Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Kathleen Hawes

December 4, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Last year a lonely possum crept into my bed. This possum has problems: booze, Benzos, Oxy, you name it. He'll snort, smoke, or pop pretty much anything. He can't pay his rent, but he's good in the sack. At night he tickles the inside of my thighs with his whiskers till I just can't take it, then I have to pull him up close. His tail is bald and skinny. His teeth are pointed, widely spaced.

—from "Opossum Problems," Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
English class, freshman year of high school, I made an abysmal attempt at poetry. There was an allusion to sex in one line, something about “tangled sheets” (ugh). During the next parent-teacher...

(Almost) 10 Questions for Lance Larsen

November 30, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

My friend Julia wanted to bask in fame, or wear it in her hair like a dragonfly wing, or maybe roll in it like a dog. Wouldn't it be easier, I said, to just shake Fame's craggy hand? I meant the poet, who had just finished reading. This happened at a snooty conference where Pulitzer Prize winners and untouchables sample tarts from the same tray. My friend Julia refused to fawn, refused to buy his book. Well then, I said, let's join him for breakfast tomorrow.
—from "Dark Harbor," Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In first or second grade at Washington Elementary in Pocatello, Idaho, my class was assigned to write about hope. Here’s what I turned in, misspellings...

10 Questions for Annie Lampman

November 20, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Evanthe held still, her limbs pulled into awkward angles—one elbow cocked out to the side, the other braced against a root serving as tripod, both hands grippin the binocular's rubber houseing hard enough she was afraid she wouldn't be able to unbend them again. She didn't dare readjust. Didn't dare move her left knee off whatever sharp thing she'd planted it on. She'd been waiting her whole life to see this: a male paradise tanager...
—from "Birds of the Land," Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was a creative-writing undergrad in a fiction workshop class somewhere around 2003, the professor assigned a two-page writing exercise where two...

10 Questions for Amanda Kabak

November 13, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

When Angie answers a knock at our door, this girl, Molly, starts talking a blue streak, each word rendering Angie smaller and more pale until I finally understand what Angie must have from the beginning: this girl is her daughter, a daughter I know nothing about, an entire daughter Angie never once mentioned to me in our decade together. Since we get closer to sharing everything than any other couple I know, I would turn this girl away in disbelief, but she has Angie's eyes and chin and voice, and we move inexorably inside until they are sitting at our small, round kitchen table, and I am hovering around the edges, barren in my uselessness.
—from "Unsafe Haven," Volume 61,...

10 Questions for Mike Day

November 9, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Rain fell violently through the night. San Ye thought of the gravestones in Dongba, and the flesh and bones beneath, and the clothes and things buried with the bodies. The coffins must be swimming in slimy muck. . .he couldn't sleep.

He tossed and turned until dawn, got up, and looked outside to see the bridge over the river had collapsed. Sodden planks drifted on the current, spinning gleefully before floating away with bits of rope, branches, and the sedge grass, never to be seen again.
—from "Song of Parting" by Lu Min, Translated by Michael Day, Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
Let’s talk about Dorothy Tse’s “Chickens,” the first...