Benjamin Wey's Turtle Tales
Welcome to Benjamin Wey’s Turtle Tales! Here, you will find a collection of enchanting tales that feature one of the world’s most beloved animals, and stories that celebrate the pleasures and wonders in life. Each story has been written by turtle enthusiast, Benjamin Wey, focusing on sparking realization in children and conveying a variety of moral themes to his readers.
Turtle Tales features a series of short fiction that follows the lives of a turtle in different time frames and in alternate worlds. Each story is its own piece and does not relate to another. Therefore each tale can be read anytime without any necessary previous reading. Below, you will find an interview with Benjamin Wey, the author of Turtle Tales, from the literary zine, Gorilla Zine.
Gorilla Zine is a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to the best of unconventional short fiction and poetry. It has received numerous awards from various genres, and it also often features some of today’s most promising and important writers.
Gorilla Zine: First and foremost, I’d like to say thank you so much for joining us today.
Benjamin Wey: No problem. I surprisingly have a lot of free time these days.
Gorilla Zine: Yeah? Why’s that a surprise?
Benjamin Wey: Well with grad school and all…
Gorilla Zine: I see… Well should we get things started?
Benjamin Wey: Let’s do it. Shoot.
Gorilla Zine: Ok, so first of all, why turtles?
Benjamin Wey: [laughs] Well, at first I wanted these stories to be children’s literature. But like most children’s stories, they end up kind of appealing to adults. So there’s definitely a lot of context that can be read into with these stories. But as for the turtle, I guess when I had these children’s stories in mind, I thought about my childhood love, which were pet turtles. So I guess each story essentially contains a part of me, with the turtle and all...
Gorilla Zine: Wow, I never thought that someone’s fascination for a living creature would ever take them that far.
Benjamin Wey: [laughs] Well you know… Some writers have their women (or men) as some form of basis that they’ve built their stories around. Like Fitzgerald, I guess the turtle is my version of Zelda.
Gorilla Zine: That’s a good way of putting it. In many ways, it doesn’t even feel like I’m reading about turtles anymore when I’m reading your story. You make them very human characters.
Benjamin Wey: In many ways, turtles are like humans. They’re just trying to live forever. And sure they don’t exactly communicate the way that we do, but they need compassion as much as us. You know, in a lot of ways I think everyone in their life eventually want to “be a turtle”— in the sense that they just want to be themselves and take life easy and slowly to savor it. We were never meant to live in a cage or in four cemented walls. Why do you think people are always wanting to go out, or travel, or escape? It is only natural for us to feel the need to be outside with nature.
Gorilla Zine: [laughs] Makes sense… So will we ever see any of these turtle stories in some form of print?
Benjamin Wey: Probably not. I’ll probably continue to publish them myself through my site. I think the only way these stories will ever be on print is if there’s ever an artist that would like to collaborate. Right now, I’ll just stick with my partner Cooper Helmsley. I know I said earlier that I had originally intended these stories to be children’s tales, and I think in order for that to be, there has to be some visual representation. Images are a must!
Gorilla Zine: Do you think you’ll ever write outside of the Children’s Literature medium?
Benjamin Wey: Probably not. I've never really thought of myself as Benjamin Wey, the writer. Right now, Benjamin Wey, the turtle enthusiast, has to focus on grad school.