INTERVIEWS
Interview with a Masthead: Meet the New BWR Editors
Every year, the BWR masthead changes hands. To give our readers and contributors a chance to get to know us a little better, each new editorial team completes an annual interview for our website. We submit questions to each other & answer each other’s questions in turn. Keep reading to learn about which editor would rather kill fiction than marry it, what food our editors absolutely do not want to run out of in the apocalypse, and what part of the editorial process our editors love the most.
“when she does “I very much hope to become some kind of fungus or moss when I die…” An Interview with Mariah Gese, Author of “Mold Vincit Omnia”hit it, she hits it out of the park”: An Interview with Exquisite Armantè, author of “Ulta Receipt”
"I very much hope to become some kind of fungus or moss when I die..." An Interview with Mariah Gese, Author of "Mold Vincit Omnia" Mariah Gese is an artist and writer from a haunted swamp in New York. They received their MFA from Indiana University, where they were...
“that idea of the shimmering moment”: A Conversation with Kelly Lenox, author of “After a Guided Meditation on Self-Confidence”
Kelly Lenox (The Brightest Rock, 2017) writes poetry and prose in Oregon. Her work appears in Poetry Daily, Cold Mountain, RHINO, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, with an MFA from Vermont College...
“new ways of imagining”: An Interview with Writer & Academic Intan Paramaditha
Intan Paramaditha is the author of The Wandering, a novel on the politics of travel in a choose-your-own adventure format, and a feminist horror story collection Apple and Knife. Both were translated from Indonesian to English by Stephen J. Epstein and published by...
“erring on the end of overflowing beauty”: A Discussion with Chigozie Obioma, Author of The Road to the Country
Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were shortlisted for The Booker Prize, making him one of only two novelists to be shortlisted for all their works. They have won about a dozen prizes...
“tentatively eking their way towards hope”: An Interview with Kathryne David Gargano, Author of Pentimenti
Kathryne David Gargano (she/they) is a queer, Jewish writer interested in myth, retellings, art, and religion. They received their PhD in English & Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where they served as the Managing Editor of Cream...
“[A]t the intersection of many roads and seas”: An Interview with Rajiv Mohabir
Poet, memoirist, and translator, Rajiv Mohabir is the author of four books of poetry including Whale Aria (Four Way Books 2023) and Cutlish (Four Way Books 2021) which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Eric Hoffer Medal...
“I wrote a weird, little guy essay”: Sophie Ezzell on Creative Nonfiction, Nostalgia, and Prioritizing Kindness in Art
Sophie Ezzell is a queer Urban Appalachian writer. Her nonfiction has been nominated for multiple Pushcarts and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, River Teeth, Black Warrior Review, New Orleans Review, and others. Sophie received her MFA from Oklahoma State...
“Joy and Some Flailing and Very Low Stakes”: A Conversation with Donika Kelly
DONIKA KELLY is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A recipient of a fellowship from the...
2023 Contest: Interview with Poetry Judge Gary Soto
Gary Soto, born and raised in Fresno, California, is the author of thirteen poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Award and the National Book Award. His prose titles include Living Up the...