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iamvalley.com Features
Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism
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BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA -- Tamara Kaye Sellman, editor of Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism, has some explaining to do. When Sun Mi Kim, regular contributor to iamvalley.com, asked her to participate in an interview about magical realism, Sellman balked.

"Me? You want me to define magical realism?" she laughed.

"I know more about what it is not than what it is," Sellman admits of her pet topic. The writer and editor created Margin as a way to share her own personal exploration of magical realism. She never anticipated being consulted as an expert.

"When Sun contacted me, I got very nervous. I may produce and edit a website about magical realism, but I don't think that makes me much more than a lifelong student."

Kim's perception is a little different. "Some of the most compelling fiction falls under the genre of Magical Realism," Kim writes. "Sellman gives us a littérateur's introduction to magical realism -- where magic meets the mundane."

The interview delves into the basic fundamentals of magical realism as well as reveals the early developments that brought Margin into being. It also, in Sellman's view, breaks apart a few misnotions about magical realism. "It's not just Latin American writing, it's really an alternative form that has been utilized all around the world as a way to skirt, or to even defend against, mainstream realism," she says. "I hope that, if nothing else, visitors to the interview will take that away with them."

Sellman's interview became an editor's pick at the iamvalley.com website virtually overnight. It can be found at:

http://iamvalley.com/story_display/story_display.html?id=157

iamvalley.com is part of the larger IAM Valley.com Inc&trade, a for-profit global Internet communications and media company that aims to offer a comprehensive branded network of media services to millions of worldwide "cultural creatives" and the general public daily.

According to a statement at the iamvalley.com website: "We are currently living a moment in history where there is an insatiable demand for information, entertainment, and commerce which satisfies our deep yearning for spiritual evolution, personal growth, and environmental awareness. We are now at the beginning of a fundamental change of worldview as radical as the Internet revolution: the Cultural Creative revolution."

When asked if magical realism falls inside the parameters of such a revolution, Sellman replies: "Oh, handily. Magical realism has always had its thumb on consciousness."

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Rev'd 2003/03/27