Meet Genevieve Trainor, the editor for our new anthology inspired by Dante’s ‘Inferno’!

Folks who follow us may be familiar with editor, Genevieve Trainor: she joined RSM for the team-edit of last year’s Jekyll & Hyde-inspired anthology. This year she takes on the role of sole editor for a new collection inspired by Dante’s Inferno.

We sat down with Genevieve to ask her what fresh hell she’s looking for from folks who pitch for this year’s Red Stylo Presents anthology. Take a scroll through some of our warm-up, get-to-know-you questions, and then click to listen to the MAWPcast for some more Q&A (recorded early January.) There Genevieve discusses the real things she’s looking for and what she’d like to see as people pitch stories this year. ***NOTE: OPEN CALL for this collection ends February 15th!***

RSM: Obviously, if Hell exists (as we assume in the new collection), there’s some system of sins that get you there. Do you believe in Good and Evil?

Genevieve:  As overarching philosophical concepts? Definitely. Do I believe that any individual has the capacity to be purely good or purely evil? No. If there’s some great cosmic game for dominance between the two, it’s not Red Rover, it’s Tug of War. We’re just strands in the rope. 

RSM:  What’s your favorite ring of Dante’s Hell?

Genevieve:  I’ve got to go with two [Lust]. First, it’s where shit starts to get real. Level one is kind of a bye. Two is where actual “sins” start to be defined, and souls start to be judged. Second, I’m a sucker for the different myths about *how* our souls are judged. I’m partial to Anubis and Ma’at’s feather, personally, but there’s something cathartic about Minos’ requirement that the dead tell him their sins — and something undeniably cool and dynamic and visual about that tail. Philosophically, I like the feather — but the tail is a better story. Third, I’m partial to level two because love is always worth it.

RSM: In the poem, the poet Virgil takes fellow poet, Dante, on his tour of Dis, and there seem to be a lot of writers there. Who would you choose to be your tour guide and why?

Genevieve: Damn. I though this would be an easy one, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am. My gut instinct is Edgar Allan Poe — he was so formative to everything I am as a writer and as an artist in general, and I feel like that’s why Dante made his choice. But then I think of Adrienne Rich — she appeals to me because she is so representative of everything I *want to be* as a poet, in the times that I still think I want to be a poet. And if you’ve read her “Diving Into the Wreck,” you can imagine how well-suited to this task she’d be. 

RSM: What kind of music do they play in Hell?

Genevieve:  The entirety of Nickleback’s body of work, on loop, but each song is a bad club DJ’s mix with either “What’s New Pussycat?” or “… Baby One More Time.”

The What Fresh Hell Is This? comic anthology, inspired by Dante’s Inferno, will take the reader on a journey through the nine circles of Hell, pausing in each circle to learn how some poor, wretched soul came to inhabit the City of Dis. Edited by returning RSM editor, Genevieve Trainor. #SeeYouInHell