Scout Profile//Jasen Sousa

Jasen Sousa Puts the Company on his Back

Cover of Jasen Sousa's novel-in-poems, "Fancy Girl"

SOMERVILLE//Jasen Sousa, a Somerville native whose novel in poems, Fancy Girl, will be published in September by his own imprint, J-Rock Publishing, fell into the role of writer unintentionally. He’d pass along stories to friends in juvenile detention centers and mental hospitals as a way of keeping them in tune to the outside world. “I used to bring them little wraps of writings of things that were going on in the neighborhood,” he said. The recipients were grateful and repaid him with compliments and encouragement to continue writing. “As I did more research I noticed a lack of urban literature out there.”

            Thus, a void he sought to fill. Fancy Girl deals with the livelihood of Deanna Keight, a teenager, as she turns to prostitution in a wholehearted attempt to save money for her and her daughter. She is driven by the choking desire to leave Somerville and the characters of her life behind. There is no holding back. Sousa keeps the story believable and is able to spool out compassion from moments of degradation. For him, writing in the voice of a female call girl provided the biggest challenge, but was offset by being the biggest reward. “Their life is tough to most people,” he said of his protagonist. “[I was] trying to be authentic and accurate as possible, tell their type of story, what they go through on a daily basis and how they do what they have to in order to keep their family together.”

            Deanna walks the tightrope of single-parenthood, leaving her daughter in the care of Johnny J, who may still harbor some past love for her, while she scuffles in bedrooms all over. Meanwhile, Machinegun Mike, the father of Deanna’s daughter, is about to be let free from jail. As her corrosive journey shifts, the people in her life uncoil right along with her. The reader travels along in the girl’s mind, experiencing bouts with doubt, humiliation, self-righteousness, misguided love and triumph. Sousa succeeds tremendously at bringing this more-common-than-you-might-think tale come to life.

            Fancy Girl has been available as an ebook through Sousa’s own website and Amazon.com since July. Come September it will be available in print form from J-Rock Publishing, the company Sousa started with the purpose of providing a platform for urban youth to stretch their literary desires. At age 17 tragedy put a dent in Sousa’s life when a close friend died from a drug overdose. “I felt that if he had an outlet to tell what he was going through then maybe he wouldn’t have come to that outcome,” he said. The loss helped Sousa to push J-Rock, which he’d start a few years later while still a teenager, into existence.

He sensed a lack of opportunity within the city for kids beyond high school, especially within the arts. “I wanted to create this small publishing house just to give kids an opportunity in a field they would normally be shut out of,” he said. “The whole point was to build this literature for urban teenage readers [and] to create this environment that urban kids from everywhere can relate to.”     Sousa looks to employ anyone with a solid interest in the market at J-Rock. “Even if you weren’t necessarily interested in writing you could do graphic design, photography for book covers, marketing. You could get experience in all these areas.” All work is done on a contract basis. Interested applicants need only email Sousa through his website.

            When sitting down to pen Fancy Girl, Sousa asked himself an important question: “How can myself, as someone who writes for teenagers, create a product that would get them interested in reading when they come from a family history where books are not in the household?” One answer was to feed them the story, line by line, in poem form, an idea he got while at Pine Manor College, where he earned his MFA in Creative Writing. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree from Emerson College.

“Teenagers are more receptive to things that are fast. I wanted [Fancy Girl] to be hard-hitting, easy to read for a teenage audience and something to introduce kids to books.” The book consists of brief one or two page poems, each one carrying the story along, each one a story in itself, and is divided by chapters. Often when a teenager is folded up into a book these days, it’s the otherworldly Twilight series or Harry Potter books, Sousa said. With Fancy Girl he wanted to provide a realistic story that kids in urban areas could relate too. They won’t know what hit them.

jrockpublishing.com

Scout Profile//Scott Mastro

The Writer Strung Along

Scott Mastro & His Dog 

"Blood Money," Mastro's book of short stories.

SOMERVILLE//Scott Mastro meets for our interview trailed by his five-inches-off-the-ground “terrier-hound,” Georgia. Georgia drags a black leash behind her, zigzagging in the shadows of her master. Mastro walks with a crisp jutting, as if bee-bop blares constantly in his head, and looks in every direction behind dark square sunglasses. He’s all distracted energy with a mouth like a motorcade and last February his first book of short stories, Blood Money: Tales from Two Continents, was published by Savant Books.

            “You get that big rush when you first get published,” he tells me, then catches his breath, “then the real work begins. Then the guilt sets in and you’re like, ‘Damn, I got a book and I can’t sell it.” Mastro lives the writer’s gutter lifestyle, traveling every which where inspiration leads and knows he’s stronger for it. “I sacrificed just about everything to write.”

The chapters in Blood Money could represent the small wisps of storylines Mastro has picked up in his travels. There’s the flash of love between a Korean girl and an Iranian man; the English businessman burdened by a bucket; the church-going pothead in Rome. The stories are loose and laced with odds-and-ends humor. Reading through them pin-balls your mind across the globe. The book can be found at The Book Shop (694 Broadway), Porter Square Books in Cambridge and online at Amazon.com.

