Imagining is an Act of Love: A Conversation with Lynn Steger Strong
...no human being is explicitly good or explicitly bad, and asking a character to be relatable all of the time negates the possibility of their being a fully realized human.
Features & Reviews
9297 posts
“A black sheet between present and ancestors”: Kiran Bath’s Instructions for Banno
It is as if we are falling backward, towards the sky, towards the structural silencing of bannos, and Bath’s words wrap around us like curled balloon string and lead us back toward the ground.
The Relentless Impressionism of Immigration: Shubha Sunder’s Optional Practical Training
Sunder’s impressionistic lens also reveals that, perhaps, only in stepping back from intense initiations into new spaces can we see them clearly.
An Accidental Daring: A Conversation with Lauren K. Watel
I do think that making something out of your fear is a hopeful act, at least on the level of the individual.
Poetry, Healing, and the Spirit of Survival: A Conversation with Nadia Alexis
My understanding of survival has evolved. I am interested in the idea that we go through a journey of creating ourselves as humans.
Shape Shifting: Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Characters
Lipson’s ability to do both with precision and compassion, often within the span of a single essay, will touch readers who are mothers, but also readers like me—and like all of us—who know what it is to have a mother.
Less Workshop, More Sensibility: A Conversation with Emma Pattee
I thought, “You’re not allowed to write a book that’s just about a woman walking. That’s not even a book. That doesn’t even make sense.”
We Can and Should Go Home Again: Raye Hendrix’s What Good is Heaven
These poems feel grainy with rich texture, like sinking your hands into the soil, the way it stays between your fingers all day if you don’t scrub your hands clean.
Funny and Large and Wild: A Conversation with Sarah Lyn Rogers
I’m interested in knowing when I’m lying to myself and how that allows me to make different choices later.
Pawn or Perpetrator: Nussaibah Younis’s Fundamentally
Younis, given her expertise in Iraqi politics and international affairs, offers welcome insight into a realm that is often only shown in snippets on the news.
Send in the (Lesbian) Clowns: A Conversation with Kristen Arnett
Not everything is going to be funny to everybody, but a joke is going to be funny to at least one person, one time, at a specific point.
Wrestling with Bears: A Conversation with Robert Ostrom
When I write, I don’t set out to preserve anything. I feel more like a conduit for whatever obsessions, conscious or not, are inside of me.