Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Nayereh Doosti

April 24, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Seyyed Gholam Hossein Shabdari Kermani was blessed with a clitoris on his right nipple, or at least that was his pickup line. This is a story about him. At the raw age of five, he discovered pleasure while playing with a pink screwdriver in an empty garage, where his balding father and seven potbellied uncles played soccer and scored lazy goals between two stacks of bricks. It was a nice and sultry Gulf evening, their yolk-hued Seleção Brasileira jerseys dotted with perspiration, their knees scraped, sweat dripping down their napes. 
—from "Things She Wouldn't Tell," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
In my teens, I read lots...

10 Questions for Chard deNiord

April 15, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

I think you’re still here sometimes
calling to me like the thrush at dusk
inside the woods where I lose my way.
I search for you like a ghost myself
in all the usual places, stand on the shore
this side of you and speak to the river
that flows and stays, stays and flows.
—from "This Side of You," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I began writing short lyrical poems in my early teens. I had no idea where
they came from or what inspired them. All I remember is that they both mystified and
frightened me. But I kept writing them. They were often self-instructional as well.
Here’s an example of some juvenilia I remember:

...

10 Questions for Adrian Blevins

April 10, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Years after it was over and he was gone, I would think of the unfortunate woman
he was living with now and engaged to marry. Poor woman with the face
               so pale and flat

like a slide down a mountain rock. Poor plus-fifty bride-to-be with the voice
               too whispery
and the chin too jutty. The hair too thin and white, the thighs too big, the walk
              so lumbering.
—from "Quiet Part Out Loud," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
It’s so hard to remember! I started writing at 13 or so, and wrote terribly...

10 Questions for Daniel Byronson

April 1, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

I would have liked to see myself going into the little room at the Café Boscán enraged and pistol in hand looking for his face facing some other face among the tables. He spoke wet, moldy words. I’d have stuck the barrel of the pistol to his forehead and, sublime as he ever was, he would even thank me for granting him the iron’s cool touch in the final moments of his life. Midnight sparrowhawks rose up, shaken, from the tables. Halfway through the foxtrot a shot rang out and when the lights came up they saw me, kissing the blood that ran across the shadow’s face. It tasted bittersweet and when I awoke from my dream I said so. 
—from "Selections from Ballads of Sweet Jim," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

...

10 Questions for Kayhan Irani

March 14, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

OPENING: A pair of sheer white curtains undulate as a breeze blows. They are suspended in air, floating on their own. Behind them, pitch black. 

NARRATOR
We are here, at a criss-cross of story and memory, place and time.
We are here to witness and listen, to embrace and mend the fractures.
Why are you here?

(Four options appear in orange text. TO WITNESS; TO LISTEN; TO EMBRACE; TO MEND. Choose one to move ahead.)
—from "There Is a Portal," Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first full length plays I wrote was in the fourth grade, and it was a play about a suffragette who was organizing her friends...