Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Ward Schumaker

September 17, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

Tell us about one of the first pieces you created.

It's 1949, I'm six years old, lying on the floor, thumbing through Life Magazine and I find a photo story on Jackson Pollock. Immediately I realize: that's me, that's who I want to be! The next day our first grade teacher surprises us with easels and paint. I get to work. Still, a piece of art takes time. "Please don't make me go to recess," I plead. "I have to finish this painting. It's a lot more important than running around the playground."

What artist(s) or works have influenced the way you work now?

When I was twelve my brother introduced me to books by The Roycrofters, hand-illuminated letterpress books...

10 Questions for Peggy O'Brien

September 12, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

"The shortcut proved the long way round. Mid-summer,
Insomniac sun. She ambled through the market.
Throngs pressed the flesh. Is this salmon firm and fresh?
These strawberries plump and sweet, as ripe as June?
Crubeens and chickens, carrageen moss and peas.
The price went up according to the depth
Of hunger in a voice. "Cheap flowers,""cheap flowers,"
—from “Barter,” Summer 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 2)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
For many years in my twenties and thirties I listened to another’s poetry rather than wrote my own. I was not just married to a well-known Irish poet, I was also his first reader. I would criticize draft after draft,...

10 Questions for Stacy Gnall

September 10, 2018 - By Abby MacGregor

"Up out of the trailer, the apartment in Harlem, the estate of the estranged

             circus stars—    All lit true

                                                              by the glint of a tooth, you are ending.

With the black bear doped and posed at the country fair. To prove

           There's a god, a snake

                                     ...

10 Questions for h.R. Webster

September 5, 2018 - By Sarah Lofstrom

Road-kill season
and the borrowed breath
of woodland on the verge
is the easiest exit for whatever
afterlife was promised.
Velvet & quiver.
—from “Jersey Bruiser,” Summer 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 2)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
...

10 Questions for James Haug

August 27, 2018 - By Sarah Lofstrom

"The river was collecting snow on itself. Almost nobody  was coming to see it. Its banks were either slick and muddy, or frozen and rutted. The river was letting itself go. Here and there it was jammed with branches that trapped chunks of ice from the current, and plastic jugs and scraps of chicken wire, and here it was that snow collected...." —from “Dismal Levels,” Summer 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 2)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Early on I tried little stories in a Jack London vein: dog stories, man and dog stories, man and wolf stories, man alone in the wilds playing harmonica near a campfire stories, man hallucinating in the driving snow stories. It seemed pretty heady and elsewhere. It was all...