Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Shelley Wong

February 13, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

Set the dove free and try
to call it back within a year.
How do you love a bird so much
you cage it? If I were that bird
I’d sing all day. With the right song,
I’ll dance my bones down.
—from “My Therapist Asks If I would Be Happier If I Were Straight”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In my junior year of college, I wrote a Frank O’Hara imitation after reading “The Day Lady Died.” It involved traveling by train en route to a beloved. I was thrilled by the line break “I couldn’t make out / the voices coming through the train.”

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you...

10 Questions for Sarah Audsley

February 11, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

Early mornings, I waited for the school bus, tiny hands clasping
thin backpack straps, lunch inside a crinkled brown paper bag, tacky

white fluff & peanut butter stuck to the cheap Ziploc. The bus arrived
at 7:05 a.m. The yellow morning light was a warm puddle — soft, I could

touch it. —from “It Was a Yellow Light”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started writing poetry in my childhood bedroom in the log cabin-house my father built. I remember making things up on the page and writing letters to my imagined biological parents in my pink marbled journal. In high school, I wrote poems, looking back on it now, as a way to process my parents’...

10 Questions for Diana Khoi Nguyen

February 8, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

There you stood, eye to the photograph looking at the
place you’re in without you. Am I feeling elegiac
or algebraic again. A violence from within protects
from a violence without.
—from “On Memorial”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I’m not sure if this question is referring to first piece of all time—but I’ll respond as if it were. Third grade—a poem about clouds, while I sat in the middle of the soccer field. There were dandelions beneath my hands when they grazed the earth, and the sun seemed softer than it does these days.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
An inexhaustive...

10 Questions for Charles Yu

February 4, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

“Dear Applicant,

We appreciate your interest in our supergroup and the time you’ve invested in applying for the Associate Hero opening.
While we acknowledge that your abilities as 'The Outsider' (i.e., heightened powers of perception, an ability to subtly blend in with your surroundings) could be assets to our organization, at the current time our invisibility needs have been met.
On behalf of everyone here, thank you for your interest in our organization. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
THE FANTASTIC FOUR”
—from “RE: Your Recent Application to Our Group”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of...

10 Questions for Marina Budhos

January 30, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

“They came in droves.

All through the cool season, from October through April, the shadow people arrived at the depot. First the locomotive groaned to a stop at Howrah Station in Calcutta, its grooved wheels and iron pistons coated in dust from the long trip across the plains of northern India. A parade of weary figures made their way down the metal steps, the men rail-thin and bandy-legged, tattered shawls crossed over their shoulders, the women clutching their worn bundles, as they were herded into little dinghies that went bobbing down the Hooghly River.”
—from Sweetness, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, V...