Beverly Paras Parayno was raised in San Jose by immigrant parents from the Philippines. Her fiction, memoir excerpts and author interviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, The Rumpus, Memoir Pool, Huizache, Warscapes and Southword: New Writing from Ireland. Parayno earned an MA in English from University College Cork and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. A resident of Oakland, she is a freelance grant writer and development consultant for Bay Area nonprofits.
I first interviewed Yiyun Li in 2005 when she won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, among many other awards, for her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.…
Tamim Ansary is the author of West of Kabul, East of New York and the forthcoming book Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. He is also…