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10 Questions for Kathryn Petruccelli

April 11, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Early August. The sun serious
about itself, the breeze moody
as an infant, hushing its breath
to a whisper, watching, then lifting
all it had into a burst of joy.
—from "Prophet," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote:
I’m assuming you don’t want to hear about the middle school stuff that involved rainbows and much angst. (An early grasp on paradox?) But when I was about 30, I discovered the then-flourishing world of poetry slam and wrote a piece about trying to be more Zen while finding all the good writing fodder in edgier circumstances. Slam was great for my voice at the time, and I enjoyed the idea of speaking for three minutes without anyone...

10 Questions for Dan Beachy-Quick

April 7, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

eternity is
    different than an
hour   I you
    know this too  the
sun-bright teeth   the
    mouth's inherent
night   what is
        ours—
—from "Everydayness," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I remember writing and thinking perhaps it was a poem, or doing a poem-like thing, was back in high school, my junior year, and much due to that rare teacher who can actually teach poetry, Becky Porter of Alameda High. We had read John Keats’s poem “On First Reading Chapman’s Homer,” and...

10 Questions for Stevie Edwards

April 5, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Three days into stripping
the third layer of painted wallpaper
in a poorly ventilated powder room
and I am a sorrow river. My husband
sticks his head in to ask why
—from "On Crying While Stripping Wallpaper," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I had published in a literary magazine for adults (I had poems published in Teen Ink at some point, but I can’t remember anything about them) was called “C-a-n-c-e-r,” which was published in The Cartier Street Review in 2009, under the name Stephanie Edwards. I wrote it about a time...

10 Questions for Vivian Li

April 3, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

紫薯, a mother’s boiling incense, herbal ginger tea
山峰, summit of skies, an unwrapped shin almost fire-scalded red
tobacco, whistling grey pipe of meshed 廣州 air and 1970s pollution
my father dodging into villages with naked children,
                                            small mounds of dirt baked with stolen potatoes,
                                     ...

10 Questions for Claude Olson

March 30, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

I am often mistaken for a tiny biting inset. No one cares to know my taxonomic name. The term "midge" will suffice. Any little two-winged fly can be a midge. There are highland midges and phantom midges, midges with affectionate nicknames like "punkies" and "no-see-ums."
—from "13 Considerations of the Holy Bug," Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
As a kid with a big imagination and a very short attention span, I would think up stories all the time but rarely write them down. So my earliest memory of a story I could commit to paper was an elaborate spin on an assignment for my 10th grade English class. Every time we were given a new list of vocabulary...