I Am No One’s Graveyard: An Interview With No‘u Revilla
Sometimes a poem is a rock, and sometimes rocks turn into flowers. And no matter how many poems I write about aloha and decolonial futures, they may still try to kill me
Interviews
937 posts
You Don’t See the Whole Young Man until the Very End: An Interview with Douglas Stuart
The amount of pressure on young men still to get on with it and to bottle it up and to be strong and be certain is overwhelming. And it shows in the UK. The suicide rates for men are so high. It’s a mental health issue. We don’t allow men to express themselves or talk about their vulnerability, and we blame them for a lot; we get to that phrase “toxic masculinity” really quickly. I don’t believe masculinity is always toxic, I just think sometimes it’s very unhealthy and we need to examine it and open it up.
Feeling Comfortable Enough to Be Funny Is What Makes Me Want to Write Fiction: A Conversation with Megan Giddings
There was a long stretch where I tried actively not to make things I wrote funny because of a disastrous undergrad fiction workshop where I spent thirty minutes just listening to people complain that a story had jokes. And wouldn’t it have been so much better if the author had let us pay attention to the emotions? Lol.
A Hypnotic Transitory Beauty Quest: A Conversation with Jackson Bliss
While many Californians are obsessed with “living in the moment,” most Asian Americans I know live in a complex cultural space where “the moment” is the superstructure and history is the base.
When Silences Need to Be Broken: Talking with Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Language is inexact, and will always be an approximation. In my own experience of amnesia, there was a period of time where things didn't have names, and it was in that nameless, getting-to-know-something that I felt I knew it better.
If You Eat It, It Becomes Authentic: A Conversation About Red Sauce with Ian MacAllen
There is this moment where you must first cut yourself off from doing more research because that rabbit trail goes on forever in some cases . . . You have to ask yourself, “Do I have enough?”
Honoring the Past That Built Us: Talking with Kali Fajardo-Anstine
All of my writing is guided by the need to feel culturally seen and acknowledged as a vital part of the American identity.
If You’re Bengali, Food is the Center of Everything: An Interview with Madhushree Ghosh
But food is not just a tool for memory, but also important in terms of social justice issues which Indian Americans don’t talk about because we are the model minority. We don’t want to get in trouble.
A General Truth Through a Particular Lie: An Interview with the Creators of the Podcast Penknife
I personally find this myth of authenticity extremely insidious and damaging, because it often leads to purity tests and the constant need to prove one’s cred . . . rather than leading to constructive thought and action—
Make something inexplicable happen: An Interview with Morgan Talty
What's funnier than somebody having a mental breakdown? We all experienced it, so why can't we laugh at that?
Form as a Metaphor for Fatness: A Conversation with Stephanie Rogers
Is it ridiculous to say don’t give up? Because I mean it.
Just by Looking at Him: Ryan O’Connell Trust-Falls into Novel Writing
. . . after I finished my first book, I was like, “I'm never writing a book again,” because that process was so miserable. But now that I've written this novel . . .