Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Adam Sweeting

May 10, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

“A few years back, I took my daughter and her best friend apple picking in central Massachusetts, where we enjoyed a picture-perfect early fall afternoon. It was the kind of day that shouts NEW ENGLAND—slightly cool temperatures, glorious foliage, and apples waiting to be picked. Our timing could not have been more perfect. The year’s weather had proved ideal for apples, with no late frosts, suf­ficient early summer rains, and a storm-free August. A bumper crop followed, one of the best in decades, and we returned home rich in fruit.”
—from “Lost Flavors: Climate Change, Poetry, and New England’s Apples”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write...

10 Questions for Robin Myers

May 6, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

Or as self-medicator,
or two-tongued song-
singer, or undersecretary of pre-dawn walks,
or any manner of other
offices. They’re just
conjectures. I still scrawl
my appointments on the back
of my hand, tend
to keep them.
—from “Poem for Self as Single Mother”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Sometime in high school, I wrote a poem about watching a lamb being born and nearly dying in the process (the lamb, not me!). I’d been experimenting with poetry for a while, but that was the first time I tried to grapple with an experience of both wonder and horror. Which I still see as one of poetry’s major purposes and possibilities...

10 Questions for Maria João Medeiros

May 1, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

“I have an idea hanging from my head. It’s been out there for ages. Everything suggests it’s a bad idea.”
—from “Animal Stomach” by Rui Cardoso Martins, translated from Portuguese by Maria João Medeiros, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
My very first translation into Portuguese was Daniel Defoe’s The Political History of the Devil, a treatise written in 1726. Since I’m not a professional translator, it was a make-or-break project. So now, whenever I accept a translation job I always thank the Defoe Devil . . .

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
My earliest...

10 Questions for Steven Cramer

April 26, 2019 - By Abby Macgregor

 Jake says: “first time I recall wanting to die I was eight.
When I tried and nearly did I really wanted to live.”
—from “South Belknap”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
If I go “deep background,” I remember trying to write a sci-fi story when I was nine or ten. I made all the characters say the opposite of what they meant (the Queen of Mars tells her guards to “release” the interloping Earthlings when she wants them arrested.) The story remains unfinished. As a college freshman, I started writing miserable T.S. Eliot imitations (I believe The Fisher King made an appearance!), some of which AGNI—at that time more a...

10 Questions for Bruna Dantas Lobato

April 25, 2019 - By Abby Macgregor

“It was raining, raining, raining, and I was going into the rain to meet him, no umbrella or anything, I was always losing them in bars. I was holding just a bottle of cheap cognac tight against my chest, hard to believe it said this way, but this was how I was going through the rain, a bottle of cognac in hand and a wet pack of cigarettes in my pocket. At one point I could have taken a cab, but it wasn’t very far away, and if I took a cab I could buy neither cigarettes nor cognac.”
—from “Beyond the Point” by Caio Fernando Abreu, translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
It was another story by Caio Fernando Abreu...