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10 Questions for John Hennessy

April 30, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

In another life, I join the hierophants
of New Jersey, drink petrochemical winds
swirling across Route One, a new Delphi,
speak their ethylene mysteries. Called back

by my inexorable childhood, it becomes
impossible to ignore my sons’ own strange
gifts: smokestacks stop smoking, chimney
fires burn green as pine trees, then flare out.
—from "In Another Life," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In my last year in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, I dressed up as the Greek demi-god Pan for Halloween. It was quite the costume, involving both mud and makeup, a leather jacket with no shirt underneath, and red maple leaves crushed into...

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...

The Heart of the Ironbound

April 17, 2024 - By Briana Bhola

A Review of I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López (The Feminist Press, 2024)

Annell López’ short story collection, I’ll Give You a Reason, brings us to the heart of the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. These stories explore race, colorism, Blackness, identity, sex, and gentrification, among other topics. López gives us gritty and complex characters with their vulnerability on full display; her stories are often devastating, yet empowering. Through López’s expressive and captivating writing, these characters and their hardships feel tangible. Her pages are a portal: readers fall into them and walk the streets of Newark. We feel...

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...