Youth Radio Project interviews Jordan Rose of Graffiti Magazine

A new zine is about to hit the streets of Eugene. Speaking with the Youth Radio Project from Graffiti Magazine, Jordan Rose.

[00:00:08] Jordan Rose (Graffiti Magazine): It’s a completely reader-driven publication. That’s kind of what we’re looking for. It’s just the breadth of Eugene, raw and uncut. I mean, there’s a little bit of editing, of course, like, we have to stick with the guidelines and make sure there’s no libel or anything like that.

[00:00:22] But you know, for the most part, the majority of the submissions that we get in are just— they’re amazing. I just got the demo copy the other day and all of it’s so, so good. Somebody wrote in talking about how they’ve been wearing their friend’s underwear from since they knew him from college and they felt bad about telling them they’ve been wearing it, but it’s hilarious. It’s knockout funny, stuff you wouldn’t think to read about.

[00:00:46] There’s one cooking review. Typically it’d be like, ‘Oh, this is how you make your five-star meal.’ But it’s hilarious. It’s somebody that’s making cookies from the cookie dough ice cream. They’re digging out the little cookie dough pellets in there, and then they’re going by brand. So like: ‘Ben and Jerry’s, three stars, it’s really fantastic.’

[00:01:05] And there’s illustrations, people who do a little bit more of that kind of art want to send us in something like that. We’ve even got an obituary column.

[00:01:13] I do have some submissions in there myself. I’m a new transplant to the Eugene area, so I started a blog about my travels and being new to Eugene. And I wrote a little book review as well, which is a fantastic book. People should totally read it.

[00:01:29] We got a ton of poetry in, as usual, when there’s usually a call out for ‘Please submit your writing’. I mean, the beauty of poetry is that anybody can do it and anybody has it.

[00:01:38] John Q: Graffiti might have a future contributor, Jenah Hartman.

[00:01:41] Jenah Hartman (Youth Radio Project): Within the past few days I’ve done some poetry. I started like writing things, specific things about people that I see. Like there was this sixth-grader and I was walking down the hallways and I always have this notebook with me. I was walking down the hallways and this girl always has her hair like braids. And she undid her braids and her hair was super cool and it looked a lot better without the braids. And I’m like: ‘This one girl in sixth grade took out her braids and she looks absolutely beautiful.’ Just like tiny things that I noticed about, you know, society.

[00:02:20] Jordan Rose: It’s always something that somebody’s got on hand. Like, I cannot tell you, my dad’s not a writer himself, but I’m sure if I asked him like, Hey dad, you got any writing? He’s yeah, I guess, I’ve got it sitting around somewhere. So that’s the beauty of it is that kind of, anybody can do it.

[00:02:33] Jenah Hartman: Yeah, and then I noticed people who have experience debating things, the way they say specific stuff, the way they explain it— I kind of find it as poetry.

[00:02:47] Jordan Rose: Yep, I love it. It’s beautiful. Honestly, it’s a fun little paper. There’s just a really fun mix of items in there so it’s a really fun variety of things.

[00:02:57] And I’ve had a little experience working on other magazines myself. First magazine I worked on was a food and travel magazine. This one was amazing. Most of the issues were covering sustainability inside of food. And so there’s like different issues. There’s one in Reykjavik, there was one in Milan, there’s one in Lisbon. So I got to be at the forefront of a lot of these really beautiful conversations and see what these great minds of agricultural science and all of that were thinking.

[00:03:25] And then I also helped with a coffee magazine. It just covered everything about specialty coffee, which you wouldn’t believe how much there is to know about specialty coffee. Like it’s—it may as well be wine because there’s about a million and one things to know about it.

[00:03:39] So I’ve got a little bit under my belt and as soon as I connected with Don (the publisher of Graffiti), I was like, ‘Hey, you know what? I would love to help you on this project, this is right up my alley. This is the stuff I love to do.’

[00:03:50] So my role is associate editor and creatively I do help a little bit with the layouts. I’ve got like four new ideas of some stuff we could add in on the next print issue. So I have a little bit of oversight on that end.

[00:04:01] And I have a monthly writing that I do in there, and that’s just whatever is going on for me that day. It’s probably going to follow like same format as the blog form writing that I was doing that I submitted originally. So it’s going to be pretty similar to that.

[00:04:16] In terms of skills, it’s a lot of being able to take a large body of work because a lot of the work that we get sent in is so different. Like you could be getting like this and this and this and this and this, and it’s being able to put it all together in one cohesive thing. And even though I would say that Graffiti does not have one directive, like I’m sure every issue is going to have its own little unique flavor, some direct line of contemplation or thoughts or a theme of some sort.

[00:04:45] I think that’s the beauty of Graffiti is that it’s going to be people that really love our voice and kind of love what they see. And it’s going to be something that people come in and be like, when’s Graffiti getting in? Like, where, where is that? I think it’s going to be something that’ll catch on like that.

[00:04:57] I’m from Colorado originally and although it’s beautiful state, I don’t think it quite has anything on Oregon. And yeah, my impressions are: I love how weird it is. Just be weird. We love weird people. We love weirdos. Be proud of it. Those are the voices of Eugene that we love to feature.

[00:05:14] John Q: Youth Radio interviews Jordan Rose of Graffiti Magazine. It’s a new publication for Eugene creatives.

[00:05:22] Jenah Hartman: This is Jenah for KEPW 97.3 FM, Eugene’s Peace Works Radio.

Submit your material for publication to Graffiti Magazine, 1430 Willamette St. #242, Eugene OR 97401, or by email to graffitieugene@gmail.com.