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Interviews
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Category: Interviews
Hala Alyan is a licensed clinical psychologist, professor at New York University, and writer. She is the author of the novel Salt Houses (2017), winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Her latest novel, The Arsonists’ City (2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of four award-winning collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019). Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, LitHub, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Following the release of her latest collection, The Moon That Turns You Back (2024), poet and critic Jennifer Lee Tsai spoke to Alyan about the roles of witness, catharsis, and commemoration in her poetry.
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Category: Interviews
Tim Z Hernandez is an American writer, poet, and performer. His first poetry collection Skin Tax (2004) received the 2006 American Book Award and his debut novel Breathing in Dust (2010) was awarded the 2010 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. In 2014, he received the Colorado Book Award for his poetry collection Natural Takeover of Small Things (2013) and the International Latino Book Award for his historical fiction novel, Mañana Means Heaven (2013). Most recently he was recognized for his research on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, the incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name, which is chronicled in Hernandez’s documentary novel All They Will Call You (2017). Hernandez is currently an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s bilingual MFA in creative writing program. Following the publication of his latest collection, Some of the Light: New and Selected Poems (2023), he spoke to our Reviews Editor, Isabelle Baafi, about the role of witness and mindfulness in his work.
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Category: Interviews
Meena Kandasamy is a poet, novelist, activist, and translator from Chennai, India. Her writing aims to deconstruct trauma and violence, while spotlighting the militant resistance against caste, gender, and ethnic oppressions. She is the author of the poetry collections Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017), and Exquisite Cadavers (2019), which have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Hindu Lit Prize. Following the release of Kandasamy’s latest book of translation, The Book of Desire (Galley Beggar, 2023), and in the lead-up to her third poetry collection, Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You (forthcoming with Atlantic Books), poet and editor Sohini Basak met with Kandasamy to discuss the politics of translation and the lexicality of love.
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Online ExclusiveCategory: Interviews
Victoria Chang is the author of The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022), Dear Memory (Milkweed, 2021), and OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), which was named a New York Times Notable Book, a Time Must-Read Book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. Her forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World, will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the lead-up to her new collection, Jennifer Wong sat down with her to discuss how innovations of form and lyricism can bridge the layers of identity and grief.
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Category: Interviews
Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T S Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. Until recently he was Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews (he is now Professor Emeritus), and was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan for twenty-five years. He also works as a jazz musician. Shortly after the launch of his memoir, Toy Fights: A Boyhood (Faber, 2023), he sat down with our Reviews Editor Isabelle Baafi to talk about the influence of music and play on his childhood and poetry.
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Category: Interviews
Will Harris is a London-based writer. His debut collection, RENDANG, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. He co-leads the Southbank Poetry Collective with Vanessa Kisuule, and works in extra care homes in Tower Hamlets as an activity worker. In the lead up to the publication of his second collection, Brother Poem (Granta, 2023), he sat down with our Reviews Editor Isabelle Baafi to talk about writing through absence and memories, both real and imagined.
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Category: Interviews
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer, and artist. Her debut pamphlet, Girl B, was published by the African Poetry Book Fund in 2017. Shortly following the publication of her debut collection, Quiet (Faber & Faber, 2022), she sat down with our Reviews Editor Isabelle Baafi to talk about the complexities of language, and the act of creating spaces for re-imagining and reclaiming.
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Online ExclusiveCategory: Interviews
Mohammed El-Kurd is an award-winning poet, journalist, and activist from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, Palestine. His work has been featured in the Guardian, the Nation, and Al Jazeera English. In September 2021, Mohammed, along with his twin sister Muna, was named one of the ‘The 100 Most Influential People of 2021’ by Time magazine. Rifqa (Haymarket Books, 2021) is his first poetry collection.
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Category: InterviewsSelima and Julia first met in the Ladies toilets on the top floor of City Hall, London. They were there for the National Poetry Competition presentations in 2002, when Selima was part of the judging panel and Julia had been [...]
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Online ExclusiveCategory: InterviewsSohini Basak: Ever since the pandemic broke out, I’ve so often come face to face with the inadequacy of words while grieving or trying to console a loved one. In that context, thank you so much for writing Outgoing Vessel, [...]
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Category: InterviewsTL: Hi Major! I’d like to start off by asking, if poetry is a lamp that is present as we search for truth, what is one truth you keep rediscovering when writing your poems? MJ: One of the great problems [...]
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Shouldn’t we all be quitters?
Dai George
To accompany this exclusive extract from John Ashbery’s Parallel Movement of the Hands, Dai George talks to the book’s editor, Emily Skillings DG: I’d like to start by thanking you, on behalf of all John Ashbery fans, for the wonderful work that you [...] -
…no holds hyena! An interview with Fran Lock
Karolina Ros Olafsdottir
KO: I really loved the poem in the magazine and the energy in it. I was wondering if you could start with talking a little about ‘La Jena di Londra’ that appears in the Spring Issue? FL: I’ll try. This [...] -
Category: InterviewsJennifer Lee Tsai interviews Bhanu Kapil about the trajectory of her career to date JLT: I wonder if I could ask you about when and how you started writing? What is the purpose of writing and who do you feel you are writing [...]
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Category: InterviewsAL: Hi Romalyn. How are you? What’s life like where you are? RA: It has been a tough 2020 for everybody. Lockdown happened when my editor and I were putting the finishing touches to Antiemetic for Homesickness. I continue to work [...]
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Category: InterviewsAL: Hi Rachel. How are you? What poetry has been seeing you through these difficult times? RL: Throughout early-to-mid lockdown I couldn’t read a thing. That’s never happened before. I’ve always found solace in reading. Then I started chain-smoking novels. [...]