Starting with Fire: A Conversation with Mai Der Vang
Mai Der Vang discusses her new poetry collection, YELLOW RAIN.
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Posts Tagged: refugees
Sacred and Profane and Infinitely Compassionate: Remembering Anthony Veasna So
Agent Rob McQuilkin and editor Helen Atsma discuss AFTERPARTIES by Anthony Veasna So.
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Making a Shelter of Language: A Conversation with Bhaswati Ghosh
Bhaswati Ghosh discusses her debut novel, VICTORY COLONY, 1950.
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Imagination as Oasis: A Conversation with Sulaiman Addonia
Sulaiman Addonia discusses his new novel, SILENCE IS MY MOTHER TONGUE.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #220: Jennifer Steil
“Ultimately art is about making sense of our brief lives on earth.”
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Abstracting Yourself: A Conversation with Robin Hemley
Robin Hemley discusses his new essay collection, BORDERLINE CITIZEN.
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Poetics of Lineage
I see the birds. I feel my body, splitting from its spirit, lying in the grass.
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The Fraught Nature of Belonging: Nathalie Handal’s Life in a Country Album
Each poem opens a window into cities and vocabularies of exile.
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The Violence of Forgetting: The Divers’ Game by Jesse Ball
His is not a language that trivializes violence; it’s a language that exposes it.
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Terror Is a Faggot with Halal Sausages Strapped to His Chest
Dishonesty became a form of protection.
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A Parcel of Stories: Hard Damage by Aria Aber
The speaker in Hard Damage, it seems, is writing herself to life.
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On Crossing Over
I wish I knew how to say: You all deserved so much more.
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Closing Nazareth: On Shelter
We stood with the open-handed absence which finally allowed for a telling.
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I Am a Camera: Talking with Ali Fitzgerald
Ali Fitzgerald discusses her new graphic memoir, DRAWN TO BERLIN.
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Stories of Survival: A Conversation with Katya Cengel
Katya Cengel discusses her new book, EXILED.
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They Prefer People to Die: On Trump, Borders, and Racism
A good man doesn’t leave someone to die in the desert, and when he uses God’s name, he does it to bless, not to kill.
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Struggling toward Truth: Porochista Khakpour’s Sick
Khakpour gathers courage, again and again, as she reaches into the most painful parts of her life, excavates them, and holds them up to the light.
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TORCH: Haiti, Crossing Borders of the Mind
The ocean is deep, unfathomably so. And one can stay on the surface or keep on plumbing the depths.
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After the Telling
We want to protect our children from everything, even sometimes ourselves.
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Thinking about the Story: A Conversation with Kareem Mortimer
Filmmaker Kareem Mortimer discusses his latest feature, Cargo, his writing process, and why the Bahamas can be “a microcosm for the world.”
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Death, Satan, and Cats: A Conversation with Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine discusses his newest novel, The Angel of History, surviving the AIDS epidemic, and the role of religion in his life and writing.
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Spaces of Exception vs. Spaces of Redemption: The Films of Ana Lily Amirpour
Diasporic communities live inside a host nation, but they also live with difference.
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In a Quicksand of Language: A Conversation with Krys Lee
Krys Lee discusses her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean, having empathy for people and characters, and finding the balance between real-world facts and imagination.
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The Storming Bohemian #34: Descent into the Underworld
The last time I punked the muse, I wrote of the summer solstice, a meditation into the heart of the sun. My goal was to leave behind the ever-more-depressing news cycle, and touch some place deep down where hope resides. We live in the Sun, I concluded. I envisioned a home where we could all […]
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Beauty Undercut by the Possibility of Terror: Afterland by Mai Der Vang
Precariousness is an essential condition of life for the people who populate Vang’s poems, especially the Hmong refugees on whom the poet’s eye most lovingly lingers.
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TORCH: My Father’s Mansion
I love the United States, too. Like a house I was raised in, though, I know it up close and can spot its many fissures.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #81: On Cultural Preservation
The Lost Boys had their moment in the media, but these people, these survivors, not boys at all and not lost now either, are still here, living lives, growing and changing and thinking and reflecting.
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On Speaking Plainly: A Conversation with Rajith Savanadasa
Rajith Savanadasa discusses his debut novel, Ruins, writing across oceans, and the chance encounter with refugees that led to the story at the heart of his novel.
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Haunted by Child Refugees: Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends
These aren’t ghosts; these are children who have braved a perilous journey to escape the violent nightmares back home.
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All Writing Is Political: A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid discusses his new novel, Exit West, hope in fiction as a form of resistance, the necessity of learning to accept social change, and how much America and Pakistan have come to resemble each other.
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