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10 Questions for Diannely Antigua

August 16, 2022 - By Helen McColpin

"It was the summer of loss spanning the exact distance
my disease could reach—the degrees of longitude
and latitude, lonely numbers like decorations
for a forgotten graduation party in a church basement."
—from "Diary Entry #5: Self-Portrait as Revelations

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first poems I ever wrote was about a boy (of course). I was 11 years old. The poem was full of clichés like “hitting the dusty trail” and “setting sail.” It was essentially a goodbye poem to a boy I still liked but because of the religious rules placed upon me, we couldn’t be together. Very dramatic, very sad. Very me.

What writer(s) or works have...

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 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...

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...

10 Questions for Akhim Alexis

July 12, 2022 - By Aviva Palencia

“It is the usual disposition of corners, to be polyvocal, and so, between the voices of future morbidities and past registers, I contribute my current grammar to the orchestra of echoes.”
—from “In This Small Place,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I must have been around 11 or 12 when I wrote a poem about PawPaw. It was the first time I remember actually constructing a poem line by line. I entered it into a children’s poetry competition that was hosted by the national library and surprisingly won. I actually still have the book I won, it’s called Poetry Speaks to Children and has poems by Rita Dove, Robert Frost, and Langston Hughes to name a...