Balancing all the parts to the whole arc: A conversation with Cristina García
I feel like in my own experience and experience of many people I see, there is tremendous competition for narrative. For me, it’s interesting to see what pans out.
Interviews
923 posts
“Being in Uncertainties”: A Conversation with Maureen N. McLane
A lot of poems want to place you in the darting mind of the poem. Some want to address you—as “the beloved,” say, or as someone hated, or they implicitly situate you as an overhearer of such an address. But poems can also be spaceships offering interstellar as well as time travel.
Amnesia and Abject Terror Are Prerequisites: A Conversation With Ruth Madievsky
You don’t read literary fiction if you’re looking for tight little answers to life’s mysteries.
The In-Between-ness of Things: An Interview with David Groff
What would it mean to embrace being generative? To have a different way of taking on a responsibility for creating more life on the planet?
Inherent Violence: A Conversation with Rita Chang-Eppig
I knew I wanted to be deliberately vague, as to whether something was actually happening. For many people across the world and across time periods, there isn’t always this strong delineation between fantasy and reality.
The World is a Shitting Bird: A Conversation with Emilie Moorhouse
She mocked beauty standards and even the condescending tone they had when advising women on how to behave “nicely.” So she obviously did have certain strong leanings.
The Presence in Absences: A Conversation with Gina Chung
The only way you can care for your art is to care for yourself.
“Actually, I’m Not Grateful”: A Conversation with Stephanie Foo
I found myself as a potential representative of a larger group, which had no representative. There wasn’t a first-person story about Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, so I thought, “I know how to do this.”
I Become More Animal When I’m Grieving: A Conversation with Jenny Sadre-Orafai
So much of being a poet and a writer is also about exploration.
Tangled Narratives: Curating an Anthology on the Realities of Natural Hair with Lyzette Wanzer
I wanted to get Black joy into the book because that’s also part of our experiences.
Deconstructing the Troubled Teen Industry: a Conversation with Samantha Leach
It’s culture that needs to change and not girls themselves.
A time to speak directly: A Conversation with Jesse Lee Kercheval
. . . when I’m putting together a collection of poems, I want an emotional arc.