First, Michelle Marie Wallace chats with two Bay Area writers-turned-visual artists, Cristina García and Truong Tran, in the Saturday Interview. García and Tran share their inspirations and the impetus that led each to make visual art after spending many years developing their writing.
Next, Jeff Lennon reviews Thomas Lux’s “terse” new collection, To the Left of Time. “Surprising” and “uncanny” poems “ring with the workaday ethic” that contributes to the title of the collection.
And Rebecca Johns reviews Margaret Wappler’s satirical novel, Neon Green, a story of a father and environmental crusader whose obsession with the natural world causes tensions between him and his family. When a flying saucer from Jupiter lands in his backyard and starts dumping neon green goo, his obsessive tendencies take center stage.
Lastly, in the Sunday Interview, Swati Khurana talks with 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize winner Janine Joseph. Her debut collection Driving Without a License focuses on the author coming to terms with her identity as an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines. Joseph shares the story of her long love affair with poetry, her inspirations, and the moment during her time at NYU when “I, the poet, had to, for lack of a better phrase, ‘come out’ to those who could help me become a better writer.”
