, the Little Jackie Paper, and some buses in England. She enjoys eating at restaurants and aspires to live in an old house. Kristin just started her MFA in Poetry at New York University. She also blogs at Not Intent on Arriving, and tweets as Ktin520.
