Blog / 10 Questions

10 Questions for Sarah E. Vaughn

March 18, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

Some people speak of living through a climate crisis. Others simply go about their business as if nothing is happening. Both groups of people have more in common than they would let on, and the climate crisis might well inspire either to tell stories about events they would prefer to never experience again.
—from "On Watermarks and Fakes," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In elementary school every year we were assigned to write short fiction accompanied with illustrations. It was a tall order then, and would still be for me now. I remember two of the stories I wrote. One was about a girl losing her pet parrot and the other was about a girl with stage freight. While it was very...

10 Questions for Lisa Olstein

March 15, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

In one chemical future, the clouds themselves will be extinct, so we try to hold them in mind as they float by casting their individual storm-sized shadows across the animals across the plains.
—from "Glacier Haibun," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started writing in high school, under the influence of a passionate tenth grade English teacher whose love of literature was palpable. The first poem I can remember writing was about a horse named Lindy who wanted to run fast as she was asked to by her rider, but also wanted to run away. I remember reading it over the phone to my friend Claire, telling her it'd been published in The New Yorker, the only...

10 Questions for Xavier Navarro Aquino

March 10, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

Abuela doesn’t want to die. She’s still holding on to life for the stubbornness of it. And on one of the worst days to head down the mountainside, Ma and Pa decided to drag Diego and me to see her.
—from "A Death Foretold," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote a lot of bad love poetry in my adolescence. My first piece of fiction came much later. It was a terribly written story about a priest and his friend in some made-up town in Ohio. Mind you I’d never been or known a thing about that state. If I recall correctly, the priest slept with his friend’s wife. After writing that trash, I’d like to think the only way to go is up.  

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10 Questions for Brian Turner

February 16, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

Here is a portion of the silence we walk upon, where the stony shore of the Atlantic curls breakers of salt onto a shelf of the lithospheric dead. At our feet, ammonites in their obsidian-colored whorls.
—from "The Jurassic Coast," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
As a child, I wrote a poem about the fog in winter, known as Tule fog in the San Joaquin Valley. The poem is blurry in memory, but it was a persona poem from the point of view of the fog itself. I wouldn’t have known what a persona poem was at the time, but the alive-ness of the world was very present in the poem—as the fog had its own intentions, its own volition, with a mood that lingers with me...

10 Questions for Vanessa Place

February 9, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

August besieged California with a heat
unseen in generations.
I watched as towering plumes of smoke
billowed from distant hills in all directions
and air tankers crisscrossed the skies.
—from "The Fire Sermon," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Stendiamo un velo pietoso.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Influence is a conceit, best left to the conceited. There are writers and works I admire, that did and do inspire, but I don’t know if they left thumbprints so much as the scent of possibility. Possibility is better than genealogy, don’t you think?

What other professions...