contributors

Talking with Anukriti Mishra

Talking with Anukriti Mishra

“As a second language writer I think of bending genre conventions as leading the reader into unchartered territory, being a bridge to the unknown.”

Talking with Kevin McLellan

Talking with Kevin McLellan

“Yes, silence does follow the colon at the end of the poem, yet it could also imply possibility or the hope of possibility or it could imply more of the same.”

Talking with Rachel Marie Patterson

Talking with Rachel Marie Patterson

“Repetition also helped me depict the claustrophobia and exasperation of caring for an infant, especially when your body doesn’t do the work it is expected to.”

Talking with Katy Aisenberg

Talking with Katy Aisenberg

“I often write in the third person, using my first name Margaret. I suppose it is a way of trying to render how we can feel so separate from ourselves, always observing.”

Talking with Kim Knight

Talking with Kim Knight

“His arrival in Australia is a pivotal moment: The lack of documentation, losing the written Chinese version of his name, this is where it all starts, with this seemingly simple process of entering the country and declaring himself. Everything goes awry from here.”

Talking with William Erickson

Talking with William Erickson

“I don’t know if I know yet where this poem lives, though it lives somewhere close to me. So the title as an address is a reaching, or a call to which maybe, hopefully, there will sound a response.”

Talking with Elizabeth Sylvia

Talking with Elizabeth Sylvia

“It’s meant to be something of a self-indictment. This moment is peaceful, yes, but in part because of what the speaker is choosing to exclude. The privacy provided by the trees protects the speaker and also discourages her from considering the world beyond her own comfort.”

Talking with David Greenspan

Talking with David Greenspan

“We hauled furniture and filled our mouths with chewing tobacco. We spent holidays together in a halfway house. Ryan was human – wonderful, kind, compassionate, creative, but also deeply, fundamentally, afraid and mean and sick. He died. I didn’t.”

Talking with Stacey Forbes

Talking with Stacey Forbes

“The simple act of worshipping the sun — and worshipping Jesus — springs from the same place: a hunger to hold something sacred in our hands.”

Talking with Dan Wiencek

Talking with Dan Wiencek

“I think of poems as a sort of dance between tension and resolution, where some images or ideas seem to raise the stakes while others provide a release or otherwise alter whatever dynamic is at play.”

Talking with Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Talking with Sarah Dickenson Snyder

“Fear seems to live inside for me, in my mind, especially in my imagination—imaging the venomous bite, the dramatic fall.”

Talking with Shanta Lee

Talking with Shanta Lee

“Within the context of how I grew up, I’ve often had to revisit and ask the question: If I were a parent trying to raise a child in a certain environment, how would I want to control the ways that their body is seen and being seen?”

Talking with Abigail Ham

Talking with Abigail Ham

“There is something magical about airports, train stations, bus stops, etc. … They make us think honestly about our between-ness and our aloneness and our inescapable connectedness.”

Talking with Katherine Riegel

Talking with Katherine Riegel

“I think as writers, we understand and process the world through our writing, so it’s natural to write about loss.”

Talking with Ashley Memory

Talking with Ashley Memory

“Above all, we must honor our own perception of the events, and this is part and parcel of our debt to the reader.”

Talking with Michael Quinn

Talking with Michael Quinn

“And there’s always a moment when you sit back and see that your subconscious was forcing something out.”

Chelsea Catherine: On Writing, Pride, and Summer of the Cicadas

Chelsea Catherine: On Writing, Pride, and Summer of the Cicadas

“I have been out for six Pride seasons now, and through each one that passes, I become a better human and writer, aided in large part by others from my community.”

Talking with Mureall Hebert

Talking with Mureall Hebert

“Poetry fascinates me because of its intensity.”

Talking with Christie Tate

Talking with Christie Tate

“My very proper Southern grandmother would definitely frown on the personal essay and the memoir because it divulges too much, and privacy and keeping your business to yourself—especially your mess—are both hallmarks of being a lady.”

Talking with Rose Auslander

Talking with  Rose Auslander

“I love trying to spin the world into a web of words. And I love those times when it feels like those words turn into a world of their own.”