Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Joshua Garcia

July 28, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

My therapist asks me why I think I always return to lack,
and it may or may not be related, but it's been on my mind,
so I finally tell him I might have been assaulted by my doctor.
—from "Poem with Starbucks and Kissing and Trees", Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I received a very generous rejection at age 12 from an unnecessarily kind editor at The New Yorker who must have understood that he was responding to a child. I only remember that the story had something to do with my dad, a school bus, and a sunset. One of the first poems I wrote that I took seriously as an adult, however, was “Wet Dream,” which is about memory and beginning to...

10 Questions for Amanda Hawkins

July 26, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

At first the men thought it was a store of foggy white cum.
I can forgive this mistake-desire can interrupt logic.
—from "Spermaceti", Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In fifth grade I wrote what I now call a feminist version of Pete’s Dragon in verse: A character called Rose befriends a little girl who is going through challenging times and needs a friend. The girl is the narrator and tells of how Rose had to leave to help someone else. I still have the paper.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I believe where we are and how we write—at any point—is a layering effect of the past, but recently? I...

10 Questions for Adrian Matejka

July 21, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Slowest-footed day of the week,
wrong noted & creaking on
the credenza while the other

influencers gossip in the kitchen's
linoleum.
—from "Tuesday Feeling", Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first time I wrote a poem was in March 1994. I remember it so vividly because I was in Bloomington, Indiana walking across a field near campus. I was listening to Miles Davis’s version of “Footprints” and for just a moment, I thought I understood his language of trumpets. I got my notebook out and wrote a draft of a poem called “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” that ended up in my first book 9 years later. That’s one of the...

10 Questions for Bettina Judd

July 19, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

you are falling for someone in hell. which may mean that you are
trying to love in america in there is no guarantee. there is never a guarantee
& yet here is your foot, willfully arched over the edge.
—from "you are falling for someone in hell." Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Ever? I think it was a poem about the moon. I was maybe 5 or 6 years old.  

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Lucille Clifton, absolutely. The body of my grandmother’s unpublished poetry. Toni Morrison’s exacting and mythical language in Beloved for example.

What other professions have you...

10 Questions for Mike White

July 16, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

God sees me
as a bird
sees an airplane

moving at a great
distance.
—from "God Sees Me", Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was in tenth grade I had an English teacher who asked the class on a regular basis to write short stories that would be graded by our classmates (he was getting very close to retirement). Given that an A was guaranteed, there was no academic or creative pressure, and so I’d write outrageous, mock-serious tales designed to amuse my friends. I can’t recall any of the narrative details now, but I’m sure it was the best writing I’d done to that point, and for at least a decade thereafter.

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