Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Zohra Saed

January 14, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

Jalal Abad, once Adinapour,
is the mythic city of shine—
the whim of a Mughal King, Jalaludin Akbar,
known for his fondness for citrus and fountains.
—from “Jalalabad Will Never B JBAD,” from Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was a child, I wrote mini stories on the blank back pages of books I took out from my elementary school library. I didn’t sign my name. Once, I got bold and drew some pictures to go with the stories. These were stories inspired by the Afghan and Uzbek fairy tales my father told me. I got in trouble by my second grade teacher and I got a kind of detention, a gentle one, for vandalizing school property. When I got home, my...

10 Questions for Brandon Shimoda

January 11, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

"The first time I visited Domanju, I was ten. I remember a river, black blue and green. I remember a large bell, hanging inside of what looked like the cap of the earth’s largest mushroom. I remember a statue shaped like a prototypical squid. I remember, on top of the squid, another statue, a young girl, holding above her head, as if in offering to the sky, an enormous crane. I remember, on the sidewalk above the river, a young girl and boy, not statues, living, ribbons of every color unraveling from their arms, gathering in colorful piles on the ground."—from “Domanju,” from Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote a short story when I was six. Here it is in its...

10 Questions for Jane Wong

January 8, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

I told the earth to settle back            
            down, to lay deep in its mud
armchair, to soften the static            

from its flaring mouth.
            Can we slow down, tender
those we miss? —from 'A Cosmology," from Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I can’t remember the storyline, but when I was in the fifth grade, I wrote a serial short story about a bus driver. I remember passing a new chapter to some friends in...

10 Questions for Harry Harootunian

January 4, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

"When I was younger I had a recurring dream of walking in the ruins of Ani. Ani was a city of the Bagratid Kingdom in eastern Anatolia (“Higher Armenia”). It had been a powerful fortress as early as the third century, but by the ninth century Ani became the center of a large kingdom that covered a good part of the region. It was known for its architectural splendors and, as a city of 1,001 churches with a population estimated to be at least 100,000, larger than any Medieval European city at the time, it stood at the crossroads of several trade routes between east and west."  —from “In the Ruins of Ani,” Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Since I’m a...

10 Questions for Arhm Choi Wild

January 2, 2019 - By Emily Wojcik

"A woman walks in alone after hours, all the machines quiet, though she can’t hate them today. The dry-cleaning tank is square and tall so she must stand on tip-toes to run her cracked hands along the top, muttering old Korean in neat strands of sound. A piece of skin flakes off when she rubs the metal of the shirt press." —from “13^th Anniversary,” in Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first pieces I wrote was about my mother, in the same dry cleaners that is featured in “13^th Anniversary”. I wanted a way to showcase how hard she worked, as a single mother, as a small business owner of a grueling industry, and as an immigrant...