From the Blog

10 Questions for Oonagh Stranksy

August 8, 2022 - By Aviva Palencia

Evelina looked for peace and quiet.

To find it, she woke up before everybody else: before her father who had to get to the fields an at early hour, before her mother and grandmother who had chores to do, before her older siblings who went to school, and before the younger ones who slept late.

Sometimes she even woke up before the rooster; she’d sit by the window in her room and look out at Candelara.

—from "Evelina and the Fairies," Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
My first published translation was Carlo Lucarelli’s noir, Almost Blue, for City Lights, in 2001. The story behind how this project came about is quite charming.  A total...

10 Questions for Jessi Lewis

August 2, 2022 - By BY HELEN MCCOLPIN

“‘C’mon, ladies. It’s not fun for me either,’ Marina called. ‘Bend over and touch your toes.’ The wet nurses complied, their rumps rising up in a line of mottled curved. The lights weighed on them, all nude except for cotton underwear.”
—from, “The Milkmaid,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
For some reason poetry arrived before fiction. I wrote a poem about a tractor covered in snow when I was eight that is surprising because generally that’s not an eight-year-old’s go-to. I might have peaked then as a poet. Though, to be honest, I often look back at pieces I wrote as a kid and I hope desperately that I held onto...

July MR Contributor Publications

July 29, 2022 - By BY HELEN MCCOLPIN

Here’s the list of recent contributors’ publications from late June and July. Stay tuned at the end of each month for a new installment!

Lauren Hilger’s poetry collection, “Morality Play” is out now with Poetry Northwest Editions. Her work appears in Vol. 57, Issue 3.

 ...

10 Questions for Matt Donovan

July 26, 2022 - By Aviva Palencia

It could happen. Once it happens.
Earlier, later. Closer today
but not to you. You’ll survive

because you ran, because you hid.
Because you were first. Because last.
Because alone. Because the others.
—from “Mass Shootings Are Actually Pretty Rare, But Here’s What to Do If You’re Ever in One,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

What inspired you to write this piece?
For a few years, I’d been writing poems linked to guns and gun violence in America. While doing some online research into mass shooting preparedness, I stumbled upon an article in Self Magazine with a title that I borrowed verbatim for my poem: “Mass Shootings Are Actually Pretty Rare, But Here's...

Meaning in a World Without Hope

July 21, 2022 - By Helen McColpin

Moldy Strawberries is an inspiring exercise in hopelessness and futility. Caio Fernando Abreu’s short story collection, translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato, serves as a coming to terms with life under a repressive government, life without a brighter future. Abreu wrote in Brazil in the 1980s, through the country’s twenty-one-year military dictatorship. His queer, countercultural writing made him a frequent target for censorship by the Brazilian government, yet Abreu’s writing ultimately prevailed, making him a cultural icon nonetheless. He died in 1996, two years after testing positive for HIV....