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10 Questions for Lisa Olstein

March 15, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

In one chemical future, the clouds themselves will be extinct, so we try to hold them in mind as they float by casting their individual storm-sized shadows across the animals across the plains.
—from "Glacier Haibun," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started writing in high school, under the influence of a passionate tenth grade English teacher whose love of literature was palpable. The first poem I can remember writing was about a horse named Lindy who wanted to run fast as she was asked to by her rider, but also wanted to run away. I remember reading it over the phone to my friend Claire, telling her it'd been published in The New Yorker, the only...

10 Questions for Xavier Navarro Aquino

March 10, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

Abuela doesn’t want to die. She’s still holding on to life for the stubbornness of it. And on one of the worst days to head down the mountainside, Ma and Pa decided to drag Diego and me to see her.
—from "A Death Foretold," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote a lot of bad love poetry in my adolescence. My first piece of fiction came much later. It was a terribly written story about a priest and his friend in some made-up town in Ohio. Mind you I’d never been or known a thing about that state. If I recall correctly, the priest slept with his friend’s wife. After writing that trash, I’d like to think the only way to go is up.  

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Nisam pametna

March 8, 2022 - By Ulvija Tanović

March 8, 2022, 12:23 a.m.

I’ve been counting time, reckoning. . . It’s been 26 years, 1 week, and 2 days. . . It’s been 4 years, 2 months, and 28 days. . . It had been 3 years, 10 months, and 22 days. . . The siege of Sarajevo lasted for 1425 days. I wasn’t there. I watched it all on TV. I was there when the siege was officially lifted. February 26, 1996. My birthday. My sweet sixteenth. I’d come back as I had vowed I would. But I didn’t know that time gets bent out of shape, that you can never go back, that you have to keep going back, you never get to stop counting time, reckoning. . .

Seemingly, time has passed, but I’m watching it all on TV again. It’s happening somewhere else,...

Don't Let Racism Divide Us

March 7, 2022 - By Michel S. Moushabeck

Like many of you, I’ve been glued to the news this past week following Putin’s senseless, illegal, and immoral war on neighboring Ukraine. Our eyes are filled with images showing the horrors of Russia’s invasion. We stand in solidarity with the people of the Ukraine and our hearts and thoughts are with all those affected by this tragic war.  

As a Palestinian whose family was displaced and exiled, it is easy for me to identify with the suffering of the people of Ukraine and feel their anger towards the invading Russian army. The fear, the indiscriminate bombardment, the destruction, the scenes of women and children taking refuge in subways and underground shelters, and the ensuing massive refugee crisis are all too familiar to me. 

War sets...

If there is ink.

March 5, 2022 - By Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché is a poet, translator, and activist. Her most recent books are What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin, 2019) and In the Lateness of the World: Poems (Penguin US / Bloodaxe Books UK, 2020).