Category: Interviews & Excerpts

New Prose Poetry: Excerpts from Girlfriend by Barbara Henning

When my longtime yoga teacher, Genny Kapuler, read what I had written about her, she said, “I feel honored to be one of the beads in your mala, one of your sisters.” I like to think of this book like that, as a poetic prose meditation on my friendships with girls and women. I started…
Josh Denslow & Bradley Sides Talk about Their New Books Super Normal and Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood

Josh Denslow’s Super Normal tells the story of siblings who possess superpowers coming together as they receive devastating news about their mother. Bradley Sides’ Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood explores the southern lives of individuals taking care of pond monsters, running garlic farms, and fighting their dinosaur siblings. With their new books, Denslow and…
Justin Bryant and Alex Miller Discuss White People on Vacation

White People on Vacation is the story about the struggle to live a meaningful life in the era of late-stage capitalism. More specifically, it is about a group of college students (white) who take a vacation (cursed) to Hawaii, which is paid for by their parents (loaded). Everybody has a terrible time in this portrait…
Sneak Preview: “Prologue: Eternal Weimar” from David Leo Rice’s New Novel The Berlin Wall

Europe, 2020. Some claim that the Berlin Wall, once a living entity, is coming back together, its scattered pieces seeking reunion on the far side of history. The European continent trembles on the edge of total war, either in reality or deep in its own feverish imagination. Part present-tense apocalyptic satire and part neo-medieval phantasmagoria,…
“A Sliver of Mirror”: Memory and Imagination in Sejal Shah’s Fiction Collection How to Make Your Mother Cry

I met Sejal Shah in 2016 when I moved to Rochester, New York, to become the executive director of a literary arts organization. Shah was a beloved teacher there. We quickly developed a friendship and we exchanged numerous phone calls and emails on any number of topics, though usually about books and literature. In many ways, Shah’s story…
“RIPE”: An Excerpt from Ross McMeekin’s Short Story Collection Below the Falls

Two climbers in the North Cascades risk their friendship and lives ascending a frozen waterfall. The girlfriend of a famous comedian in Greenwich Village must decide whether she wants to raise a child in the spotlight of fame. A mysterious Bird of Paradise makes daily overtures to an elderly widow in the frigid Midwest. A…
“Bones Blush Brilliant in the Soft Light”: A Conversation with Virgil Suárez

It’s a couple of months to poetry month as I write this. Back when I was a kid poet reading in secret in my bedroom or, later on, rocking it on the Lower East Side, poetry didn’t have a month. Or, if it did, I didn’t know about it. It would have seemed silly to…
“Our Flaws Can Define Our Growth”: An Interview with Jay Halsey by Gina Tron

Jay Halsey’s poems and prose have been published in several online and print journals and nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. He was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, and has lived on the Colorado Front Range for the past seventeen years. His photography has been used as cover art for poetry collections and…
Allison Wyss Interviews Farah Ali about Her Debut Novel The River, The Town

Farah Ali’s The River, The Town is a gorgeous first novel about a Pakistani family navigating poverty, drought, and generational trauma. Farah and I spoke on September 27 about climate disaster around the world, how desperate circumstances lead her characters to make unexpected choices, and the idea that it’s not just food and water that’s…