Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Jim Daniels

April 17, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

At the Saturday market, enormous eye-
bulge of skinned rabbits. My son, nine,
bulges back, looking, but not.
—from “Natural Selection”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I’ll tell you about the first two pieces I got published, in the same issue of my high school literary magazine, because they led me down a path I continue on today. One was a horrible piece of teen angst that was written based on what I thought poetry was supposed to be about and sound like: “I who am about to die/I who weep but cannot cry…” The other, “Growing Up in a Party Store,” was my first real poem—it was set in the store I worked in for...

10 Questions for Dana Alsamsam

April 15, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

With grapefruits & apricots. Without a cat or a dog.
With my father who wanted a son. With my mother who wanted
nothing but closed lips, nothing but nothing. With my father’s head
shaking slightly. With photographs sealed in boxes in the closet.
—from “Self Portrait With & Without”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I don’t remember when my writing turned into “pieces” per say—but I used to write a lot about trains and bridges.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
My literary lineage has given me so much; particularly queer folx, Muslims, and immigrants or children of...

An Interview with Alice Guthrie and Corine Tachtiris

April 10, 2019 - By

Corine Tachtiris interviews Alice Guthrie, winner of the 8th Annual Jules Chametzky Prize for Translation for her translation of Atef Abu Saif's "The Lottery".

Corine Tachtiris: I thought we could start by talking about “The Lottery.” One of the things I noticed is that there’s a balance between this really intimate voice, where you feel like you’re part of a community, and these larger political forces that are outside of people’s control. So I wanted to ask you about creating that balance in the translation.

Alice Guthrie: Yes, that...

10 Questions for Cody Kucker

April 8, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

Something in the river’s vexed beyond the torque
of tide returning to the sea, wherefrom
this thing must too have come, thrashing like all’s
apt to meet a fate of tatters in its teeth.
—from “Great White”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Actually, it was recently returned to me as a Christmas gift from my stepmother. It was a story—illustrated and all—about a family of dinosaurs and how it was all Baby Dinosaur’s fault that Mommy and Daddy Dinosaur were parting ways. I must have been six or seven when I wrote it, my brother was two or three and our parents were getting divorced. But I must say, there was an actual narrative arc to it....

Chametzky Prize-winner Alice Guthrie on translating Atef Abu Saif

April 5, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

We talked to Alice Guthrie, winner of the 8th Annual Jules Chametzky Prize for Translation, about translating Atef Abu Saif's "The Lottery." Here's what she told us:

I think what I really enjoyed about this story, and what made me want to translate it, was the way Atef paints this vivid picture of several aspects of Gazan life, offering this very pointed political and social commentary along the way, but all with such a light touch. It never feels contrived, or dogmatic, and there's plenty of humor—which is such an achievement, given the intensely poignant material we are dealing with here. And that playful...