All posts tagged: Interviews

Reaching a Pulse Point: Melody Nixon Interviews Rushi Vyas

Content warning: This interview discusses death by suicide.

Headshot of Rushi Vyas Headshot of melody nixon


MELODY NIXON and RUSHI VYAS first met at a 2020 poetics seminar hosted by the University of Otago, where Vyas is completing a PhD in Poetics. Since that meeting Nixon and Vyas have exchanged thoughts on poetry, grief, and their own experiences of parental death by suicide as they each became new parents themselves.

This conversation distills some of those themes in relation to Vyas’ 2023 chasmic collection When I Reach for Your Pulse (Four Way Books and Otago University Press), which was a two-time finalist for the National Poetry Series and is currently longlisted for New Zealand’s Ockham Book Awards. Vyas is also co-author of the collaborative chapbook Between Us, Not Half a Saint with Rajiv Mohabir (Gasher Press, 2021). Born in Toledo, Ohio, Vyas now lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand, while Nixon lives on another Aotearoa island in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington.

Reaching a Pulse Point: Melody Nixon Interviews Rushi Vyas
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No One Wore Pearls Anymore: Jennifer Jean interviews Jennifer Martelli

Jennifer Martelli's headshot: A woman with thick brown hair looks intently and inquisitively at the camera, arms crossed.

One day in 2008, after not writing for almost 10 years, JENNIFER MARTELLI searched “poetry workshops on the North Shore of Massachusetts.” She signed up for the first “hit” that came up, a Sacred Poetry workshop led by JENNIFER JEAN at the now-defunct Cornerstone Books in Salem, Massachusetts. Both Jennifers bonded over poetry, parenthood, and publishing—and a great friendship was formed! They continue to write together, travel together (because Jennifer Martelli is afraid to drive over bridges, Jennifer Jean takes the wheel), and share their work.

In this interview, Jennifer Jean asked Martelli about her latest collection, The Queen of Queens, which explores the political and emotional zeitgeist of the present by probing the past in a lyrical, smart, and singular voice. Jennifer Martelli’s poetry is the self-deprecating inheritor of Sylvia Plath and Marie Howe.

 

No One Wore Pearls Anymore: Jennifer Jean interviews Jennifer Martelli
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Nothing You Expect: Joseph O. Legaspi Interviews January Gill O’Neil 

headshots of o'neil and legaspi
JANUARY GILL O’NEIL and JOSEPH O. LEGASPI have been friends for almost three decades, since the mid-90s, when they met at orientation in the beat-up lounge of New York University’s creative writing program. The two simply hit it off, bonded over brie, and shared poetics, both starry-eyed on their first venture into New York City.

January is the author of the newly minted collection, Glitter Road, her fourth book published by CavanKerry Press. Her previous titles are Underlife, Misery Islands and Rewilding. She is associate professor at Salem State University and currently serves as board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). The interview was conducted over Zoom in December 2023. Full transparency: Joseph traveled to visit January outside of Boston for a weekend in September, braving a storm that drenched New York City, and arriving three hours late. But instead of “getting to work,” they hung out as good friends do and enjoyed each other’s company, relishing in nourishment, and sustenance.

 

Nothing You Expect: Joseph O. Legaspi Interviews January Gill O’Neil 
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Lay It Bare: Joy Baglio Interviews Anders Carlson-Wee

Headshot of Anders Carlson-wee Headshot of joy baglio


ANDERS CARLSON-WEE‘s 
Disease of Kings showcases a mastery of tone and voice, an uncanny ability to talk to you (reader) like a friend and confidant, while telling you the hardest truths— truths that might actually change your life, truths the world doesn’t necessarily want you to know. These poems are urgent without being demanding, confessional without being sensational, and indirectly lead us to reconsider the nuances of relationships, how our lives are structured, and ultimately the big questions of what matters most. Disease of Kings tells a fierce, uncompromising narrative, yet also manages to be deeply vulnerable and do away with pretense and artifice, embracing a primal need to “Lay It Bare,” as one of the poems is aptly titled.

JOY BAGLIO sat down with Anders to discuss Disease of Kings, touching on his impulse toward narrative, crafting vivid imagery, honing voice, and more. 

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Lay It Bare: Joy Baglio Interviews Anders Carlson-Wee
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Beyond Their Labor: Manuel Muñoz and Helena María Viramontes on Writing the Lives of Farmworkers

 

Manuel Muñoz

Photos L-R courtesy of Manuel Muñoz and Lindsay France/Cornell University.

