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10 Questions for Travis Price

May 10, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

I didn't know many people who had gone to university. Neither Dad, nor Mom, nor my grandparents went. Still I knew more or less how university types dressed and even how they spoke, partly because my cousin was a veterinary student (though I barely saw him, and until he finally graduated, I wasn't entirely sure that he'd actually been studying for thirteen whole years like he claimed.)
—from "This Is a Pipe," Volume 63, Issue 1 (Spring 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
When I lived in Uruguay in 2018, I discovered a good way of making friends: Inviting Uruguayans I wanted to get to know better to play a game of Settlers of Catan. One of my competitors turned out to be the writer Marcelo...

The Birth of an Author

May 7, 2022 - By Michael Thurston

A Review of Hank Drossel. Item: Regarding the Basilisk. SYOM Press, 2022. ix+187 pp.

Hank Drossel worked for decades as the travel agent and logistics manager for various arts institutions, especially music ensembles. From a perch at Eastern Airlines, he supported Cold War-era “hearts and minds” tours: avant-garde artists and groups performing American freedom for audiences behind the Iron Curtain. When both the Cold War and Eastern fell to the global domination of finance capitalism, Drossel worked freelance for art collectives, small orchestras, and early music ensembles, overseeing travel arrangements, venue bookings, contract riders, and the packing and transportation of priceless instruments. He often traveled with his clients to make sure that musicians...

10 Questions for Sakena Abedin

May 3, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

They came to meet him at the tiny airport in the town where he had attended medical college. As he went from his new house in Texas to the airport to New York and then London and Delhi, he had the sensation that the world was growing bigger and bigger. But on the final leg of his journey, the flight from Delhi to Nagpur, it all shrank back down again.
—from "Kabir," Volume 63, Issue 1 (Spring 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was in fourth grade, I borrowed the family typewriter and wrote a story set in my neighborhood with a plot that was heavily borrowed from Heidi, which was my favorite book at the time. Many years passed before I tried my hand at fiction again.

What writer(s...

Between Worlds

May 2, 2022 - By Marya Zilberberg

It wasn’t my choice to leave Odesa. My father decided, my mother agreed, and so it happened. In 1976. We were lucky to get out, lucky to avoid the fates of refuseniks and political prisoners in the Gulag, lucky that my father—who lost his job immediately upon applying for an exit visa—did not get arrested for parasitism, lucky that I would be able to live my life in the relative freedom of America. But part of the bargain was leaving forever and letting others contend with the insatiable cannibalism of the Soviet machine.

How do you put into words what it’s like to know you can never go back?

Think of it this way. You know how it is when your friend has been trying to get a hold of you, and you say to yourself, Well, I’ll get back to them...

10 Questions for Lindsay Sproul

April 26, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

We knew our answers, but they weren't what you were looking for: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Not married.
A man with stronger arms than mine.
A person with the courage to bite down.
An evil queen.
A horse.
—from "Please Don't Ask Us," Volume 63, Issue 1 (Spring 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first words I learned how to write were “cow” and “mom.” In preschool, I distinctly remember writing a picture book about a cow mom who lost her baby in the supermarket.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Aside from Carson McCullers, Alice Walker, Jo Ann Beard and some other greats, I...