On May 8th, MR and Amherst Books hosted our 2025 Anne Halley Poetry Prize winner Chard deNiord for a reading.
ONE FATHER in a khaki jumpsuit branded with “Correctional Facility” smiles as he supports his fourteen-year-old’s interest in saving the bees through the telephone. In a prison waiting room, another father liesgently to his six-year-old son that the boy’s mother is not incarcerated at all, but at a “police training academy,” where . . .
Greer (R) with her father (L). Tell us about your relationship to writing: how it began, where it’s headed, etc. How has incarceration influenced it?I began writing as a way to get out of, and navigate, punishment as a child. I would write poems and stories for my mother in the hopes . . .
Rubble in Gaza, taken by Farah Rebhy. Our next two public affairs posts, for today and on February 27th, are written by twin sisters in Gaza, Amna and Alaa Dmeida. As Israel’s ongoing genocide continues to sever Palestinian kinship with unfathomable cruelty, Palestinian writers continue to share their stories with heartbreaking courage. . . .
Jakyra Green, author of the poem “Dear Brother” from Volume 66, issue 4, chose to read and briefly discuss Carl Brandon Moore (who goes by Taqwaa)‘s poem, “Thank You, Whoever You Are,” as part of our new interview series. Upon hearing about this, Taqwaa was overjoyed to read and discuss Green’s poem . . .
ALAN GROSTEPHAN is the author of The Banana Wars and Bogotá, a novel chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best ten books of fiction in 2013 and longlisted for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He is also the editor and translator of Stories of Life and Death, a collection of writing by emerging Colombian writers.