Helena María Viramontes

 

Acclaimed writers MANUEL MUÑOZ and HELENA MARÍA VIRAMONTES met almost three decades ago: Muñoz was obtaining his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University, and Viramontes was his mentor. Many novels and story collections later, the pair are still close friends. They sat down recently to talk, for the first time, specifically about their roots in farmwork. They discussed the poor working conditions and hardships, but also the ways that farmworkers find love and joy in their families. As writers, they connected over the desire to honor the wholeness and complexity of these lives in their work. 

Beyond Their Labor: Manuel Muñoz and Helena María Viramontes on Writing the Lives of Farmworkers
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Moving Beyond the Trappings of Multilingualism: Farah Ali interviews Dur e Aziz Amna

 

DUR e AZIZ AMNA is the author of American Fever, a coming-of-age story replete with warmth, poeticism, and wit. It is a story about home and homeland and refuses to settle for easy definitions of either. The Guardian calls American Fever “a subversive debut” and the Los Angeles Review of Books calls it “a quiet triumph.” Over a series of emails, FARAH ALI and Dur e discussed how Dur e avoided sketching reductive pictures of Pakistan and America, illness as a vehicle for revealing uncomfortable truths, and the ways certain ideas are shattered after leaving home.

Moving Beyond the Trappings of Multilingualism: Farah Ali interviews Dur e Aziz Amna
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The Magnetic Pull of Place: An Interview with Rosanna Young Oh

Jane satterfield headshot Headshot of Rosanna young oh

JANE SATTERFIELD and ROSANNA YOUNG OH—poets who met at the 2023 Poetry by the Sea Global conference in Madison, CT—connected via email between Baltimore and New York City, and reflected on the power of inherited narratives, their shared fandom of Jane Eyre, sustaining creativity, and Rosanna’s newest collection, The Corrected Version.

The Magnetic Pull of Place: An Interview with Rosanna Young Oh
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Interrogating the Narrative of Injustice: Daphne Santana Strassmann interviews Enzo Silon Surin

Enzo Silon Surin's headshot: a Black man smiling with a short beard and a quarter-zip sweater. Daphne Strassmann's headshot: a woman with thick, rounded glasses, dark hair, and a light sweater.

 

Haitian-born poet ENZO SILON SURIN gives “voice to experiences that take place in what he calls broken spaces.” These are the spaces he writes about, writes for, and writes from. In his latest poetry collection, American Scapegoat, following the success of his last book, When My Body Was A Clinched Fist, Surin illuminates our opaque relationship with the truest history of Black America. His poems invoke an urgent conversation, which is why the word “interview” here feels unmalleable; Enzo and DAPHNE STRASSMANN had a vulnerable exchange about the inheritance and meaning of a broken space.

Interrogating the Narrative of Injustice: Daphne Santana Strassmann interviews Enzo Silon Surin
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Looking for the Weirdness: An Interview with Jim Shepard

Headshot of Robin McLean

ROBIN McLEAN met JIM SHEPARD in a fiction workshop in Italy in 2013, two years after she’d finished her MFA in fiction, two years after she’d sworn off all workshops forever. But she’d read a few of Jim’s stories by then and was hooked. She’s worked with Jim on many stories since, has followed him and Karen Shepard around. Many do. Robin generally shows up with a pile of questions, often about agency or “rate of revelation” or “subliminal coordinates.” If you don’t know what those are, sign up for a workshop with Jim Shepard.

Here are some inquiries asked and answered on a spring pilgrimage to Western Mass in 2022, a sunny morning on a snowy hilltop, an icon of an old tape deck set on RECORD between cups of coffee, three dogs hunting crumbs around the table, then basking in the sun as the ideas flowed.

Looking for the Weirdness: An Interview with Jim Shepard
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Intentional Offerings: jaamil olawale kosoko interviews Nicholas Goodly

jaamil olawale kosoko's headshot: a black person wearing a brown dress, standing between two rock formations.Nicholas Goodly's headshot: black person wearing a gray sweater.

NICHOLAS GOODLY’s debut full-length poetry collection, Black Swim was published by Copper Canyon Press in September 2022. JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO and Nicholas recently connected over Zoom and talked about interdisciplinary art and writing, the essential nature of rest, and prioritizing creative expression. 

Intentional Offerings: jaamil olawale kosoko interviews Nicholas Goodly
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