Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Amy Gordon

October 18, 2016 - By Amal Zaman and Danielle Brown

A story my father likes to tell
on late fall evenings. His brown,
Jewish, thumbtack eyes pin you
with the details. The german countryside. A simple inn.
- from "What He Saw" which appears in our Spring 2016 Issue (Volume 57 Issue 1).

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

One of the first pieces I wrote was when I was a senior in high school and I often stayed up at night and wandered around (I was a terrible insomniac) and I experienced a sort of mystical vision. I tried to write a sonnet about it. I have never written anything like it since then.

What writer(s) or works have...

10 Questions for Akil Kumarasamy

October 11, 2016 - By Amal Zaman and Danielle Brown

Laalini, the woman I married, recited for me three lines of poetry about this world of dew and confessed her love for Issa, and before I learned he was a poet, I thought he was an old lover, and the jealousy and the relief I felt then left me walking the city in a trance as if I had almost lost what was irretrievable, dear as an arm. - from " Meditations" which appears in our Spring 2016 Issue (Volume 57, Issue 1).

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

When I first started writing fiction, I wrote a story about an elephant killing a tourist in India and later as retribution, the elephant...

10 Questions for Lee Upton

October 4, 2016 - By Amal Zaman and Danielle Brown

IN MY EARLY CHILDHOOD, the people I loved most in the world made sure that I saw a silver tree. I remember taking a giant breath and then swallowing the sight of that tree so that it would never leave me. Late-born, with a far older brother and sister, I must have been a small child to be on someone’s shoulders, and the wind must have been blowing so hard that the leaves flickered like metal. – from Ambrosia, our September 2016 Working Title. Read and excerpt or buy on...

10 Questions for Brandon Lewis

September 26, 2016 - By Amal Zaman and Danielle Brown

My cityborn friend snaps limbs from trees for the bonfire
and hands me their greenness.    Why refuse

this gift of smoke and hissing years of rain?
Every tree is difficult. Take this oak and its burl—such handsome infection

to climb. I am sorry but without Violence it's too late to catch up with them…
Was a societal leg up ever real?
-- from "That Difficulty Increases Desire" which appears in the Spring 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 1).

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

It’s very...

10 Question for Caroline Beimford

September 20, 2016 - By Amal Zaman and Danielle Brown

"It was the air. The temperature and density of it, like it was being compressed around the city. It was the emptiness of the streets and the quiet. It was the time: there was no school, no one wanted lessons, there was nothing to do but read and breathe and try not to sweat through everything I put on. Even the walls sweat. Beads of condensation budding, like sap, from the purple paint."  -- from "Asfixia" which appears in our Spring 2016 issue (Volume 57 Issue 1).

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

The first real story I ever wrote was for a class with Suzanne Berne at...