Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Deesha Philyaw

February 7, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

The man who is about to ask you to marry him grabs the check from the little tin tray and slides the three fortune cookies toward you.
"All yours," he says.
     You grin and he grins back. Three years together, and you have your rituals, your routines. When you have pizza, he eats the crusts you leave behind; when you have Chinese, you claim the fortune cookies he thinks are silly. 
     You crack open the first cookie and read the fortune inside. It says, A decade from now, the man sitting across from you is going to choke you. 
     You squint at the tiny piece of paper and read it again. Then you glance up at the man sitting across from you, the man you plan to spend the rest of your...

Naming Stars: An Interview with Andrés N. Ordorica

January 23, 2024 - By J Brooke

As someone who has dealt with immense loss and lives with long-term grief, I cannot say I relish books exploring the topic. Five years after losing our twenty-four-year-old trans son, I am less triggered by storylines dealing with dying young, than I am bored by them. My grief, the steady rhythmic bassline of my days, thankfully offers no surprises; the gray ache never evaporates, but it also rarely spikes. Articles, poems, and books abound painting bright lights extinguished prematurely. And while often beautiful examples of writing, these works do little to color in my gray. Those living with grief probably know what I’m referring to—those who don’t, consider yourselves lucky. Reading ...

10 Questions for Aliyeh Ataei

January 17, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

She was considered beautiful in the eyes of the common man, but she believed her womanly seduction outweighed her beauty. Yet she would feel guilty as soon as she turned on her charm. First she would pretend she had done nothing wrong, but then she would be gripped by the cardinal sin of being a woman, seeing herself as the prime suspect in all the romantic entanglements in her life. As soon as she was arrested at her father-in-law's in Birjand, the first and most definitive thing she uttered were the words "I am innocent." 
—from "Ten Minutes," Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first story I ever wrote was about three men sitting down to play cards, with a...

Woman:Revisited, A Reading

January 16, 2024 - By Staff

To celebrate the launch of our Woman:Revisited, an issue looking at womanhood and femininity 50 years after MR first published an issue on the theme, we hosted a reading with editor Shailja Patel and Zoe Tuck, and contributors Carole DeSanti and Kayhan Irani.

10 Questions for Sandra Waters

January 8, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Much of what was happening around the world remained unknown to most people. The vast majority didn't know anything about it or couldn't decode the signs of this revolution. In the big cites, the fuses had been lit, and we could smell the sparks coming from Vietnam, the Prague Spring, Bolivia, Chicago, and Woodstock. I sensed it, but nothing and no one had clearly communicated these things to me. You could feel it in the air, but there was no verbal confirmation. 
—from "Coming Out," Volume 64, Issue 4 (Winter 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
About twenty-five years ago I started translating Laura Mancinelli’s I dodici abati di Challant (1981), an Agatha Christie-inspired murder...