Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Deesha Philyaw

February 7, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

The man who is about to ask you to marry him grabs the check from the little tin tray and slides the three fortune cookies toward you.
"All yours," he says.
     You grin and he grins back. Three years together, and you have your rituals, your routines. When you have pizza, he eats the crusts you leave behind; when you have Chinese, you claim the fortune cookies he thinks are silly. 
     You crack open the first cookie and read the fortune inside. It says, A decade from now, the man sitting across from you is going to choke you. 
     You squint at the tiny piece of paper and read it again. Then you glance up at the man sitting across from you, the man you plan to spend the rest of your...

10 Questions for Aliyeh Ataei

January 17, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

She was considered beautiful in the eyes of the common man, but she believed her womanly seduction outweighed her beauty. Yet she would feel guilty as soon as she turned on her charm. First she would pretend she had done nothing wrong, but then she would be gripped by the cardinal sin of being a woman, seeing herself as the prime suspect in all the romantic entanglements in her life. As soon as she was arrested at her father-in-law's in Birjand, the first and most definitive thing she uttered were the words "I am innocent." 
—from "Ten Minutes," Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first story I ever wrote was about three men sitting down to play cards, with a...

10 Questions for Sandra Waters

January 8, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Much of what was happening around the world remained unknown to most people. The vast majority didn't know anything about it or couldn't decode the signs of this revolution. In the big cites, the fuses had been lit, and we could smell the sparks coming from Vietnam, the Prague Spring, Bolivia, Chicago, and Woodstock. I sensed it, but nothing and no one had clearly communicated these things to me. You could feel it in the air, but there was no verbal confirmation. 
—from "Coming Out," Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
About twenty-five years ago I started translating Laura Mancinelli’s I dodici abati di Challant (1981), an Agatha Christie-inspired murder...

10 Questions for Siavash Saadlou

January 3, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Rakhshan believed no sins existed, unless a woman had committed one. That may be why her life had always progressed like a chain of dominos, invariably promising complete destruction with the fall of the first piece, after which she would have to build everything anew. Ever since childhood and into her youth, until now, at thirty-five years of age, she had always known what awaited her down the road with every first mistake, paying the price dearly and later beating herself up helplessly to get her life back in order.
—from "Ten Minutes," Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
My first work of literary translation included a trilogy of poems from the Iranian poet Rasool Yoonan...

10 Questions for Lory Bedikian

December 20, 2023 - By Franchesca Viaud

After we make love, I think of the word obliterate

how it means the destruction of something. I think

hostile hands are everywhere. We should probably

nail it all shut. I don't have time to think back to

the fourteenth century because too much is tangling

roots this day and the day after.
—from "Manifesto,'" Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Well, I’ve been writing for decades so I wouldn’t be able to do that. Let me bring back a poem I worked on revising during my MFA. It was a century ago, the year 2000, and I presented something to the workshop group titled “Beyond the Mouth,” which is now the opening poem to...