Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Lauren Camp

June 22, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Right when the dissector picks up the eye, I notice the sun
has already found a place to bruise with light.

With slight pressure, she shifts the pink flesh and muscle.
That eye can't see to ask its paths. Or fact its ransom.
—from "Blind Spot," Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The one that comes to mind is my poem, “Slow.” It’s four quatrains and perhaps the only one of my poems I have fully memorized. The poem circles around the beauty of New Mexico, but also the dangers. A bark beetle blight had devastated a massive number of piñon trees here in the high desert. The trees were vulnerable to the infestation because of drought. Ironically, I...

10 Questions for May Huang

June 20, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

In the same spot where Father died, the dead body of a deer lay prostrate in the rain. Raindrops collected on the ground, flowing like a river. Invisible to the naked eye, electricity trickled into the moist soil as if through the veins of leaves, electrons packed closely together. Micro-organisms gnawed away quietly, exchanging trace elements, absorbing the weaker monomers to form new substances, or nutrients for the plants and soil.
—from "Raining Zebra Finches" by Chiou Charng-Ting, Translated by May Huang, Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I translated Ya Hsien’s poem “Chicago” as an undergrad studying abroad in Chicago, reading and learning about the...

10 Questions for Alexa Doran

June 15, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

For every year you aren't a tongue away:

America clogs. I ice the White
Zin, choose a filter, call this mood.

Not to say I'm a hunter
but I refuse to see the syllables
which luck your name
—from "A Toast to the Narcissist's Exit," Volume 64, Issue 2 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I’m thinking of the first poem I had published, called “Every Poet is a Partition; Every Love is a Sea” published in Ekphrasis magazine. This poem was based on the work of Jason deCaires Taylor, a British sculptor who created the first underwater sculpture park, and has since built several underwater museums and parks, all of which feature “living...

2023 Anne Halley Prize Reading

May 31, 2023 - By

View a recording of our 2023 Anne Halley Poetry Prize Reading with winner Megan Pinto!

10 Questions for Cherry Lou Sy

May 25, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Maria slinked in corners and stood next to objects that did not move, pretending that she was an object. She held on to her growing belly. It wouldn't stop moving, wriggling like a worm exposed to the sun. She tried to wear bigger clothes, pretending that nothing was happening in the area of her stomach, but still, it would not stop.
—from "The Nameless," Vol. 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of my earliest memories of writing a piece of fiction was in fifth grade. I was a student in a small school in the Philippines where the principal was also my fifth grade English teacher. I don’t recall now what the prompt was, but I remember writing about the travels of an old galleon...