Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Eric Henry Sanders

July 7, 2017 - By Katherine Keenan

“Lena smiles and bounces a little bit. I don’t have a particularly bouncy bed and it looks silly that she is trying to bounce on it. Her cheeks flush.
‘Have you seen Girls?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m in it.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I say. ‘You’re everywhere.’”
—from “Lena Dunham Is Everywhere” which appears in the Summer 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 2)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first professional piece I completed was a full-length play, By The Master’s Hand, about a real...

10 Questions for Ahsan Butt

July 5, 2017 - By Katherine Keenan

“Amin didn’t see him. The brake pads clenched, lifting Amin out of his seat, and then he saw the child.

Since dashing into the path of danger, the little boy hadn’t moved. He was seized by a question, and the force and authority of its asking was the closest he would come to being touched with revelation. And though the child understood the question and its implications with terrific clarity, his was an understanding received through feeling rather than thought, through the vertigo of his frame of reference collapsing, its grounding assumptions giving way. In fact, his mind barely managed a few failing words. Could this happen? was only a partial,...

10 Questions for Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

June 30, 2017 - By Katherine Keenan

“Say, white girl,” Liana could hear the brown-skinned girl behind her whispering in the middle of Pre-algebra. She knew she was calling for her, even though Liana wasn’t white. At the old school, everybody knew Liana’s daddy was Creole, that her mother was light-skinned black. Also, at her old school, there had been other girls like her, girls whose hair touched their butts and swung back and forth when they jumped rope. But when her daddy moved out, her mama had to transfer her to Eleanor McMain Magnet, and she was the lightest girl here by a long shot.”

--from “White Girl,” which appears in the Summer 2017 issue (...

10 Questions for Claire Schwartz

June 26, 2017 - By Beth Derr

-- from “REDACTED” which appears in the Summer 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 2)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.

A CO[O]L CAT
(My mama tells me I used numbers as decoration.)

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?

Solmaz Sharif for form as tactic. Ross Gay for his ecosystem of life and loss contoured by gratitude and wonder. Kaveh Akbar who lifts as he climbs. Aracelis Girmay for the coil of her “...

10 Questions for Joy Ladin

June 19, 2017 - By Beth Derr

“My therapist says I’m afraid of vanishing.
Last week his ceiling caved in, ending our session
in a shower of words and water.
I’m serious. I’m always serious
when I talk about therapists and cave-ins.”
--from “Flourishing” which appears in the Spring 2017 issue (Volume 58, Issue 1)

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

The first poem I committed to finishing as an adult was called “The Akedah,” a retelling of the Biblical story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac. Like so many Jewish poets, I...