Meet Gabriela Denise Frank—Managing Editor
Crab Creek Review is excited to announce our new Managing Editor, Gabriela Denise Frank! Initially a contributor in 2017 to our Creative Nonfiction Editor in 2021, Gabriela has been in the Crab Creek sphere for many years. A talented writer, artist, and editor, Gabriela will now help lead Crab Creek Review. She brings boundless energy, deft insights, and meticulous organization to our team, and we are so excited for her to take on this new role. Learn more about Gabriela in our mini interview with her below!
1. What are you excited about as you step into the Managing Editor role at Crab Creek Review?
I am excited to continue exploring behind the scenes in the literary world with a journal I love. I’ve always been drawn to the engines of organizations and businesses—how design firms work or how one learns the professional development side of artistic practice, for example. I’m excited to deepen my relationship with CCR: I published an essay with the journal in 2017, joined as creative nonfiction editor in 2021, and now I can keep learning and growing in this new role as the journal itself evolves.
2. What is your favorite part about editing a literary journal?
I love discovering work that I couldn’t have written. I love working with writers who surprise and astound me, and who may be early in their publishing careers--regardless of age. Editors are gatekeepers in a sense, but the gate swings both ways. I see my role as one of swinging the gates open and making the boundary between writers and audience more porous and accessible. It's deeply satisfying to amplify someone else’s voice in the world, and the experience has made me especially grateful for the editors who have advocated for my work. We all belong to an ecosystem.
3. What's your favorite piece of writing advice?
I was in a fiction workshop with Maud Casey at Bread Loaf Sicily—we were workshopping novels—and mine was unfinished. We spoke about many things, but she made a point of separating out revision-level concerns with feedback on the chapters I submitted. She was careful not to derail me, knowing that unfinished work is incredibly tender; she impressed upon me the need to write all the way through so that I would know what I had to work with.
It’s the simplest advice: always, always, always write to the end of the first draft. Do not go back and polish the beginning (this is what used to derail me from completing work). Until there's a full draft on paper, the essay, novel, or poem is only an idea. It seems perfect. We get scared of screwing up that perfection, so we procrastinate by dodging into revision. The first draft, of course, will not resemble the unblemished and brilliant notion, but it will be real and then can we do something with it.
4. What was the last piece (writing, visual, etc.) that really stuck with you?
There are a few: Diamond Forde’s gorgeous hybrid called Rememory and Maya Jewell Zeller’s hermit crab Povery Fires in DIAGRAM; Christina Quarles’s imaginative paintings (her exhibition at the Frye was fantastic); Eleanor Crook’s haunted visual work with artificial intelligence, and I’m in love with the visual artwork of Jodi Hays, which I’m dying to see in person.
5. If you had to choose a favorite crustacean, what would it be?
I’m a Cancer Sun, so a crab, of course!
1. What are you excited about as you step into the Managing Editor role at Crab Creek Review?
I am excited to continue exploring behind the scenes in the literary world with a journal I love. I’ve always been drawn to the engines of organizations and businesses—how design firms work or how one learns the professional development side of artistic practice, for example. I’m excited to deepen my relationship with CCR: I published an essay with the journal in 2017, joined as creative nonfiction editor in 2021, and now I can keep learning and growing in this new role as the journal itself evolves.
2. What is your favorite part about editing a literary journal?
I love discovering work that I couldn’t have written. I love working with writers who surprise and astound me, and who may be early in their publishing careers--regardless of age. Editors are gatekeepers in a sense, but the gate swings both ways. I see my role as one of swinging the gates open and making the boundary between writers and audience more porous and accessible. It's deeply satisfying to amplify someone else’s voice in the world, and the experience has made me especially grateful for the editors who have advocated for my work. We all belong to an ecosystem.
3. What's your favorite piece of writing advice?
I was in a fiction workshop with Maud Casey at Bread Loaf Sicily—we were workshopping novels—and mine was unfinished. We spoke about many things, but she made a point of separating out revision-level concerns with feedback on the chapters I submitted. She was careful not to derail me, knowing that unfinished work is incredibly tender; she impressed upon me the need to write all the way through so that I would know what I had to work with.
It’s the simplest advice: always, always, always write to the end of the first draft. Do not go back and polish the beginning (this is what used to derail me from completing work). Until there's a full draft on paper, the essay, novel, or poem is only an idea. It seems perfect. We get scared of screwing up that perfection, so we procrastinate by dodging into revision. The first draft, of course, will not resemble the unblemished and brilliant notion, but it will be real and then can we do something with it.
4. What was the last piece (writing, visual, etc.) that really stuck with you?
There are a few: Diamond Forde’s gorgeous hybrid called Rememory and Maya Jewell Zeller’s hermit crab Povery Fires in DIAGRAM; Christina Quarles’s imaginative paintings (her exhibition at the Frye was fantastic); Eleanor Crook’s haunted visual work with artificial intelligence, and I’m in love with the visual artwork of Jodi Hays, which I’m dying to see in person.
5. If you had to choose a favorite crustacean, what would it be?
I’m a Cancer Sun, so a crab, of course!
Gabriela Denise Frank is a transdisciplinary storyteller, editor, and educator whose work expands from the page into the sonic, the visual, and the experiential. Her writing has appeared in True Story, Tahoma Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The author of Pity She Didn’t Stay ’Til the End (Bottlecap Press, 2022), she serves as creative nonfiction editor and managing editor of Crab Creek Review. Her art practice is supported by grants, fellowships, and residencies from 4Culture, Artist Trust, Centrum, the Civita Institute, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Mineral School, Seattle Public Library, Shunpike, Vermont Studio Center, and Willapa Bay AIR. www.gabrieladenisefrank.com