Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Daniel Barnum

April 2, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

in 1980, my father saw my mother’s photo in a magazine, then
     left connecticut.

road-tripped to meet her where she lived in arizona. who would
     stay in connecticut?
—from “Qui Transtulit Sustinet,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Spring 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
How far back are we going? In first grade, I wrote and illustrated a story about my cats, Rosie and Marmalade, going on a road trip to visit my extended family in the southwest. One night, they went out camping out in the desert, then woke up the next morning and realized that, exhausted and surrounded by the spare landscape’s utter darkness, they’d set up their tent at...

A Reading with Sam Taylor

March 22, 2021 - By Sam Taylor

A reading from our 2020 Anne Halley Poetry Prize winner Sam Taylor. Taylor reads his prize-winning poem "Postcards from Babel" as well as an assortment of other poems.

SAM TAYLOR is the author of three books of poems, Body of the World, Nude Descending an Empire, and the forthcoming The Book of Fools: An Essay in Memoir and Verse. His poems have appeared in such journals as the Kenyon Review, AGNI, and the New Republic, and his work has been...

10 Questions for Gloria L. Huang

March 22, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

The glass under her forearms was smudged with cloudy fingerprints. An ant wandered aimlessly across the counter, island-hopping from one oily smear to another. She watched as it shuffled, the quick movements of its legs and constant swivels of its antennae creating the impression of a creature lost and blind. Is it thinking? she wondered. Does it know I'm here?
—from "Scattered Islands," Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
“First” first? I’ve been writing stories since I was a child, but I assume you don’t want to hear about my third-grade story “Mr. Tabblesworth The Cat Drives to the City”. (Or do you?) One of the first stories I had...

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...