INTERVIEWS
2017 Contest: An Interview with Flash Prose Judge Joyelle McSweeney
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of eight books of poems, fiction, drama and essays. Her writing chases an exuberant sound-infused hyperdiction through an array of genres, conventions, personae and forms. Her poetry books include The Red Bird, The...
43.2 Feature: An Interview with Sara Jane Stoner
I could say these poems are “about” how we all have our monsters on the inside and on the outside.
An Interview with Yanara Friedland
I am less of a writer and more grounded in a tradition of chronicler, scribe, archivist; someone who moves between times and their respective archives, lifting and carrying materials across the heavy thresholds of so-called history and space.
2017 Contest: An Interview with Poetry Judge Rachel McKibbens
Rachel McKibbens is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of Pink Elephant, Into the Dark & Emptying Field and blud. She founded The Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat, the only annual writing retreat exclusively for women of color,...
2017 Contest: A Conversation with Nonfiction Judge Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released by Button Poetry in 2016. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, is...
2017 Contest: An Interview with Fiction Judge Nicola Griffith
Nicola Griffith, a dual UK/US citizen, is the author of six novels (most recently Hild), a few short stories, and a memoir. She co-edited the Bending the Landscape anthology series of original short fiction with queer protagonists. These works have won more than...
2016 Contest: An Interview with Poetry Winner Kirsten Ihns
I think humor is, or can be, fundamentally subversive—it’s like irony, but more joyous, for me.
2016 Contest: An Interview with Nonfiction Winner Rocket Caleshu
I see a relation between the provisionality of inhabiting a trans identity and the provisionality of writing as critical practice, and I wanted to convey that in the essay.
2016 Contest: An Interview with Fiction Winner Ava Tomasula y Garcia
I’d been writing “Videoteca” for at least six years, in a notebook in which I collect pretty much everything: accounts of interactions, transcriptions of news reports on the tv, my own diary entries.
43.2 Feature: An Interview with Ron A. Austin
I grew up in the neighborhood explored in “Muscled Clean Out the Dirt.” My grandparents owned small businesses in the city which ended up being gutted and eaten up by urban blight despite their best efforts and hard labor.