From the Blog

10 (or maybe 12) Questions for Bryan Thao Worra

February 18, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

“That was the question the protagonists of the cartoon show King of the Hill asked the Lao character Kahn Souphanousinphone when he debuted on March 2, 1997—even after he’d explained where he and his family were from in elaborate detail. Twenty years later, that question continues to encapsulate Lao American refugees’ enduring frustration when explaining our journey of rebuilding to others.”
—from “‘So are you Chinese or Japanese?’”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
There’s not much to tell: It began for a girl,
There was a mask, some ink, some Pagliacci,
A reference or two to the Batman and the human...

To Hampshire College Faculty

February 15, 2019 - By Members of the Mount Holyoke College Faculty

10 Questions for Shelley Wong

February 13, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

Set the dove free and try
to call it back within a year.
How do you love a bird so much
you cage it? If I were that bird
I’d sing all day. With the right song,
I’ll dance my bones down.
—from “My Therapist Asks If I would Be Happier If I Were Straight”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In my junior year of college, I wrote a Frank O’Hara imitation after reading “The Day Lady Died.” It involved traveling by train en route to a beloved. I was thrilled by the line break “I couldn’t make out / the voices coming through the train.”

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

10 Questions for Sarah Audsley

February 11, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

Early mornings, I waited for the school bus, tiny hands clasping
thin backpack straps, lunch inside a crinkled brown paper bag, tacky

white fluff & peanut butter stuck to the cheap Ziploc. The bus arrived
at 7:05 a.m. The yellow morning light was a warm puddle — soft, I could

touch it. —from “It Was a Yellow Light”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started writing poetry in my childhood bedroom in the log cabin-house my father built. I remember making things up on the page and writing letters to my imagined biological parents in my pink marbled journal. In high school, I wrote poems, looking back on it now, as a way to process my parents’...

10 Questions for Diana Khoi Nguyen

February 8, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

There you stood, eye to the photograph looking at the
place you’re in without you. Am I feeling elegiac
or algebraic again. A violence from within protects
from a violence without.
—from “On Memorial”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I’m not sure if this question is referring to first piece of all time—but I’ll respond as if it were. Third grade—a poem about clouds, while I sat in the middle of the soccer field. There were dandelions beneath my hands when they grazed the earth, and the sun seemed softer than it does these days.

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