This is the last of four interviews Micheal conducted at the 2010 Jubilee conference. Alissa Wilkinson has a professional life that probably looks like a particular niche of ESN members. At the time of the interview she was editing The Curator for the International Arts Movement, while teaching writing at The King’s College and serving as Associate Editor for Comment. In 2014 she serves as chief film critic at Christianity Today Movies, Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at The King’s College and editor of QIdeas.org. She has written a number of columns and articles. In this insightful piece, Micheal explores with Alissa vocation, balance, and life as a writer, editor, and teacher. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV
Micheal Hickerson: One of the reasons I wanted to interview you because of all the different things that you are doing that relate to the same general vocation and calling. I think that’s a pretty common thing among ESN members and among people in academic or cultural fields, and it’s becoming more common. First of all, I wanted to ask you about the publications that you are connected with. You were the founding editor for the Curator, which is published by International Arts Movement. There is also Comment, where you are the —
Alissa Wilkinson: I am the associate editor.
MH: Let’s talk about the Curator. Why did you decide to start that magazine and what was the origin story for it?
AW: I’ve been connected with the International Arts Movement in different capacities pretty much since I’ve moved to the city, which was about four and half years ago. I had been going to their head morning meetings in Tribeca, and we had a discussion group. Several of my good friends who are now on staff with me were also going to that group, and we got to talking about how good it would be for IAM to be putting something out there into the cultural sphere that was an example of promoting good work, which was where the idea of the Curator came in.
One morning over breakfast we just had this idea, “Hey, we should do an online magazine. I mean how hard can that be?†We decided the point of it should be to curate culture in such a way that we are looking to promote good culture that might otherwise be overlooked, because magazines like, on one hand, The New Yorker and The Atlantic tend to be very good at writing good cultural criticism and then on the other hand, there are Christian publications that do the same thing. They mainly focus on what’s broader in culture — either pop culture or high culture — but things that people are already talking about. The idea was let’s also write about things that people might not be talking about.
Photo credit: Anna L Conti via Flickr
In that way, it fit with the idea of IAM as a local movement more than just something that was from New York. I have writers all over the country — actually all over the world — and I encourage them to seek out what is interesting in their area, like a small band that they love, or their friends’ work, or something like that. Maybe they find a book in the library that was published 25 years ago and think, “I can’t believe nobody has read this book.†The concept was to publish culture essays that had a personal bend that would help uncover good culture.
I started recruiting some writers, and Kevin Gosa who works here at IAM with me started recruiting some writers he knew, and between the two of us we got up quite a list. We launched on August 29, 2008. Since then we’ve published three essays continually every week, and we’ve added a lot of writers. We are hatching plans of maybe some blogs, I am not sure yet, but it’s been a good experience. I’ve been handling most of the work on that end. I am trying to get some coworkers to come on and help with some of the scheduling and I have an assisting editor who helps me proofread.
Everyone volunteered their time up until about this time last year and now we get to pay them a little. It’s been good and we’ve gotten a lot of buzz. Actually, I was surprised we’ve gotten links from Book Forum and from Kottke, which is pretty well known. People seem to be resonating with the idea. [Read more…] about ESN Interview: Alissa Wilkinson