Notable Colleagues and Correspondents
WHAT DID YOU ENJOY PLAYING/ MAKING AS A CHILD? Our contributors share with us.
BEHIND THE SCENES
MELANIE FALICK
MIKE RUBIN
MIA SAINE
When I think back to playing/making as a child, my most vivid memories are of happily swinging and climbing on jungle gyms, playing hopscotch and jump rope, and playing jacks. I haven’t changed much: I still like activities that fully engage my body and mind that I can enjoy with friends.
I used to build plastic model kits, beginning with snap-together dinosaurs and progressing to airplanes and spaceships put together with model glue. I thought I was indulging my interest in science/science fiction, but as an adult I learned that my mom had an ulterior motive: to improve my rudimentary fine motor skills. The finished creations still hang from the basement ceiling of my parents’ home, festooned with nearly a half century of cobwebs.
When I was a child, I always enjoyed playing as a geologist and studying new rocks and minerals and learning the unique natural qualities of different places.
Melanie Falick is an independent writer, editor and creative director — and a lifelong maker. She is the author, most recently, of Making a Life: Working by Hand and Discovering the Life You Are Meant to Live and the host of Making a Life: The Conversation, a new online series. She is the former publishing director of STC Craft/ Melanie Falick Books, an imprint of Abrams, and the current creative director and editor of Modern Daily Knitting Field Guides. Follow her on melaniefalick.com and @melaniefalick on Instagram. Keeping in Touch, Page 28
Expatriate Detroiter Mike Rubin is a writer living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Pitchfork, Vulture and Victory Journal. He has been an editor for Motorbooty — a Detroitbased, independently published satirical journal described as “the Spy of the rock world” — since 1987.
Memphis-native illustrator and designer Mia Saine is a nonbinary Black creative seeking to share a more positive, inclusive narrative. Since graduating from Memphis College of Art in 2017, they have specialized in commercial illustration and branding, advertising design and environmental design. Saine’s colorful, minimal digital illustrations strive to normalize and amplify minorities’ voices and experiences. Saine reveals the constant cycle of injustice, tropes and stereotypes by showcasing minorities embracing their self-empowerment and happiness. Ask + Answer, Page 10
Where Can Sound Take Us?, Page 46
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