Blog / Interviews

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...

10 Questions for Natasha Lvovich

November 9, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

First, in complete silence, the yellow wall in my room cracks, spreading its spiderweb threads as quickly and as slowly as is possible only in a dream. Chills are crawling down my spine; hot flashes throb into my head. This is panic, fear, terror—a preverbal, pre-Russian sensation that as yet has no name.
—from "Phone Home," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
This is a complicated question because in my several lives—Russian, French, and American, with some overlapping—there have been different chronologies. I wrote my first book in Russian at the age of seven; it was called Papa, Mama, Eight Children, and a Truck, and it doesn’t matter that this book...

10 Questions with Kelly R. Samuels

November 4, 2021 - By Emily Wojcik

I slept the sleep of the dead
once. Once, could not be woken
in time to do what it wasI had to do.
Did not hear the ring of. Did not hear
the rap of. Was called. Was shaken. Rose
groggy, stumblingdown the hall, my mother saying, Look
at who has finally graced us with her presence. ...

—from "Only Somewhat Sleeping," from Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote....

10 Questions for Kevin Prufer

November 2, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Severalancient skulls unearthed in Ethiopia
with butchery marks around the eye sockets and occipital bones

It's called "pot polishing"—

A sign that bones have been boiled for reasons of cookery—
—from "Cannibalism," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was about eight years old, I wrote a long story about a penguin who, one sunny day, wakes to find that his iceberg has floated far out to sea and is quickly melting. He has all sorts of adventures—with pirates, tourists, another lost penguin—trying always to get back to the South Pole. But I don’t think that’s what you mean by a “first” piece. My first serious...

10 Questions for Pam Baggett

October 22, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Outside my mother's bedroom window
in the memory care unit, sparrows
and Carolina chickadees play hide-and-seek
in holly bushes lit with winter's red berries.
—from "Stripes," Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I wrote was about standing by the pond at dawn watching a beaver quietly backstroke as sunrise turned October’s gold-leaved hickories briefly pink. The poem was probably terrible. When I got news later that day that my beloved uncle had died at that very hour of a heart attack, it seemed as if someone had handed me poetry and said, “Here, you’re going to need this.” Four years later, my first published poems appeared...