I am thrilled to have Nadia Gerassimenko here this month to present her amazing Moonchild Magazine, one of the best new venues for short literary fiction and poetry. Nadia was so kind to answer a few questions for us.
Who is Nadia Gerassimenko and how did she become a writer?
I’m a poet, an editor, a nightdreamer, a moonchild, a friend. If I could go back to the first memory of when I initially started writing, I think I was eight, and I wrote my first Christmas-themed song. Then I had another productive spurt of writing songs from age ten to twelve. I stopped for a while and resumed when I was fourteen–with poetry this time. I remember it being springtime, a beloved season that makes me feel so alive and one with nature and in love with everything. I also remember having intense emotions within me I had to let out creatively somehow; internalizing them would have probably felt awful, even if such feelings were positive ones. I would write poetry and occasionally dab my feet into fiction until my early twenties. I had a bout of writer’s block for a while afterwards due to school sucking all my creativity and my wellbeing being compromised. Fortunately my love for writing and reading returned several years after being out of school. Nowadays I still mainly focus on poetry, exploring themes of trauma, chronic illness, endangered animals. And occasionally I experiment with non-fiction to get out of my comfort zone. Thank goodness for writing. As someone who has been an introvert, a recluse, and a very private person all my life, writing has been and still is something very cathartic, releasing, healing for me. I do feel I have family and friends I trust with my pain, but some things I don’t want to discuss with anyone but rather write it away.
Experimental fiction. What has attracted you to it in the first place?
I’m someone who feels very stimulated by visuals, especially in written form that’s technically not easy to experiment with. I’m absolutely dazzled by writing that has no bounds when it comes to formatting. I’m also blown away by writing that tells stories in unexpected ways, that breaks through the fourth wall, that explores themes in fresh, innovative, progressive ways, that leaves room for nuance and ambiguities, that makes you go, “Huh, I never thought of it that way. Wow!”
You’re an editor/publisher with Moonchild Magazine. How did you decide to found the magazine?
I was editing for Luna Luna Magazine at the time. I loved being part of such a supportive collective who continuously support and publish bold, empowering, avant-garde work. While I mostly had free-range over curating and publishing work of my choosing, I was still contemplating and longing for something of my own. Something dreamy. Something otherwordly. Something experimental. Moonchild Magazine was born to publish works that are like an experience and to nurture a safe and sacred community of like-minded moonchildren who raise each other up and support one another.
How do you select your authors you publish?
When I receive something and read it, in order for me to publish that work in particular, I have to be moved by it both mentally and emotionally. I also try to put myself in readers’ shoes and consider how it would make them feel, if they would love it as much as I do. I admit to soliciting other people’s work as well if I discover something/someone that inspires me tremendously, I reach out.
2018. The story/poetry that made you cry -if any.
“Bougainvillea” by Samantha Lamph/Len broke my heart.
2019 onward. Your future plans.
In 2018 I started publishing online chapbooks in Moonchild Magazine‘s imprint Moonchaps. I plan to continue publishing more luminous chapbooks in 2019. Maybe I will make a blog to publish non-themed writing and artwork on a regular basis. I would eventually like to be able to pay my contributors, though I don’t know how at the moment, but I’m reflecting on it. 
Thank you so much, Nadia, for this great interview and I hope Moonchild Magazine continues thriving as it has done so far. For more about Moonchild Magazine, I invite readers to have a look directly at its pages here.
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