FU Review has come a long way in the last 11 years. What began as a student-run review that Freie Universität was sorely missing has matured into one of Berlin’s seminal English-language literary journals. Each of their 12 issues features a theme – Melt, Still, Debt, Dirt – and artwork that brings an eye-catching coherence to each cover. The FU Review editors fight for every piece they publish. The result is a journal of poetry and prose that surprises, keeps you up at night and
forces you not to forget it. Following their recent event DEVOTED and call for submissions (they’re now closed, but stay tuned for more), we sat down with editors-in-chief Kitty Doherty and Elizabeth Schippers and prose editor Christian Beltran to find out what makes this literary journal so much more than the sum of its parts. How has FU Review changed since it began in 2015? Elizabeth: It started out as a student-run journal, and most of the pieces were by students from Freie Universität. Now
contributors and editors don’t need to be connected to the university at all. So the most exciting change I’ve seen is FU Review’s growth. We had a big increase in visibility around our issue Debt. It was really exciting to see this student-run journal reach outside of Berlin and receive submissions from all over the world. Kitty: Our 10th issue was also Restoration, which included unpublished Audre Lorde letters and poems. So visibility grew around that time because she’s so amazing and popular. We got
a lot of submissions, because, of course, to be published alongside Audre Lorde is incredible. What about the name FU Review? How do you think it translates outside the context of the university? Kitty: I’m from England, so when I say it to my English friends, it’s like, “F– you.” But of course, when you’re at Freie or in Berlin, you become blind to it. Maybe I’m not the biggest fan of the name. I don’t know if I can say that? Elizabeth: We’ve talked
about changing the name but also never found it to be a pressing issue. Without the FU, we wouldn’t have been able to get where we are today, and they still support us a lot with events. So it’s an homage to the university as well. How important are your events in terms of being a part of Berlin’s writing community? Christian: Events are how we survive. When you’re perusing a bookshop, we’re just one contender, but events are where you can see the journal
firsthand and get a copy. Plus, it’s fun, in a real psychological sense of the word, because it’s a community-centred activity to go out for an evening, meet people, talk to them about what they’re reading. You get to participate in this thing that’s happening in real time. Kitty: Being a writer can sometimes be quite isolating. You spend a lot of time on your laptop in your thoughts. There’s something so amazing about going to an event and being like, ‘Oh, my God, we
all love this same thing’. FU Review was born from a university context. The journal has always been about poetry and prose, but is an ‘academic’ voice important to you? We’re on the lookout for a striking or weird piece of text to get our grubby little hands on. Kitty: My first reaction is: no! We just love to publish stuff that’s strange, weird, unique. We’re all academics, most of our team are also students in some way, but there’s something so limiting about being
academic or literary. It gives the sense that a good piece of writing has to be from someone who’s educated in some way, and that’s just not true. I’m more interested in what you have to say about heartbreak, even if you just record a scream or a conversation or a text exchange. Elizabeth: We’re on the lookout for a striking or weird piece of text to get our grubby little hands on, where you’re like, ‘I can’t believe we get to publish this!’ You
all use similar words about the kinds of texts you like: ‘strange’ or ‘weird’. What do you mean by that? Elizabeth: What I mean is a piece of writing I don’t forget. Those don’t come around so often. They’re the ones where you did something surprising. You did something weird. You took something we thought we knew and put a different angle on it and we’re shocked and we’re saying yes. It’s important to keep in mind how many submissions we get. I’m reading through
the prose pile right now and it’s 2,700 pages. There are so many, so the way I know that we found a good one is when I still think about it at the end of the day. Why do you have a theme for each issue? Kitty: We want to invite people to approach a shared and simple thought, wrestle with that idea, make it explode and see what we get. I’ve always learned so much about the word through these issues. Like, with Dirt,
I just loved all these connections between memory as dirt or things we can’t let go of as dirt, versus dirt on the ground. Maybe we’re just weird literary people and this is what excites us. It’s also why the featured artist is so important to us. Their artwork on the cover gives colours, character, voice and coherence to the whole theme. It makes this gorgeous connection between art and literature. It’s very integral to the issue’s identity. Christian: The words themselves are often simple
but expansive. They can have multiple meanings. They stand on their own, like Issue 11. ‘Still’ is such a tense word. It’s describing something inert, but it’s also a verb. And it’s a contradiction. It’s doing a lot for itself by itself. What does your selection process look like exactly? Elizabeth: We open submissions for an X amount of time and people submit according to the theme. We have prose editors and poetry editors who work with blind submissions. Ultimately, we only work with yeses
or nos. Then we go into our editorial selection meeting, each with a shortlist. At this point, everyone has read everything. So, it could be that a piece only got one yes, but we’ll still discuss it in the meeting. Obviously, there are pieces that are a yes across the board right away. But that’s what makes FU Review. We give pieces as much of a chance as we possibly can, and we allow the editors to fight for them. It’s actually a really fun
process of sitting for the whole day arguing about why you think your favourite piece should be published. Kitty: Minds are always changed. First you hate one piece, then by the end, you’re desperate to edit it yourself. What’s a memorable piece that still stands out to you now? Christian: For me, it’s ‘Still searching for hotdog-man’ by Love Landefjord. Frankly, I was repulsed by it. It didn’t sit with me at first. But that piece stuck with me so much over the years that
I even considered getting a tattoo about it. It had so much life, someone who’s haunted by this thing that’s more than just a hotdog or a man. Elizabeth: For me, ‘Action City’ by Tom Ball exemplifies what we’re looking for at FU Review. It was a piece that I initially said no to because I thought it was weird in a kind of… I don’t know. It was our previous editor-in-chief Moses who really made a case for it. He was like, ‘We need
to publish this. This is the coolest shit I’ve ever read.’ I’m so glad that he did. Reading it again, giving it more of a chance, I was like, actually, this is fantastic. I was so excited that we got to publish it and have people have that same reaction of, ‘Wait, why is this here?’ But because it’s published by a relatively reputable journal, you look at it with different eyes and ask, ‘What’s there to gain from it?’ Kitty: I think this process
is what the world needs, in terms of asking people to look again and challenge themselves, to meet something strange or uncomfortable with an open eye and compassion, instead of pre-existing judgment. It’s a good way to approach lots of things. Buy FU Review online or at bookshops including Shakespeare & Sons, do you read me?! and Curious Fox, and keep up to date @fureviewberlin
FU Review, Berlin literary journal, English-language poetry, prose, themed issues, Melt, Still, Debt, Dirt, blind submissions, Audre Lorde Restoration, DEVOTED