Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Daniel Wolff

July 2, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

If you’re gone for good—if you’re history -
I’ll know to search along rivers.
I’ll look for bones, trace foundations,
piece old shapes from shards.

But time will take those, too.
Strangers arriving with children will run
the length of the ruins for hide-and-seek,
squeals of living delight.
—from "Always Beside a River," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I don’t remember its name. Not sure it had a name. It was a long, probably rhyming narrative along the lines of “The highway man came riding, riding...” Written in the back of shall we say a 5th grade class. To the interest of some fellow classmates...

10 Questions for Alexandra Berlina

June 25, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

@josephbrodsky puts on a snuggly tune,
tweets a few words: “December. Like counting spoons
in the sideboard after a guest is gone.”
Grins on rereading:
this is the perfect tone.

Gets up, goes to the window, looks out. It strikes
him that the day, still young, has grown dusky. Like
a snowflake that—having lived a second in flight,
fragile, glittering, weightless, dazzlingly white—
—from "@josephbrodsky," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I always wanted to be a literary translator, but had to make do with scholarly texts at first. Shklovsky: The Reader (2014) was the first breakthrough, an in-between project: he...

10 Questions for Chen Po-Yu

June 18, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

You were a wooden coat hanger.
Your body, half-clothed. No hat could alter your looks.
No gentleman’s hat that tipped to highlight
Your smile. You were an exquisite gentleman’s
Coat hanger, with pale skinny arms growing upward.

The wood grain was fading, paler and paler.
The winter, too, was half-clothed. No gentleman’s hat
Could disguise the looks of the past.
No gentleman could. No black gentleman’s hat could.
The gentleman who kept a cat
Could wait at a station in winter.
Like a tree that grew paler and paler, leaves falling.
—from "Coat Hanger," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the...

10 Questions for Abby Manzella

June 10, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

On November 1, 2012—over ten years ago now—I awake to the sound of a generator . . . in another, wealthier building. It is Day Four of the blackout. I cover my nose from the chill in my unheated and lightless apartment. My husband, already awake, wraps his arms around me and gives a quick squeeze. The warmth from his body accentuates the cold of the air. 

“It’s time to e-scavenge,” he whispers in my ear. We are co-conspirators, taking new actions and finding new words for this strange, new moment. 

I grumble against the intrusion of the morning. Still, I know it’s time to face the day, so I slip out of my husband’s embrace and our bed into the cold air of our once perpetually overheated apartment.
—from...

10 Questions for Kayla Min Andrews

June 3, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

I'm home from work, reading in bed, when Mom calls to tell me. It’s six in the evening. My boyfriend’s out with some friends of his I find exhausting. He’s often out, while I stay in. We’ve been together for almost a decade, our rituals of avoidance calcified into habit. 

I live in New Orleans. Mom lives in Asheville, North Carolina. We talk several times a week. Ususally she makes me laugh with her sparkling anger at a co-worker, a hilarious gaffe she made with a student, juicy details of a power struggle either in her own romantic life or a friend's. Usually when she asks how I'm doing, I deflect. I say something quick—oh, pretty good—and try to get her talking again. 

This time, her voice trembles. Her latest scan...