Q/A: Marina Woollven

Posted by Zoe Baillargeon in Creative Writing

Contest winner Marina Woollven

Marina Woollven, a Creative Writing junior from Texas, recently won third place in Playboy Magazine’s annual College Fiction Contest. Playboy has long had a prestigious reputation for publishing short stories by some of the most notable authors of our time, and it is an honor to have Woollven’s work recognized out of the thousands of submissions for the contest. Jackalope Magazine sat down with Marina to discuss her winning story, “Atlas,” and her life as a writer.

Jackalope Magazine: Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Marina Woollven: I’m from San Antonio, Texas. My interests are TV, lots of TV! I’m a huge TV junkie! I like TV series much more than movies but I do love movies. I dabble in photography. Sometimes I draw. I collect dolls, so that’s a thing!

JM: Why did you want to become a writer?

MW: I’ve always been fascinated and addicted to storytelling. I just felt that I had things to say. I love to read, and I wanted to put something out there. I’m very grateful I chose this path.

JM: Could you tell us about the story that you won third place with in the Playboy College Writing Competition?

MW: It’s called “Atlas”, and essentially it’s a sci-fi piece set in the future and it focuses on this very young housewife named Marcy, and she’s recently married but her husband has just decided to go on a trip for six months. So, she’s getting lonely, and she ends up purchasing a very human-like robot that she calls Atlas, and the story is kind of focusing on the relationship, but really, it’s about the human desire to not feel alone and the different ways in which we fulfill that.

JM: How did it feel when you found out you won?

MW: Not real. I did a little screaming, I almost cried! I never thought that was going to happen.

JM: How did you get the idea for your story?

MW: Well, I was dabbling in what I should write for Playboy and I had absolutely no idea, I didn’t know where to start, it was almost about to be about this really fucked—up story with witches and death and crazy things. I had been on the Playboy website because I read their articles and someone had written up this amazing article about the movie Her, and they used that as a springboard to talk about other robots and what’s currently coming out, and the whole phenomenon of the robot-wife and how that’s taking hold and also these realistic dolls that people buy to be their partners. So, I was very fascinated by this concept, I’ve always really liked robots and I had to get a story done in the course of a week, so I leapt on that idea.

JM: Have you ever been published before?

MW: No. Wait! Wait, I have a few articles in the Santa Fe Reporter, but I really wouldn’t count that, as it’s not my fiction work. I’ve never had my fiction work published. I had a poem in Glyph my freshman year, but that’s it.

JM: So fiction is your primary genre, and if yes, do you ever experiment in other genres?

MW: I’d say definitely, and I do (write in other genres.) I fall into the cliché that poetry feeds my soul so I don’t think I could ever go through life without writing poetry, and I’m interested in journalism in that it helps me. Journalism is addicting for me, it’s like a little ego boost, and I need to get that every once in a while, but I wouldn’t say it’s something I really enjoy doing.

JM: Even though there are publication opportunities on campus and in Santa Fe, would you encourage other college creative writing students to submit their work for publication on a national level?

MW: Oh, definitely! Yes! I mean, I think people should always be submitting to everywhere, honestly. If you’re a freshman, I don’t think that’s really such a big concern but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to submit, because you never know who’s going to get in. Also, aside from national contests, which is great, I think you (students) should try to publish to journals or little monthly online magazines, just anything, and you know, there’s a lot of anthology calls out there and I pick up a lot of anthologies because I love short stories and I’d say that the quality that I see that gets into some, that are published, I think some of our students could definitely meet that, and not only meet it, but far exceed it.

JM: Even though you’re still a junior, what are your plans following graduation?

MW: I immediately want to set out and get my Masters in writing. After that, I’m not sure. My ideal choice would be script writing while working on novels in my free time. But I think I could also see myself being a teacher or working for a publication company.