Blog

10 Questions for Jordan James

April 13, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

If you give me half of what your brought to the stage last night, I'll make you a record, girl. That's what I tell Adriana. Her stage name is Adie Wells, but I've known her since monkey bars and hopscotch.

She says, You goin' think half when I blow a hole through this mic.

I say, You better, or you and the Passionfruit are headed back to Lester's.

No the, she says. Just fruit.
—from "Adie Wells and Passionfruit," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I consider my first piece(s) to be a series of action/adventure/fantasy vignettes co-written with my cousin and childhood best friend. As children with wild imaginations, we...

10 Questions for Kathryn Petruccelli

April 11, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Early August. The sun serious
about itself, the breeze moody
as an infant, hushing its breath
to a whisper, watching, then lifting
all it had into a burst of joy.
—from "Prophet," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote:
I’m assuming you don’t want to hear about the middle school stuff that involved rainbows and much angst. (An early grasp on paradox?) But when I was about 30, I discovered the then-flourishing world of poetry slam and wrote a piece about trying to be more Zen while finding all the good writing fodder in edgier circumstances. Slam was great for my voice at the time, and I enjoyed the idea of speaking for three minutes without anyone...

Spring Reading with the Mass Review

April 10, 2023 - By Staff

ON APRIL 6, 2023, AT 6:00, in the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Old Chapel, the...

10 Questions for Dan Beachy-Quick

April 7, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

eternity is
    different than an
hour   I you
    know this too  the
sun-bright teeth   the
    mouth's inherent
night   what is
        ours—
—from "Everydayness," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I remember writing and thinking perhaps it was a poem, or doing a poem-like thing, was back in high school, my junior year, and much due to that rare teacher who can actually teach poetry, Becky Porter of Alameda High. We had read John Keats’s poem “On First Reading Chapman’s Homer,” and...

10 Questions for Stevie Edwards

April 5, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Three days into stripping
the third layer of painted wallpaper
in a poorly ventilated powder room
and I am a sorrow river. My husband
sticks his head in to ask why
—from "On Crying While Stripping Wallpaper," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I had published in a literary magazine for adults (I had poems published in Teen Ink at some point, but I can’t remember anything about them) was called “C-a-n-c-e-r,” which was published in The Cartier Street Review in 2009, under the name Stephanie Edwards. I wrote it about a time...