Blog / 10 Questions

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...

10 Questions for Jennifer Kwon Dobbs

January 29, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

While Professor Jeong explains a poet

should work with farmers to write of harvest,

you recall 195 kilometers away Professor Kim

said there’s no poetry in the north.
—from “Northern Korea Postcard”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
As a child growing up in Oklahoma, I developed an ear for prosody by reading Best Loved Poems of the American People, an anthology tucked in between my mother’s cosmetology textbooks. Later, on a Tandy 2000 Radio Shack computer, I tried my hand at imitating what I read in that anthology. But my first serious poem was “Terms for Adoption,” a poem in two voices braiding and juxtaposing the...

10 Questions for Alicia Upano

January 25, 2019 - By Abby MacGregor

“She is a beacon in the dark night, dressed from nape to heel in white. Standing at the threshold, she is a study in contrasts: her black hair blunt against her chin, the ivory of piano keys, while her red lips take shape to mouth the name of a friend inside. The bar is closed and it’s well past curfew. It is January 1942. A few miles west, the Pearl Harbor shipyard remains aglow with destruction. Battleships will burn for months.”
—from “Ada, After the Bomb”, Winter 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 4)
 

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.

I made a book in first grade with construction paper and that felt like magic. My father said, around this time, that I would cross into oncoming traffic with...