Sunday, January 27, 2019

The Transformative Power of Stories: New Editor of Geez Speaks about her Vision for the Magazine

Lucia Wylie-Eggert, Lydia Wylie-Kellerman and
Kateri Boucher of Geez.



















In another post, I write about Geez magazine leaving Winnipeg for Detroit, where it will find a home with a new team led by Lydia Wylie-Kellerman. Below find a Q & A with Lydia, including her vision for the new magazine. 

Why do you and your friends want to take over Geez?

Lydia: I love Geez. I’ve been writing regularly for Geez since I first began to feel my own desire to be a writer. It has been a home for me. I never would have imagined in a million years that I would one day be stepping into this position.

For the last five years, I’ve been the co-curator of radicaldiscipleship.net which posts daily reflections from people around North America who are taking risks for justice, experimenting with creative acts of community and nonviolence, who are breaking open biblical study for liberation, who are planting gardens and raising kids.

It has been a delight. I have come to realize how much I believe in the power of stories and their intergenerational, transformative power. 

I find myself so grateful for the work that is happening all over the world and it is a gift to summon the stories as a way of honoring the work and inspiring the rest of us.

I want to keep summoning stories. I want to create beauty. I want folks to feel hope in these truly scary times. 

I want to gift the world with words powerful enough for us to dismantle “this filthy rotten system,” as Dorothy Day stated, and arise to build something new and wonderful.

What are some new things you want to try?

Lydia: My hope in these days is to maintain the current quality of Geez. I want readers to find the magazine in their mailbox and see that it is the same magazine just with some different folks behind the scenes.

That being said, I won’t deny I lie awake at night filled with ideas and dreams for themes or stories or new columns.

I would love to start a regular column that is called something like “The Elders Front Porch” where movement elders write pieces on how they see the world in these days and offer the nourishment and challenge we all need to move forward. These would be small and subtle changes.

You indicate a commitment to print, but also say you understand "in this generation we cannot hope to save print magazines." Are you open to going digital? Or would you let it close if it proves unsustainable in that format?

Lydia: It is hard to answer that question with any certainty. I have heard Aiden talk about Geez as an offline oasis. Through my work with radicaldiscipleship.net, I have spent a lot of time cultivating stories in an online format. 

It has its value. But I am not sure I want to give my life helping people be more addicted to screens.

I want to help create something that can be read around the kitchen table, that can be read as you lean against a tree, something that can be held in your hands, and treasured over time. 

So my instinct is to say that we are committed to print and will go down fighting for it, but I leave a small amount of wiggle room for the spirit to take us a different way.

In Canada, we have a general fear of being overwhelmed by the U.S. What can you say to Canadians to assuage their fears that this won't turn into another America-first magazine?

Lydia: I hear this fear in readers these days and in all honesty, I carry that fear with every step of this transition. 

The U.S. empire is a powerful and ugly thing. I’ve spent my life discerning in community how to live so that my body and spirit aren’t swallowed whole by the empire.

I believe that Geez’s roots in Canada is a tremendous gift to the work and identity of the magazine. I cannot pretend that things won’t change. The context from where the magazine goes out matters.

What I can promise is that I am mindful and paying attention to this concern. I will also make sure that the context from which we do the work will be amidst people who are resisting the U.S. empire with their lives.

And in the concrete, we commit to having Canadians on the board, keeping Aiden in the editorial circle, and making sure that a certain percentage of the contributions come from Canadian authors and artists.

Finally, say a bit about who you are and the group behind this new ownership.

Lydia: I am a writer, editor, organizer, and mother. My partner Erinn, and I are raising two boys (5 and 3) on the street where I grew up. My dad lives five houses away, my sister across the street, and a neighborhood filled beloveds.

We spend time planting urban gardens, tending chickens and bees, and throwing block parties. In our neighborhood in southwest Detroit, loving our neighbors also means organizing resistance to the water shut offs that are happening on a massive scale in Detroit, as well as resisting the immigration system that regularly tears families apart on our block.

I am the co-editor of radicaldiscipleship.net. I am also currently working with the Louisville Institute to put together an anthology on parenting with commitments to peace and justice.

My team is pretty amazing. These are three women who I have spent endless hours with gardening, canning, praying, and protesting. I’ve been at the birth of their children and walked with them through hard moments of transition. They are three women who I trust their analysis and hopes for the world.

On top of all of that, Em Jacoby understands a budget better than anyone I know. Lucia Wylie-Eggert create beauty through design. Kateri Boucher loves to talk with people and can effortlessly turn you into a subscriber.


I couldn’t do this without them. I am so grateful.

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