Blog

On the Left

November 8, 2016 - By Erri De Luca

I use a simple screen to judge whether a political program—and the behavior which follows—is progressive. Two sides of one coin: for a political program to be progressive requires people to behave progressively. For me, the Urugrayan ex-President Pepe Mujica and the mayors of Barcellona and Napoli are progressive. The Italian Constitution is progressive.

We Italians tend to be pleased with a catchphrase falsely attributed to Machiavelli: “The end justifies the means.” I’ve found the opposite to be true: the way you pursue your principles and programs, your lifestyle, decides whether the end will be worth achieving. Soberness, modesty, and respect are the ways and means that justify the end to be reached. Without them, no achievement is solid or...

Resistance in Fiction

November 4, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

Though I’ve been at it for a few years now, editing this magazine still is full of surprises, and nearly all are pleasant. Finding new work you really love, and getting to correspond with—or even meet in person—the writer of that work is, of course, best of all. At the annual AWP shindig, our magazine also has the pleasure of joining forces with the University of Massachusetts Press, and that in turn has given me the opportunity of reading, meeting, and on occasion also introducing the winners of the...

10 Questions with Christine Sneed

November 1, 2016 - By Amal Zaman

Before the end of his second month at the Gazette, Connor was told that he wore his misery too openly. "You need to hide it better," said Sandra Cramer, the staff writer who did most of the movie, concert, and theater reviews and was also the paper's primary fact checker, "Or else, like Woody Allen, learn to make a joke out of it. - from "Dear Kelly Bloom" which appears in our Fall 2016 Issue (Vol. 57 Issue 3).

Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written

I used to write terrible love poems about boys I had crushes on in junior high. Those old...

10 Questions for Lauren Hilger

October 25, 2016 - By Amal Zaman

Handed from barbarian to barbarian

The Burgundian Code says
if they pull my hair with only one hand
they're free.

I carry what I own over
my ovibovine shoulders.

-- from "The Dark Ages" which appears in the Fall 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 3).

Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written

When I was sixteen, I submitted poems to a high school poetry contest where the winners got to read at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. I am forever grateful to this program, and I couldn’t believe it when I got the chance to encounter monumental poets and stand on a stage...

Interview with Aleksandar Brezar and Enis Čišić, Part One

October 19, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

Remembering a Life Cut Short

Jim Hicks: Probably the best place to start, since nobody in the United States is really going to know the background, would be to summarize the story of Karim Zaimović.

Aleksandar Brezar: Well, it’s not a story that can be summarized. The simplest way to describe his life and his work would be to say that he was a journalist and a writer from Sarajevo who, during the war and the siege, had a radio show where he read his stories on air—short stories that were a way of escaping the reality of the war, and that  in some way provided at least a...