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10 Questions for Elias Leake Quinn

August 16, 2016 - By Amal Zaman and Danielle Brown

“The tarthky was a beast from a different era, from back when the dunes were just a thin sheet spread over a second sea, the clumps of dune grasses bobbing like Lilliputian schooners. An adventurer with the right equipment could pierce the sand, dive through the floating grasses, and swim beneath their tangled roots. The shaft light drove down from the surface toward ancient monsters with wide, blind eyes.” —from “Driftwood,” which appears in the Summer 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 2).

Tells us about one of the first pieces you wrote

That’s kind of a tough question. Writing has always been a part of the...

A Gluttonous War

August 10, 2016 - By Erri De Luca

Aleppo, Syria from the WSJ (May 4, 2016).
Photo: Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Some twenty years ago, during the war in Bosnia, I walked into cities made somber by hunger. We unloaded packages for families found on the trip before: we distributed them directly, without intermediaries, storage sites, or stockpiles. I saw hunger in the shame of the elderly: every mouthful they swallowed was one less for a grandchild, a woman, someone sick. Today I experience the hunger of Aleppo from a distance and I ask myself why I’m not there...

10 Questions for Erin Fortenberry

August 8, 2016 - By Danielle Brown and Amal Zaman

“Oren loves the supply closet. He loves to go in and close the door behind him, to breathe deep the Christmas scent of adhesive, to run his fingers over the open boxes of Onyx micro-tips, G-2 refill cylinders, and unsharpened No. 2 pencils. He loves to choose these things and, finally, to steal.” — from “Dollmaker, Inventory, Child.” which appears in our Summer 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 2).

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

When I was really young, I used to write tiny plays and make my parents watch me perform them with puppets made out of lunch bags. I don’t remember what they...

Not Just Another Day

August 3, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

It is not, of course, every day in the life of an editor that an unpublished work arrives on one’s desk (or, these days, on one’s screen) that—from its opening lines to its last—is already irrefutable, both necessary and sufficient. Though I’ve been at this job for (do you remember that scene from the Herzog film?) “a little long while” now, it has in fact happened, well, precisely once. That day was the day I first came across Tabish Khair’s new novel, Just Another Jihadi Jane. A good day.

Earlier this week, the Massachusetts Review published a long excerpt from this novel as the sixth number in its e-book series, Working Titles. That was a good day as well.

...

10 Questions for Hayan Charara

August 1, 2016 - By Danielle Brown and Amal Zaman

"When you were in her womb, your mother
used and sold herself, and after you were pulled out

she didn't stop. For a minute or more
you did not breathe; and from the drugs she took

(now in you) your skinny arms and legs shook. . ."
—from "Bad Things" which appears in the Summer 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 2).

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

I vaguely remember the first poem I wrote—I was six years old. The poem was about a dream I’d had, I know that, and I tried mimicking Shakespeare’s sonnets because that’s what I...