Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Robert Crossley

October 1, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

"But to find women in heroic tales whose roles embrace something beyond spousal identity and dogged faithfulness, we need to move outside Mediterranean and Anglocen­tric circles. We must look north."

—from "Alone in the Center: Brynhild and Brünnhilde", Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.

The second piece I ever published happened to be for The Massachusetts Review back in 1976. Titled “Culture and Controversy,” it explored two debates about the roles of science and literature in the formation of culture—the nineteenth-century debate between Matthew Arnold and T. H. Huxley and the twentieth-century debate between C. P....

10 Questions for Caitlin O'Neil

September 28, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

We tried everything: ovulation predictors, herbal elixirs, ten cycles of IVF, and one illegal Indian surrogate. I’m telling you this because I want you to know how we got to this dark room on the edge of the Navy yard filled with 3-D printed bio-wombs, among them my soon-to-be daughter.
—from “Gen XX”, Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My first published story was about a sign I’d seen as a graduate student in New York City, “Dainty Dot Hosiery”, one of those painted signs you’ll see on the side of brick buildings. It also included postcards, which I love. It was about a shut-in who was mailing the postcards to the wrong person. It took me a really long...

10 Questions for Eric Schlich

September 24, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

“I was born with one eye. On the day of my delivery (June 6, 2004) the doctor and nurses at St. Alice’s maternity ward were ready and waiting for my arrival, equipped with their APGAR test, which stands for: Appearance Pulse Grimace Activity Respiration and is a rating of 1-10 for “newborn viability.” (I’m copying this out of my anatomy and physiology textbook—Understanding the Human Body, page 113—after looking up birth defects in the index, although Mother doesn’t like that word: “It’s a birth gift, Owen.” What the gift part is I’ll never know.) . . . De­spite my deformity (a word Mother hates even worse), I scored a six.”

—from “Journal of a Cyclops...

10 Questions for Sally Rosen Kindred

September 20, 2018 - By Emily Wojcik

The angel of the black bowl sets it on the table.
The girl sits down. She will not eat.

She wears a dress the color of her mother’s hunger.
She does not believe in breakfast, dreams
the eggs’ songs dead in their shells. 

—from “Morning,” by Sally Rosen Kindred, in Volume 59, Issue 3, Fall 2018

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
...

10 Questions for Ward Schumaker

September 17, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

Tell us about one of the first pieces you created.

It's 1949, I'm six years old, lying on the floor, thumbing through Life Magazine and I find a photo story on Jackson Pollock. Immediately I realize: that's me, that's who I want to be! The next day our first grade teacher surprises us with easels and paint. I get to work. Still, a piece of art takes time. "Please don't make me go to recess," I plead. "I have to finish this painting. It's a lot more important than running around the playground."

What artist(s) or works have influenced the way you work now?

When I was twelve my brother introduced me to books by The Roycrofters, hand-illuminated letterpress books...