Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Megan Pinto

September 20, 2022 - By Helen McColpin

I try and go back to the bottom
of the placid blue lake, or maybe
the storm’s calm eye. This is how I bargain
for your love in my mind, like a child.
—from "Chiaroscuro after Caravaggio’s Paul," Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In 5^th grade my local newspaper had a poetry contest. I remember sitting in my backyard and writing a poem about the beach. I still remember the opening lines: “The foamy waves lap the shore/ the salty breeze in my face/ seagulls fly toward their home/ and me, just standing there.” I don’t remember the rest of the poem, but knowing my 5^th grade self, I’m sure it was existential....

10 Questions for Heather Treseler

September 13, 2022 - By Helen McColpin

“We came to think of it as our painting: two figures
Embracing in a corrugated field, its patina of sunlight
And stroked grasses beside the soot-stacks of factories,
Their stern faces flat as prisons. Plumes of smoke
Unravelling the shirt of sky.”
—from “Factories at Clichy,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In college, I wrote a poem titled “The Painter,” and it was one of the first I tried that felt as though it truly arrived: it grew from my fascination with artists' relation to their subject matter. I was a scholarship student, working various odd jobs. Serving as a life-model for artists was one of the least arduous...

10 Questions for Anamyn Turowski

September 7, 2022 - By By Helen McColpin

“When Natasha began having sex with Jimmy Walczyk, I became an ocean swimmer. With goggles and a towel I’d walk to Will Rogers Beach and, jumping in at Lifeguard Stand 18, swim a mile north to the rock jetty below the Palisades cliffs—which was danger. I wanted connectivity to that danger; I craved the raw magnificent terror of waves tugging me toward the rocks. Who doesn’t? Jesus nuts and the brain dead.”
—from “Tidal,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
A short story when I was five (maybe it was seven sentences long?) about a hornworm. I have no recollection of the story but I’m sure it was inspired by Eric Carle’s caterpillar. Likely I...

10 Questions for Anthony Thomas Lombardi

August 30, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

“i thought i saw your face, your unmistakable
gait on the 6 train
—i’m wrong.
blessings refused maybe
or imagined.”
—from “on Survivor’s Guilt, ending with ‘Ruff Ryders’ Anthem’ by DMX,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
All I can remember is that I was 8 or 9 years old, it was titled “Despair,” & I was pretty heavily aping Kurt Cobain. That should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about how & why I turned out the way I did.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Honestly, I learned to write poetry not from poets but from...

10 Questions for Armine Kotin Mortimer

August 23, 2022 - By Helen McColpin

“Denon’s mew position will turn out to be eminently strategic. When he writes to Isabelle that everyone was pleased with his appointment, he is being ironic. On the other hand, what he is quite right about is that it’s going to keep him busy constantly. An exhausting job.”
—from “The Masked Baron’s Louvre” by Philippe Sollers, Translated by Armine Kotin Mortimer, Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
In the most ancient pre-history of my career as a translator, I did my first-ever rendition into English on a group of sixteenth-century comic tales written by Philippe de Vigneulles. Rather obscure, isn’t it? But I was asked to do the...