Mastro lives in Somerville. But, he probably won’t in twelve months’ time. “I moved to Boston after college. I lived in Cambridge, across from Market Basket. I moved out West. I lived in L.A., Colorado. I lived all over,” he says. “I’m originally from Pittsburgh, but I’ve been mistaken for being from all types of places: Canada, England, France. Lately people say I’m from the South because sometimes I’ll have a Southern accent.” His voice falls into a slow drawl.

            Last winter found Mastro in Key West, Florida where a few sparks of inspiration jolted his senses. “I just came back to Boston and this time has been the best because not only did I become published, but one of my plays is warranting the possibility of being a stage reading,” he says. The play, Moon Over Mangroves, is based off his time in the swamp state. “I was down in Key West living a fairly precarious lifestyle. By that I mean I didn’t know where to go.” He soon found out after driving through the beach and spotting an aimless crowd of van campers.

“My people!” he shouted at the comforting sight. “I pulled in and fit in right away.” Some in the crowd were homeless, some, like himself, were there just to party in the beach sand with waves surrounding. When a heavy cop presence pushed them north to Stock Island, where the mangroves still grow thick, Mastro discovered his plot.

Video still of Mastro's tune from Christmas 2012 in Key West.

Four of the men he made friends with boasted about their getting a dinghy. “You can live inexpensively on a boat and live on the hook,” he explains, “which means, go out in the water and drop an anchor.” Thrilled at the prospect of life on the open water the foursome celebrated, but soon lost their composure and wound up brawling and bruising each other. Mastro just sat watching the scene unfold.

“There’s mangroves, the cove, a full moon was there,” he says, frothing excitement, “and it just dropped. I went, ‘This is a play.’ It was a gift.” Currently the play is undergoing edits, and Mastro has been working with a filmmaker in Cambridge to form it into a movie.

Writers today have to find a whole new hustle online, Mastro says. He has gained a little traction by using Craigslist to connect with editors and writers. It’s how he got in touch with Savant as well as his collaborators on the play. “It’s tricky,” he says, considering the financial uncertainty of the written word. “You have to follow up with every lead. You have to be diligent, kiss people’s asses, research your market.” Lastly, though, it’s simple. “Always show up everywhere with a pretty girl—or two—if you can,” he adds with laughter. Even if that girl is a dog named Georgia. 


Originally from: SomervilleScout.com, 2012

Scout Profile//Ian Thal

Poet Ian Thal interviewed on Kosovar TV.  Photo by Yvan Tetelbom.

An
American
Poet in
Kosovo

SOMERVILLE//Ian Thal is big in Kosovo. The Somerville-based writer, mime, performance artist recently returned to the U.S. after reading at the Drini Poetik International Poetry Festival in Prizren. For one solid week in June Thal stormed Kosovo reading poems, checking sites of battle, getting a tan, swigging espresso and even stopping to shake hands with the prime minister. “Then I come back here and I’m essentially a nobody,” Thal said, his voice echoing in the back bank vault of Bloc 11 (11 Bow St.). “Some people say how grandeur is fleeting.”

            Thal conducts workshops in mime and commedia dell’arte for Somerville’s annual summer program, Open Air Circus, “when I’m not writing poetry and such,” he said. He’s taught for the organization since 2005 and moved to the city the following year. He is originally from Washington D.C. When speaking about the trip his eyes fill with wonder, but his vocal inflections try to play it down. Clearly the experience left an imprint on him as he walked me, photo by photo, through his spectacular journey.

            The reading gig came to Thal as a matter of connecting the dots. An Albanian-born playwright friend of his, Lediana Stillo, still connected to the area’s literary community, had been asked to dig up some contemporary American poetry for an anthology. She looked to Thal. He sent some poems; Stillo translated them into Albanian. His work appears alongside the work of other poets from around the country, including Chad Parenteau, of Jamaica Plain, and David Brinks, of New Orleans.

The volume, titled, Sounds of Wind: New American Lyrics, will be used as a textbook for advanced students of English at the University of Pristina. “It’s pretty exciting to realize that,” Thal said of the honor. “I can imagine late-night dorm room sessions.” His face torts into an angry grimace and his voice mimics a perturbed college kid, “’I hate Thal! What’s the obsession with the trains?’” Just as we study Frost, Ginsberg and Poe, students in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, will study Thal. A twinkle spurns off the ball of his eye when the thought rises in his mind.

            The festival was held in the historical town of Prizren with some 178,000 inhabitants. “Soon after arriving I realized this was a cultural diplomacy mission,” he said. The festival coincided with Kosovo’s centenary celebration of their independence from Albanian nationalists. The country’s rough-and-tumble history stretches back into the Middle Ages and the Ottoman Empire. It was only declared an independent state in 2008. “I was like the U.S. ambassador there,” he said.

            Four other speakers, including Stillo and Brinks, joined Thal for a romp around the country, visiting the capital, checking out the Writer’s Union library and taking part in the common occurrence of coffee in a café. They traveled with the intelligentsia. “There was no one language all five of us spoke,” he said, “but somehow we made it all work.”

            Thal described his own poetry as a scenic route: New England landscapes passing through Amtrak windows; the view from a rooftop on Beacon Hill; the lowlands of New Jersey. He has worked with Bread & Puppet Theatre and maintains a blog where his writing piles. See him at this summer’s Open Air Circus.

IanThal.blogspot.com