Interviews | Page 5 | The Common

“I Hope I’m Not a Moth”: Lindsay Wong on Coming of Age Through Memoir

July 15, 2019 Interviews

MARNI BERGER interviews LINDSAY WONG

Lindsay Wong’s debut memoir The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018) was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, selected for the 2019 edition of Canada Reads (where it was defended by fashion personality Joe Zee), longlisted for the Leacock Medal for humor, and awarded the Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. Her short stories and nonfiction have appeared in Apogee Journal, No Tokens, Ricepaper, and The Fiddlehead, and she has earned residencies from The Studios of Key West, Caldera Arts, and the Historic Joy Kogawa House, to name a few.

In this interview, long-time friends Marni Berger and Lindsay Wong span Portland, Maine and Vancouver, British Columbia via the beauty of the internet (as they have for the better part of a decade). They cover topics from sleeping on a mattress beside your grandmother during Hurricane Sandy to visiting your mother’s haunted playground in Hong Kong; and from avoiding self-promotion on social media to coming of age while writing a memoir.

Resisting the Path of Least Resistance: An Interview with Jennifer Egan

April 11, 2019 Interviews

On the Friday of LitFest, Amherst College’s annual literary festival, The Common Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker sat down with Jennifer Egan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, among other accolades, to talk about crime, place, and “timely” writing. This is an edited version of that live interview from March 1, 2019.

Details, Description, and Difference: 11 Questions with Haifa’ Abul-Nadi

February 21, 2019 Interviews

The Common’s summer interns Whitney Bruno, Avery Farmer, and Isabel Meyers corresponded via email with Haifa’ Abul-Nadi, Issue 15 contributor, about Arabic and English authors, the use of details in evoking emotion, and the power of writing in translation. Abul-Nadi’s short story, “Propositions,” was featured in The Common’s Issue 15 portfolio, ‘Arabic Stories from Jordan.’

TC Interns: What writers and works are you most excited about at the moment?

Haifa’ Abul-Nadi: I am currently reading Eduardo Galeano’s “Voices of Time: A Life in Stories.”

Multiple Geographies: an Interview with Helen Benedict

February 4, 2019 Interviews

MELODY NIXON interviews HELEN BENEDICT

Helen Benedict is the author of seven novels and five works of nonfiction. A professor of journalism at Columbia University, Benedict spends her time between New York City and upstate New York, where her latest novel, Wolf Season, is set—though the characters’ lives encompass Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the US. Wolf Seasonwas selected as a 2018 Great Group Read by the Women’s National Book Association.

As the seasons changed from fall to winter, Melody Nixon spoke with Benedict about her newest book, the “effects of war on the human heart,” Benedict’s path to social justice, and the way forward with the crisis of tolerance.

Ask a Local: Mara Pastor, Ponce, Puerto Rico

January 31, 2019 Interviews

Answers appear first in Spanish, and next in English translation.

Your name: Mara Pastor

Current city or town: Ponce, Puerto Rico

How long have you lived here: Desde enero del 2016. / Since January 2016.

Three words to describe the climate: Caluroso. Húmedo. Mucho. / Hot. Humid. Very.

Intuitive Nonfiction: An Interview with Courtney Kersten

January 14, 2019 Interviews

THAÏS MILLER INTERVIEWS COURTNEY KERSTEN

Courtney Kersten’s work been featured in Brevity, The Normal School, River Teeth, Hotel Amerika, DIAGRAM, The Sonora Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin Press published her debut memoir, Daughter in Retrograde.

Thaïs Miller met with Kersten on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz, where they are both pursuing PhDs in Literature with a Creative/Critical Writing Concentration. Astrology plays a large role in Kersten’s memoir, so they decided to conduct the interview after a tarot card reading.

Discrete Brain Containers: An Interview with Rita Bullwinkel

December 3, 2018 Interviews

HILARY LEICHTER interviews RITA BULLWINKEL

Rita Bullwinkel is the author of the story collection Belly Up (A Strange Object). Her writing has been published in Tin House, Conjunctions, BOMB, Vice, NOON, and Guernica. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Hawthornden Castle, and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. She is an Editor at Large for McSweeney’s, and lives in San Francisco.

Several years ago, when Rita Bullwinkel left New York City for the West Coast, Hilary Leichter went to her bon voyage party, for which Bullwinkel had purchased and reheated 100 pork buns. They did not have any pork buns on hand for this interview, but talked quite a bit over email about what fills their bellies, both literally and literarily.

Rule-Breaking is a Conscious Decision: an Interview with Willie Perdomo

November 12, 2018 Interviews

LISA M. MARTINEZ interviews WILLIE PERDOMO

Poet Willie Perdomo at his home in Exeter, NH
Daffys and Paperwhites

Willie Perdomo is a Puerto Rican poet and storyteller. He is the author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (a 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist), Smoking Lovely (winner of the 2004 PEN Open Book Award), and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (a Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award Finalist). Perdomo is currently an English instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy. His latest collection, The Crazy Bunch, is forthcoming in 2019, and his poems Breaking Night, They Won’t Find Us in Books, and We Used to Call it Puerto Rican Rain are published in Issue No.16 of The Common.

Via email, Lisa M. Martinez recently spoke to Perdomo about what it’s like to write about his former home, New York City, where much of his inspiration still lies. Perdomo discusses his relationship with that city, communication with ghosts, and the power memory has to transport us to a “gone place.”

Books Can Help Us Feel Seen: an interview with Crystal Hana Kim

October 8, 2018 Interviews

MELODY NIXON interviews CRYSTAL HANA KIM

Crystal Hana Kim’s If You Leave Me is a poignant, lucidly written intergenerational story that will leave you aching. The novel takes a clear-eyed look at the ways adults can end up with the lives we didn’t think we would have—how we deal with the mismatch between dream and reality determines our fate.

Above the Clouds: An Interview with Chandrahas Choudhury

September 17, 2018 Interviews

NEHA KIRPAL interviews CHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY

Chandrahas Choudhury is a novelist and columnist based in New Delhi. His first novel Arzee the Dwarf was shortlisted for the Commonwealth First Book Prize and chosen by World Literature Today as one of “60 Essential English-Language Works of Modern Indian Literature.” Choudhury is also the editor of India: A Traveler’s Literary Companion.

Released by Simon & Schuster this year, Clouds is Choudhury’s second novel. While fictional, the book weaves in topical themes of religion, democracy, and politics in India.

Via email, Neha Kirpal recently spoke with Choudhury about the people and places that influenced Clouds’ narrative and characters, his obsession with clouds, and a recent mango trail he undertook across the subcontinent.

All posts tagged: Interviews

“I Hope I’m Not a Moth”: Lindsay Wong on Coming of Age Through Memoir

Resisting the Path of Least Resistance: An Interview with Jennifer Egan

Details, Description, and Difference: 11 Questions with Haifa’ Abul-Nadi

Multiple Geographies: an Interview with Helen Benedict

Ask a Local: Mara Pastor, Ponce, Puerto Rico

Intuitive Nonfiction: An Interview with Courtney Kersten

Discrete Brain Containers: An Interview with Rita Bullwinkel

Rule-Breaking is a Conscious Decision: an Interview with Willie Perdomo

Books Can Help Us Feel Seen: an interview with Crystal Hana Kim

Above the Clouds: An Interview with Chandrahas Choudhury

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