MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT

Mentorship Recipient: "Eid Mubarak"

Mentor Commentary:
Laura Maylene Walter

On the Revision Process for "Eid Mubarak"

by ​​Yasmine Rukia

It took me an entire year to write “Eid Mubarak,” and a span of 6 months to work up the courage to send it out in any capacity, even to my friends. I’m a poet by nature, but a novice short story by fascination at best. It’s safe to say that I was in utter shock when I was chosen for an Editorial Mentorship and publication with the Gordon Square Review. Laura Walter is an incredible editor and ally. She nurtured the fabric of my creativity and honored my heritage throughout the entire editing process.  I’ve heard many horror stories from other writers of color who worked with editors who simply didn’t get their work or pushed their interpretation onto the story. Laura did none of these things but asked important questions and suggested edits that only encouraged and emboldened the vision I was working to create, a story about women living true to themselves and together in community despite the patriarchal overreach that keeps them disconnected.

Outside of small-knit workshops, I have never had such close care and consideration taken toward my work by an editor or a magazine before. I’ve learned a ton over the course of my correspondence with Laura; how to read stories with an editing lens, what that editing lens strives to establish and what questions I should be asking myself while crafting a narrative especially in the areas of tone and clarity. I was unsure this story would ever find a home, because of my lack of experience in the short story form and its unique culturally charged subject manner, but Laura took a chance and believed in my work and my ability as a writer. This experience was absolutely uplifting during the global health pandemic and I am forever grateful to the GSR and Laura for this stellar mentorship and publication opportunity! 
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Yasmine Rukia

Yasmine Rukia is a first generation Lebanese-American performing poet, short story writer and meme artist from Dearborn Michigan. Her poems, essays and stories appear in Mizna, Cliterature, The Porter Gulch Review, PaperMag, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, forthcoming and elsewhere. She has two sons, a typewriter, and a mean caffeine addiction. Follow her on social media to find out where she may be next.