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10 Questions for Laura Bernstein-Machlay

December 7, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Still it keeps encroaching, the prickly dread, waiting past midnight as sleep comes in stutters, until you quit trying. As branches scratch tree songs at your windows and shadows scurry like mice across the sills. Because time is ticking down. An inevtiable end approaching, the unmarked cars turning onto your street, their low rumble over asphalt.
—from "The Tender Soul's Guide to Midwestern Middle-Class Midlife Dread," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
First ever poem from second grade: Don’t bring grass to class. As this was during the 1970s, grass had another meaning I was wholly unaware of at the time, thinking instead that I shouldn’t rip up the...

10 Questions for Amy Shea

December 1, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

When someone is brought back from an overdose by Narcan, it can be a violent business: the body goes into immediate and intense withdrawal, and it can feel like you've had the shit kicked out of you. The person may be confused and terrified, and so it seems a reasonable repsonse to be angry. A lot like what it must feel like to be born: ripped from nonexistence and unconsciousness into the bright, noisy, messy business of living.
—from "Deaths of Disparity," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first pieces I really remember writing were in junior high, when I wrote lots of Goosebumps-inspired short stories. The first piece I ever had published titled,...

The Climate Crisis: A Reading and Discussion

December 1, 2021 - By The Massachusetts Review

Join Gina Apostol, Omar El Akkad, Shailja Patel, and Joseph Earl Thomas, alongside Roy Scranton and Noy Holland to launch MR's Climate issue.

To celebrate the launch of our winter 2021 special issue on the climate crisis, the Massachusetts Review is pleased to announce a reading with contributors Gina Apostol, Joseph Earl Thomas, Shailja Patel, and Omar El Akkad, alongside guest editors Roy Scranton and Noy Holland.

10 Questions for Bernard Capinpin

November 16, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

As soon as the lamp was lit at six every evening and the chickens fluttered down from the cacao and jackfruit trees, Father would leave/ He wore shabby military fatigues, boots as large as my legs, and an antique amulet on which was inscribed an Angelus that only Father could read and understand: Que cecop, deus meus, deus noter.
—from "Santiago's Cult" by Kristian Sendon Cordero, Translated by Bernard Capinpin, Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
One of the first pieces I translated was Luna Sicat-Cleto’s “The Logic of the Soap Bubbles.” Sicat-Cleto was part of the Katha (lit. ‘Story’) collective who pushed back against the then-dominant...

Pismo mom malom bratu

November 12, 2021 - By Jim Hicks

Dragi Nane,

On this side of the pond, it’s Veteran’s Day, so I decided to write you a letter. Since we last talked, I’ve been planning to follow up, and since the main issue is surely not ours alone, I’ve decided to make it an open letter. Perhaps a few others might find some sense in what I have to say. Frankly, I’d be surprised if there weren’t more than a few veterans who have made decisions like yours, for similar reasons. So I suppose, at least indirectly, I’m writing to them all.

As you know, I deeply respect your decision to fight for your country. In fact, I’m somewhat in awe of what you did in those years when the barbarians were in the hills all around Sarajevo. At the time, you were still just a kid yourself, really...