Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Stephen Graham Jones

March 1, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

This is the story of when I stopped trusting people.

I'm seventeen, living the life. Work all day, drink all night, never worrying about bills or tomorrow. The songs I was listening to were my script. We've all been there; I don't need to go into it. What happened, though, was that one bleary bright morning I run into a guy in a parking lot who tells me somebody I know got raped last night, maybe at a house I'd been in for a few minutes.
—from "The Guy with the Name," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Called “The Gift.” I wrote it when I was nineteen, sitting in an ICU for three days. It’s a girl waking up in the ICU after a car crash in...

10 Questions for Esther Belin

February 26, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Hosteen dibé bitsą́ą́' yiyą́ą́—hey ya
Hosteen dibé bitsą́ą́' yiyą́ą́—hey ya
Hosteen dibé bitsą́ą́' yiyą́ą́—hey ya
Hosteen dibé bitsą́ą́' yiyą́ą́—hey ya
—from "Sonnet 1," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I took a creative writing class in high school. I wrote a poem about my father. It was a short image poem. My teacher was impressed. She entered it in a contest. I did not win the contest but I did receive recognition. I did not think much about creative writing at the time but it was a special feat for me because the poem honored my father.

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

10 Questions for Carter Meland

February 19, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

On December 17, 2019, Lou Reed suspended his wild walk with death long enough to show me the cover art for the vinyl version of the extended single he had just recorded, a seventeen-minute-and-twenty-nine-secon rager called "Koy A'hoga." The only image I have from this dream is the cover with Lou's thumb clasping on the lower right corner.
—from "Crossing Cuyahoga," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Fifth grade. It was an English class back in the 70s, back when we weren’t woke enough to call it language arts. We had to write a piece of fiction and I wrote something about an amazing invention that could do some sort of amazing thing. So amazing I can’t...

10 Questions for Diane Wilson

February 16, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

I dreamed my mother called my name in a voice that ached with longing. I dreamed the acrid smoke of a fire stung my eyes, blurred the edges of the woman who held a deer antler with both hands as she pulled on a smoldering block of damp wood. The flames were the only light in a darkness so complete the trees had disappeared.
—from The Seed Keeper, Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
After a few years dabbling in freelance journalism, the first “real” piece I wrote was a story my mother had shared with me when I was a teenager, at an age when I was grappling with the usual teenage angst. She had told me that when she was 14, and living at the Holy Rosary Mission School on...

10 Questions for Bojan Louis

February 11, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

Mouth full of raven's bones, eyes black beaks, on our exhausted bellies
we umbilicus to Earth. .54 mm bullets light up our backs, exit our bellies

Pre-K: St. Michaels, AZ. Nuns, black scapular and white cowl, shunt
milk-blood prayers down constricted throats; gurgling cramped bellies.
—from "Ghazal VI," Volume 61, Issue 4

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Something that initially comes to mind is a poem I wrote in high school about payphones changing from 25 cents to 35 five cents. I think I was trying to be funny or ironic, but the piece was sort of long with a rhymey and ecstatic cadence, unmetered lines. I have no idea what other themes or images it possessed. It’s probably on a three-...