Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for April Blevins Pejic

February 17, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

If Pappaw hadn’t been murdered, I wouldn’t even consider doing this test. Yet, here I am. Against my better judgment, I spit into the plastic tube then check to see if I’ve reached the fill line. Not even close. I suck the inside of my cheeks to produce more saliva and spit again and again until the tube is full.
—from “Genetic Driftwood” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In high school and undergrad, I wrote so much bad poetry. Notebooks full of absolute tripe. Not a single one merits mentioning.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I’ll never forget the first time I read Flannery O’Connor...

10 Questions for Constance Merritt

February 12, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

liability
asset
supposing brains
sharp
surpassing
everything, anything
...

10 Questions for David Torneo

February 6, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

my mother was never mistaken
for a junkshop trumpet
or a yard sale saxophone, not even a
xylophone with its teeth knocked out,
nor was she a late night
tone deaf lounge siren,
but there was enough cacophony
and wild-ass mock jubilation
crueler than money
pouring out of the instrument of her throat
to stun a family of bison,
—from “Friday Night Fights,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem accepted for publication was back in the mid-1980s was titled “A Tale of Two Dogs”. From what I recall, I was under the influence of several poets at the time, significantly Kenneth Rexroth. Rexroth had a big presence on...

10 Questions for Kristina Kay Robinson

February 3, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

The first man Kalo ever loved was a hustler—a killer, too. In that way she was blessed. He taught her two things (more, but this is what she will share): all you got in this life is your balls and your word; play your hand close to your chest. The city Kalo grew up in changes infinitely and infinitesimally by the square foot. Dead men, ghosts, babies, slave ships, the drums, and jewelry (who knows how they got it on board), all these things crowd the sidewalks and jam up all the doorways, which are filled with bullet holes.
—from “Per Capita,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started writing...

10 Questions for Anita Felicelli

January 27, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Paati lived at the edge of a minor fishing village, in a small gray house darkened by caliginous algae stains that streamed down its outer walls and along the edges of its clay roof tiles. She was their mother’s mother, a stern woman, darker than their mother, with a nose curved and knowing like the beak of a hawk.
—from “Tent Cinema,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was sixteen, I wrote a short story about two skateboarding teenage boys whose lifelong friendship is disrupted when they fall in love with the same girl. One of them starts dating the girl, and the other sinks into a deep depression and starts thinking about the fun they used to have in the creek where...