EDITORIAL
​MENTORSHIP

Mentorship Recipient
Faith Fixed Like Stars

Recipient Reflection: 
Victor Okechukwu

On "Faith Fixed Like Stars" by Victor Okechukwu

by ​​Laura Maylene Walter

The opening paragraph of “Faith Fixed Like Stars” offers an array of sensory details—“blades of morning light intermingled with the dust and noise from car drivers yelling against each other, tires wobbling in potholes, clashing horns, mothers shouting at their children to be careful on the road, vendors calling about the dailies, bread sellers beckoning on customers, and shop owners opening their wares”—to thrust the reader into a bustling, vivid setting. That first paragraph piqued my interest at once, and as the story unfolded to reveal a family tragedy, I knew I wanted to choose this piece for an editorial mentorship.  
 
In the original draft, I saw opportunities to make cuts to help the story’s emotional truth shine through even more brightly. As I explained to Mr. Victor Okechukwu during our mentorship, writing fiction can often feel like a delicate dance of choosing what to reveal, what to imply, and what to outright state. The cuts I suggested were an attempt to improve that balance and to allow the power of the reader’s imagination to draw some of the connections within the story.
 
Of course, the cuts and changes I suggested represent my own subjective opinion—because everything in the writing world is subjective, and no editor has all the definitive answers. I also reminded myself through this process that Mr. Victor and I are from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures, so I was wary of inadvertently imposing my own aesthetic or cultural framework on work that is uniquely his own. The best I could do was try to be aware of this potential conflict and to ask the author to let me know if I was misunderstanding anything or overstepping.
 
For his part, Mr. Victor was gracious and appreciative of the mentorship, and I felt lucky to work with a writer who displays such heart, imagination, and ambition. As I detail in my editor’s letter, this is my tenth and final issue as the editor of Gordon Square Review, and it feels appropriate that my final GSR mentorship was helping usher “Faith Fixed Like Stars” to publication. My hope is that Mr. Victor continues to write, to learn, and to evolve into the writer he is meant to become—the same hope I have for all of us, no matter where we might be on our own individual writing journeys. 

Laura Maylene Walter

Laura Maylene Walter is the Editor-in-Chief of Gordon Square Review. Her debut novel, Body of Stars, was published in 2021 by Dutton in the US and Hodder Studio in the UK. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Poets & Writers, The Sun, Slate, F(r)iction, The Masters Review, Ninth Letter, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She has received grants, awards, or fellowships from Tin House, the Ohio Arts Council, the Ohioana Library Association, Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers.  Laura is the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow at Cleveland Public Library, where she hosts Page Count, a literary podcast.