Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Danley Romero

January 24, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

My mother taught me that music can mean different things each time it is listened to. Sometimes a piece means all the same things it has meant before, but not always. It changes, she told me, depending on where you are in life. “Music is a journey,” she said. “There is a beginning. There’s a middle. There’s an end.” But music never really ends. She said that contradictions don’t always matter in music, that a piece can end and not end because it lingers in your soul and it solidifies into a part of the core of you even if the air you’re breathing gives up all...

10 Questions for Maria Hamilton Abegunde

January 20, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

To find a missing friend, follow the rot.

When/If
You find her
Him
Them

Whatever they have become

Crouch over the body like an old woman.
—from “Learning to Eat the Dead: Juba” in Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
What comes to mind is “What Is Now Unanswerable”, the title poem of my first chapbook. I wrote it at the Flight of the Mind women’s poetry workshop two years after Tammy Zwicki was murdered in August 1992. This poem introduced me to my life’s work: writing about trauma with an acuity tempered by my desire to heal without harm. When Ruth George was murdered in Chicago in November 2019, I found myself returning to...

10 Questions for James Janko

January 16, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

If I had really good eyes, I might see the threads that join me to the crowd, or even to one old man, this fellow next to me, for example, his cheeks as flush as a Christmas card Santa, his eyes moist, his hand over his heart as he gazes at the flag and sings. He is, by all accounts, normal.

—from "The Anthem and the Angels," Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I was a truant in high school, but I began writing a novel my junior year. I stuffed handwritten pages into an empty Tinkertoy box until it was full. I have no idea what my novel was about, but I remember my older sister, who never missed school, read a few pages and said, “This is sick.”

10 Questions for Annie Zaidi

January 14, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

You know the greatest myth? ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall.’ World’s biggest hoax. Yes or no? Because the mirror never says: ‘You, my queen! You are the fairest of them all. —from “Mallika Reflects on the Events of Discount Monday,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I’d written a short essay about my mother for our college magazine. Mothers, cows and festivals were common topics for essay writing in schools and colleges. My contribution found a bit of appreciation though. I remember being stopped by a couple...

10(ish) Questions for Jacob Paul

January 10, 2020 - By Edward Clifford