Blog / Interviews

10 Questions with Christine Sneed

November 1, 2016 - By Amal Zaman

Before the end of his second month at the Gazette, Connor was told that he wore his misery too openly. "You need to hide it better," said Sandra Cramer, the staff writer who did most of the movie, concert, and theater reviews and was also the paper's primary fact checker, "Or else, like Woody Allen, learn to make a joke out of it. - from "Dear Kelly Bloom" which appears in our Fall 2016 Issue (Vol. 57 Issue 3).

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

I used to write terrible love poems about boys I had crushes on in junior high. Those old...

10 Questions for Lauren Hilger

October 25, 2016 - By Amal Zaman

Handed from barbarian to barbarian

The Burgundian Code says
if they pull my hair with only one hand
they're free.

I carry what I own over
my ovibovine shoulders.

-- from "The Dark Ages" which appears in the Fall 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 3).

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

When I was sixteen, I submitted poems to a high school poetry contest where the winners got to read at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. I am forever grateful to this program, and I couldn’t believe it when I got the chance to encounter monumental poets and stand on a stage...

Interview with Aleksandar Brezar and Enis Čišić, Part Three

October 19, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

Alternative Realities

(Read Part One and Two here.)

JH: One of the things we’ve done in the Massachusetts Review blog—because we thought we needed to—is book reviews of other work that pretends to come out this period and this history. In particular, two novels were very successful in the US: Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife and Sara Nović’s Girl at War. About the reviews we did, well, I’ll give you just the title of the one for The Tiger’s...

Interview with Aleksandar Brezar and Enis Čišić, Part One

October 19, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

Remembering a Life Cut Short

Jim Hicks: Probably the best place to start, since nobody in the United States is really going to know the background, would be to summarize the story of Karim Zaimović.

Aleksandar Brezar: Well, it’s not a story that can be summarized. The simplest way to describe his life and his work would be to say that he was a journalist and a writer from Sarajevo who, during the war and the siege, had a radio show where he read his stories on air—short stories that were a way of escaping the reality of the war, and that  in some way provided at least a...

Interview with Aleksandar Brezar and Enis Čišić, Part Two

October 19, 2016 - By Jim Hicks

Between Realism and Fantasy

(Read Part One here.)

JH: The next obvious subject is to talk about process, and how this comic came about. From an idea to an object that exists in the world, there’s a hell of a lot of work. So tell us about that. One of the things people who don’t know much about it don’t know is just how much work it is to make comics.

EČ: It took us what, six months?

AB: No, more than six months. Between nine months and a year.

EČ: A long, long process...