Quietly Magnificent: A Conversation with Christine Sneed
On DIRECT SUNLIGHT, the alchemy of titles and first lines, teaching, kangaroo humans, The National, and more.
Interviews
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Allowing Space for What Isn’t Said: A Conversation with Elizabeth Acevedo
I have to know all the jokers they hold in their hand so I know how they would play or hold them—and I think it’s that level of intimacy I’m constantly trying to learn as I write.
Letting in the Light: A Conversation with Ana Maria Spagna
Remember: you are not the only voice. You are not even the decider of what’s true or not. You are the conduit for many perspectives. Maybe through these many perspectives readers can triangulate some semblance of truth. That, to me, is history.
Morally complicating your world view: A Conversation with Steve Almond
With fiction, you’re trying to get people emotionally attached to your characters, not to learn a lesson. Ideally, [readers] get emotionally attached to the characters and those characters’ experiences leave them, in the end, feeling more than they did before.
A Poem as a Shield and a Prayer: An Interview with Lyudmyla Khersonska
People want to have somebody helping them with the names of things, for someone may forget words during the war. A poem is like a shield and a prayer.
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.
“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.