Staff Spotlight: Anthony Gutierrez

What do you write?

I write poetry and graphic novel scripts. Although I don’t stick to a spe­cif­ic genre for my poetry, if I had to pick one, it’d most likely be pop fiction or fiction-based poetry. That is, poetry that tells a story either as a single piece or as a col­lec­tion to tell a nar­ra­tive. As for my graphic novel scripts, I focus on science fiction/fantasy. I write in prose and script format since it com­bines the sleek­ness of script writing with the descrip­tive­ness of prose, which also makes it easier for casual readers to read.

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

It is dif­fi­cult to pin­point one artist or author that has most pro­found­ly influ­enced my work, but if one author had the biggest impact and showed me what was pos­si­ble, then that author would be J.R.R. Tolkien. The intri­ca­cy of his world and the epic stories that took place in it ulti­mate­ly inspired me to begin writing my graphic novel scripts to try to capture a similar scope and majesty within my writing as Tolkien did with Middle Earth. The video game series Pikmin got me into spec­u­la­tive evo­lu­tion and crea­ture design with its strange crea­tures. The Halo and Gears of War games got me into emo­tion­al and atmos­pher­ic sto­ry­telling. On the other hand, Jeremy Robin­son taught me how to balance char­ac­ter comedy and crea­ture thriller-type storytelling.

Why did you choose Stonecoast for your MFA?

I chose Stonecoast for my MFA program because I admired the close-knit aspect the program fosters and I appre­ci­ate the will­ing­ness of the faculty to learn along­side me. The other pro­grams I looked into seemed more strin­gent and I noticed a more com­pet­i­tive atmos­phere between the stu­dents. On the other hand, Stonecoast is more open and encour­ages stu­dents to work togeth­er. For these reasons, I chose Stonecoast for my MFA program, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

My favorite Stonecoast memory is seeing Justin Tussing on the dance floor during a grad­u­ate cel­e­bra­tion, sur­round­ed by faculty and fellow students.

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I plan to publish my first and second graphic novels within the first five years of grad­u­at­ing from Stonecoast. If all goes well, I will publish the other eleven volumes in that anthol­o­gy series yearly while working on other worlds and stories I want to tell.

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

I would have written Project Nemesis by Jeremy Robin­son, because that book func­tions as a love letter to the Kaiju genre and I hope that my writing will also be seen as a love letter to the series I enjoy.

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Cre­ation Of The World and Cosmos

by Anthony Gutierrez

Before there was water, grass, the soil beneath our feet, or even the stars, there was the void and Vokyr who dwelt within it. Like the void, Vokyr was cold, harsh, and form­less. His voice echoed through the void for count­less eons. This perfect dark­ness and reverb­ing silence con­tin­ued until a second voice shat­tered the dark­ness in a flash of light. From this light came Thisyr who was warm, giving, and brought form to the form­less. For a time, Vokyr and Thisyr regard­ed each other curi­ous­ly as their voices both com­pli­ment­ed and clashed with each other’s. Vokyr dis­trust­ed Thisyr’s light because it gave form to the void and reduced his voice to hushed whis­pers. Arynm feared Vokyr’s shadow because it threat­ened to devour the light as it did her voice. Thisyr was the first to notice the chaos of their voices as they echoed in the ether between them and, despite her fear, was the first to touch the pri­mor­dial chaos. Fearing that Thisyr would use the chaos to strength­en her light, Vokyr reached into the chaos and was sur­prised to hear his and Thisyr’s voices calling back to him.

Reach­ing into the void, Vokyr saw the world that Thisyr had formed within the pri­mor­dial chaos and loathed it, for it was barren and unchang­ing under Thisyr’s per­pet­u­al light. Desir­ing to push back her light, Vokyr began to sing to strength­en his voice within the chaos to change it. Fearing that Vokyr’s dark­ness would consume her cre­ation, Thisyr began to sing back to strength­en her voice within the chaos. Their rising voices within the chaos caused the world to crack and erupt, moun­tains rising and crum­bling to deep valleys as Thisyr and Vokyr strug­gled to make their voices dom­i­nant within the chaos. Even­tu­al­ly, their dis­cor­dant voices caused a great storm within the chaos that con­sumed the world. Vokyr and Thisyr wailed at the destruc­tion of the world and glared at each other with loathing, real­iz­ing that neither could get their wish as long as the other lived. 

Thisyr was the first to strike, lunging through the ether and into the void, bring­ing form to it as she struck Vokyr. Name­less beasts were born from their blows within the void as they fought like animals and tore off each other’s flesh. The void and light mixed as the two fought, forming a twi­light that poi­soned and weak­ened them both. Their discord expand­ed the chaos and its storm within the ether. In the end, Thisyr gained the upper hand over Vokyr and slew him within the deepest depths of the void before suc­cumb­ing to her wounds and dying herself. 

The gods and the first spirits were born into the great ether from their corpses, Amamyr from Thisyr’s heart, Eayr from her womb, and the goddess Evakyr from Vokynm’ s brain. Togeth­er, the god­dess­es orga­nized the pri­mor­dial chaos, bal­anc­ing the void and light. The world was rebuilt with the bones of both Vokyr and Thisyr to form the moun­tains and their sweat to form the seas. They fash­ioned the sky with Thisyr’s skull, the clouds with her brains, and the air with her remain­ing breath. Amamyr fash­ioned the sun from the rem­nants of Arnmy’s heart and spun it about the earth to lighten it daily. Evakyr took the remains of the first world to fashion the sun’s com­pan­ion, the moon, to illu­mi­nate the night and churn the seas. Amayr scat­tered Thisyr’s hair to light the void and created the stars. Evakyr touched the world and brought to it winter to balance the bounty of the sun during summer with snow and the months of night. 

Seeing that the world was ready, Amamyr drew the great­est of the name­less beasts into the depths of the earth with Vokyr’s flesh. There, Evakyr embraced them within her night-clad wings into an eternal slumber. The rem­nants of Amamyr’s light formed the hearth­stones which illu­mi­nate the caverns above the beast’s resting place. Only once the last beast had been laid to rest, Eayr molded both plant and beast from her scales and gave birth to the first man and woman, Gha’le and Her’un. Within them was both light and dark­ness like all other life. To protect them from the harsh world around them, the gods erected a ring of moun­tains around their dwelling and named it Alder’mane. It is then that when human­i­ty and the world were young, the first of the horned giants fell from the stars to the earth with arcane knowl­edge of the cosmos and sought refuge within humanity’s walls.