Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Rose B. Simpson

March 19, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

I studied flamenco for a few years when I was an undergraduate. I had signed up, hoping for an easy credit. On the first day, the teacher showed a class of sixty what kind of shoes we needed; the ones with the nails hammered into a small dome on the two-inch heel and shiny black toe. a skirt made with miles of pleated stretchy black fabric to wrap tight around our hips as we brandished them across the floor.
—from "Mata la Araña," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started undergrad at the University of New Mexico in 2001. One of the first stories I wrote to be workshopped was called “Ladybug,” and it was about a jungle love affair between two women in active duty. In...

10 Questions for Suzanne S. Rancourt

March 15, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Nowhere an Uber or Lyft
I wondered about fate and taxis

counted seconds to minutes to years since
I last looked at this watch

Dirt, long since thrown upon graves and caskets
their resonant thuds quelled
—from "I was hurried, not agitated," from Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My first memory of creative writing is this: I was probably somewhere between 3 and 4 years old at the age where a child begins to scribble in a clear up and down motion. In Developmental Psych, it’s referred to as emergent literacy. I specifically remember using a blue Bic pen (the kind that advertisements strap onto figure skates, skated about a bit and then wrote with the...

10 Questions for Tiffany Midge

March 12, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

a: You are chopping onions for yet another pot of lentils, hips pressed up against the kitchen counter, when first you hear it. The sound of mewling. Barely audible. You put down your knife.

b: One year earlier, on fellowship in Kansas, you are returning to your Airbnb from your walk. You see your house and yard down the street within view, but something looks peculiar. As you come closer, you can make it out: a vulture feeding on a possum's corpse
—from "sheltering," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote about the sky as if it were a patchwork quilt—“seams and denim skies.” And I workshopped it with William Stafford at a community poetry class, and...

10 Questions for Summer J. Hart

March 8, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

In the end days, eyes
turn around,     softened

mouth like fog on the window.

The first tongue to catch the new language is a rotten egg
—from "Salt for the Stain," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
At first, my poems were basically a catalog of thoughts or lists (lists of lists) tapped into the notes app on my phone: 12 vultures, 3 crows, the dog’s impossibly coiled tail. The first piece I wrote for publication was in response to a call from Northern New England Review with the theme of “True North.” The dog’s impossibly coiled tail became “Verses for a Double Murder,” the first in a series...

10 Questions for Shaina A. Nez

March 5, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

‘Ałk áą́’i’, long ago.
Bąą, on account of, before our people emerged to the fourth world, Nihalgai, Glittering world.
Chahałheeł, darkness, happened, and we would adapt to newness, the light, ‘adinídíín.
Ch’ah and the western wear—the urban Indian cowboy, and for some, ranching became routine and we honored the animals since we emerged with them. Now we live to serve the łíí’, beegashii, dibé, tł‘ízí, na’a’ho’he, na’a’ho’hebiyazhi.
—from "Diné Abecedarian," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In elementary, I was...