Rachel Kendall ('Sein und Werden')

Interview by Alan Kelly

Vaudeville, veiled hats, doppelgangers, clowns, macabre, destruction, deformities, ghosts, insane asylums, cut throat razors, creepy dolls, blood baths, Kathy Acker, Sartre, b/w crime photography, oddities, gas masks, medical curiosities, prosthetic limbs, existentialism, surrealism, Bataille, shiny sharp toys, tod browning, cannibalism, serial killers, philia; each word more or less sums up Rachel Kendall’s Sein und Werden (Being and Becoming). Rachel Kendall, the editor of Sein und Werden has agreed to sit down for a few words on the weirdest print/online magazine currently doing the rounds. A magazine that is going from strength to strength...

Rachel Kendall has had many stories published in a number of print magazines, including Nemonymous, Legends, Connections, Horror Express, Scifantastic and Dead Things. And in the anthologies In Blood We Lust and Darkness Rising 5. Later this year will see her essay about House of 1000 Corpses published in Butcher Knives and Body Counts, Dark Scribe Press, another short story - Scapegoat - in Dead Ends published by Screaming Dreams. Halloween 2009 will see the publication of her short story collection The Bride Stripped Bare, and her novel The Blush is to be published in 2010, both by Doghorn Publishing.

Two of her stories have been translated into Polish at theminimalbooksblog. And she self-published a short story collection called Her Black Little Heart in 2006, and runs ISMs Press, which hasso far published a novella by Mark Howard Jones and collaboration with Juliet Cook called Bone-Bodiced. And she tells me there are 2 more novellas and possibly some e-books in the pipeline.

AK: How old is Sein und Werden now?

Sein und Werden is five years old. It started in 2004 as an e-zine, and in 2006 its trampy sister project, the print zine, came into being.

Sein und Werden is one of the most innovative print/online literary magazines and certainly the strangest and you've said you prefer style over substance. It is definitely stylish -- what do you seek in submissions?

I do like to include a good mix of both raw experimental fiction and fiction that inclines more towards the traditional. One can get a bit overwhelmed with a whole zine that is the literary equivalent of experimental jazz! For me, plot is important in a story, but generally not as important as style. I am a wordy person. I like the sound and structure and flow of sentences. I like it when an author has taken the time to compose a piece, like poetry, rather than simply writing a string of occurrences. And I hate clichés!

AK: Bataille, Acker, Kafka and Beckett's influences are noticed influences when crawling through the archives. Bleak existentialism, debauched surrealism and sometimes just good old fashion body horror. Sein und Werden is pretty open-minded to writers - publishing established writers as well as newcomers?

What I publish simply comes down to (what I consider to be) good writing and that which is pleasing to Sein’s eye. I won’t turn down someone just because they’re well-published and I can’t lie – it is an honour to be able to include work by well known writers in the quirky field of the small press. But the first issue of Sein und Werden was a collection of material by writers and artists I had come across on the interweb, who I basically begged to allow me to publish their work online. I will still ask to use a piece of work that I come across in passing, rather than only waiting for the material to come to me, if it fits the bill. So, it’s about the best in ‘bleak existentialism, debauched surrealism and good old fashioned body horror’ filling Sein’s pages, rather than a list of known names and publishing credits.

AK: I read a review wherein you described yourself as "a little bit bitter, a little bit twisted" (no offence) how much of your own personality is transposed into Sein und Werden?

Oh there is definitely quite a lot of my personality in there. It comes into play with the material I choose to publish as well as the overall look of the zine, which is admittedly defined as much by my lack of publishing/IT knowledge as anything else.

AK: Each issue is themed, why?

I like to think of Sein as an ongoing project, which is why I coined the term Werdenism, so that there would be this core of ideas which the zine could then wrap itself around. At the same time I wanted to have each issue separate from the others, while still being connected. It’s a step by step approach. First there are three ‘isms’ to think about and then there is each different theme. It’s like throwing the bait out to the contributors. And it means I get different writers and artists contributing to different issues, depending on whether the theme suits them. I have been told a few times that having the theme spurs some people on to write something new, rather than delving through their archives to see what might fit.

AK: Sein und Werden regularly publishes material that other editors would flee from, have you had any negative feedback in relation to some of the more extreme material you publish?

No I don’t think I’ve had any negative feedback. What I have had on more than one occasion is a ‘wtf?’ kind of response. As in, I just don’t get it. But I don’t consider that negative. I think the magazine is just not to everyone’s taste.

AK: Sein und Werden's next issue is Cinematique, are you as much influenced by film as literature in the overall design of the magazine?

No I don’t think so. I like to add a cinematic touch sometimes, and include film stills etc, but really my greatest influence is the Avant-garde zines from the 1910s to the 1930s, which had lots of type-setting fun.

AK: Tell me a bit about your novel The Blush?

I wrote The Blush when I lived in Paris for 3 months. My days were spent idly sitting in cafes drinking wine, smoking in the park and writing my novel. It was absolute bliss. I have attempted a few novels and tend to experiment with technique each time. I went to Paris without an idea of what I wanted to write, just that I wanted to make the most of my time there. I have been a diarist for years, so I carried on with that, and it kind of turned into a novel. It’s about a girl and her boyfriend who spend three months in Paris. It’s life imitating art. It’s not purely factual however. There’s a lot of fun artistic license with the presence of a third person who threatens to fuck up their world. There’s an essence of the Sartre/de Beauvoir relationship in there I think.

AK: Are you easily scared, disturbed, disgusted?

I have become more so as I’ve got older I think. I used to write the most horrific short stories, many years ago, and watch the usual fair of bad horror. Films definitely have more of an impact on me in this way than literature. I think with fiction I’m too busy analyzing it, pulling it apart, thinking ‘wow, this author really knows how to set up the tension’. So I guess it’s films that disturb me the most. I don’t get scared so much as disturbed. And it’s usually foreign films I think. Asian horror directors such as Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) really know how to creep me out. And Lars von Trier (The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark). Although not considered a horror film director, much of his work gets me to the bone in one way or another. Especially his series, Riget (The Kingdom). That is a sensational piece of work. He can really do blacker than black humour. On the other hand, I watched Peter Jacksons’s Dead Alive not too long ago. Well, I watched about 20 mins of it and couldn’t stand to see any more. It really was too disgusting, in all of its fakery!

AK: Would you ever plan an anthology of Sein und Werden and if you did what would the theme be?

I think I would only consider doing an anthology if I wanted/needed a break from the regularity of the zine. It’s not something I’ve ever ruled out but it’s not on the cards yet. Also I think I may be more likely to do a ‘best of’ anthology rather than ask for new work.

AK: Creepiest story you've ever featured on Sein und Werden?

That’s not easy to answer actually. There are 3 that came to mind and I’m unable to pick the creepiest one. They’re all from the Artifice issue, interestingly. They are The Pomegranate Girl by Christopher Morris, The Condition by Mark Howard Jones and Re-Birthing by Marc Lowe. There is also a story out of a set of 3 by Roberta Lawson I have chosen for the issue after Cinematique, called His Real Doll. Very Hans Bellmer. Very chilling.

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Visit and enjoy the Sein und Werden online magazine by clicking here!
Past issues can also be found and enjoyed in the Sein und Werden archive!

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