Meet NUNUM's Summer 2019 Contributors: George Stein

9/2/2019

NUNUM - Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with George Stein

George Stein

George L Stein gave us the art work responsible for bringing Rachel Hoffman’s story Hunter Gather to life in our Summer 2019 issue.

George what was the first book you remember picking and reading by yourself?

It was a kid's book on The Johnstown Flood. I remember that it was horrifying.

Ah, never read it but something to remember I'm sure. What was an exhibition you attended that made you say damn that was good?

NUNUM cover Summer 2019 by Jodie Filan

Recently, it was the New York Public Library's exhibition on the

Stonewall Inn uprising in June of 1969. Lots of photos and publications from the era, 25 cent underground magazines, photos of the writers, photographers, and editors, all working for almost nothing, financially.To see these underground newspapers and magazines as framed documentation around the initial struggles for LGBTQ rights, it was a humbling statement about how real revolutions occur and the power of a free press.

Pen, pencil or phone which one do you reach for when you need to write something down?

Always a soft-gel pen.

Easy enough. What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?

Plan for acceptance, do everything required, but expect rejection, to

New Am Goth by George Stein

protect your ego and so that you'll be pleasantly surprised if and when you are accepted, and eventually you will be. You never really know if your work didn't measure up, the editors were overwhelmed for that day or that issue, or it just wasn't the right day to open your submission for whatever reason. For a creative, getting accepted is a war of attrition, not a sprint or a single bullet, so just keep sending volleys of submissions over the wall, and keep writing, or shooting new photos in my case. I think some editors regard tenacity as a favorable trait, at least that's the positive delusion that I choose to work under.

George is a writer and photographer living in Michigan City in Northwest Indiana. George works in both film and digital formats in the urban decay, architecture, fetish, and street photography genres. His emphasis is on composition with the juxtaposition of beauty and decay lying at the center of his aesthetic. Northwest Indiana's rust-belt legacy provides ample locations for industrial backdrops.