Interviews

Reyumeh Ejue Interviewed by Yolanda Kwadey What prompted you to write “Natives”? I promise not to let this response get too longwinded because it’s a favorite chew-bone of mine, haha! I’m from Nigeria, but I now live in the US. When I was in Nigeria, I couldn’t wait to leave, just like other people my […]

Ernest Hilbert Interviewed by Chloe Cook and Taylor Light “Swimming South Off Key West” and “Unruled” exhibit a subtle and pleasant attention to sound, especially with internal rhyme. How do you employ prosody in your work? Do you actively reach for the rhymes, or do they subconsciously make their way into your poems? The sound […]

Brett Hymel Jr. Interviewed by Albertine Clarke In “Sweepstakes,” you have two ostensibly extraterrestrial characters, Glorp and Thoraxis. One of the things that interests me the most about this story is the role of the extraterrestrial, both within Dean’s internal world and outside of it. To phrase it as simply as I can—in writing, what […]

Piotr Florczyk Interviewed by Jonathan Wolf You’ve said that your earliest poems (“doodles of thought and emotion”) arrived shortly after you moved from Kraków to California. What can you say about the urge to write? Was there any initial, galvanizing experience that set you chattering? And at what point—and how—did writing become more than a […]

Jehanne Dubrow Interviewed by Taylor Johnson “Dear Geryon—,” “Dear Glass—,” “Dear Camera—,” and “Dear Cat’s Eye Marble—” all embody the form of a right-aligned sonnet. Could you share a little bit about how you employed form and formal structures when crafting these poems? How did the writing process shape or reflect their content? These four […]

Nicholas Friedman Interviewed by Chloe Cook Could we begin with location? “Ampersand,” like other poems in your collection Petty Theft, is grounded in the Northeast where you currently live. (For example, “Cozy Cottages…” is set in Cape Cod.) What is your connection to the Northeast, and how does regionality inform your work? I appreciate the […]

Carol Moldaw Interviewed by Olivia Burnett Your website bio describes you as an “American lyric poet.” What draws you to writing lyric poetry, and how do you see yourself engaging with the lyric tradition? Lyric poetry draws me to it by its crystalline beauty, by the way it can be a sound chamber, a still […]

Erin O’Luanaigh Interviewed by Gregory Calabro and Peter Vertacnik Could we start by hearing a little bit about the importance of form in these poems—especially that of “Salomé” given how its shape deviates from a “typical” sonnet (though we’d love to hear about any of the other five as well). “Salomé” is an odd one, […]

Wayne Miller Interviewed by Lupita Eyde-Tucker Let’s start with the first poem, which is called “American Domestic.” That title calls up a tradition of poems that talk about American domesticity, whatever that might be. What does that mean to you? And how do you think this poem plays into that tradition? I guess I was […]

Mary O’Donoghue Interviewed by Patrick Duane The story, “Late Style,” happens on Zoom. There isn’t a strict setting or place. When did you start writing this story? I started it four years ago, and its early moves predate the online life of the pandemic. All that time ago, the story started exactly where we enter […]

Declan Ryan Interviewed by Will Carpenter and Edward Sambrano ES: Declan, thanks again for meeting with us today. So, the first question we have for you concerns the fact that you seem to be about equally well-known for your reviews and your essays as for your poetry. I want to ask: do you find that […]

Jennifer Moxley Interviewed by Jason Gordy Walker Your poem “1900” opens with “[a]n old cuss in a MAGA mask.” As the poem progresses, you touch upon the speaker’s personal history, which seems at odds with the political climate(s) it references. I also found the grandmother’s history to be especially moving. During your drafting process, did […]

Laurence O’Dwyer Interviewed by Janice Whang One of the primary pleasures of this essay was how it obsessed over and revered the “back-end” processes and tools of creating, challenging notions of labor and treasure. This essay is a polished “front-end” product that the reader gets to enjoy. Could you speak on one of the mundane, […]

Natanya Biskar Interviewed by Payal Nagpal You write about the independent school your narrator works at with a great deal of fondness and a touch of cynicism. I was wondering how your own experience working at independent schools influences your writing—your experiences have obviously served as fodder for some great content, but beyond that, has […]

Sylvie Baumgartel’s essay “Fat Man and Little Boy,” originally published in Subtropics Issue 32, has been selected by Vivian Gornick for Best American Essays 2023.

Matthew Buckley Smith Interviewed by Ashley Kim “The Octonauts” and “The Quick” both have fairly short lines that reminded me of imagistic William Carlos Williams lines. Each line carries the right amount of weight. When writing, how do you go about striking that balance on a line level? Both of those poems were originally written […]

Scott Bailey Interviewed by Sarina Redzinski The first thing that struck me about “Blue Moon” was its merging of our “human world” with the natural world. For instance, the anthropomorphism of the animals provides the emotional arc of the poem. I found this a useful lens through which we could chart the speaker’s free-associating thought […]

Wynne Hungerford Interviewed by Savannah Horton The narrator in your story, “Sacred Window Exhale,” is a former guest and current employee at an alternative medicinal retreat that spans the realms of the real and surreal. Could you explain a bit about how you developed this backdrop and whether you began with the environment or its […]

Vix Gutierrez Interviewed by Timothy Schirmer In your essay, Dark Sky City, you recount a violent attack that you and your boyfriend suffered late one evening while crossing the street in your hometown, Flagstaff, Arizona. You use the second person perspective to strap the reader in for an immersive experience. In a technical sense, it has always seemed […]

Elisa Guidotti Interviewed by Sarina Redzinski So first I wanted to start with a little bit about your background. You’re from Italy, but you live in Germany and “The Drama Club” is written in English. How did you come to decide to write in English, and would you say your Italian upbringing still influences your […]

Daisy Fried Interviewed by Kayla Beth Moore You’ve got two very different laundry poems in this issue. How would you describe the role of domestic labor in each of these pieces? Is it background music, the thing that’s happening while the speaker explores another domain in her mind, or is it more intrinsic to the […]

Kevin Wilson Interviewed by John Bolen How did you come to name the antagonist of the story John F. Kennedy in the first place? It was mostly an accident. A boy who antagonized me in high school was named after a different US president, and I used that name in the first draft and then […]

Cameron Thomas Snyder Interviewed by Angela Bell   You’re so successful at making “Houses of the Holy” feel rooted in place and time. What’s your real-life relationship to the setting? Did you grow up in Kansas?  I sort of grew up all over the place. I was born in San Antonio, moved around Texas, and […]

Jana Prikryl Interviewed by Stephen de Búrca Something that stands out in your five “Anonymous” pieces is how careful and precise the speaker is in establishing the scene for the reader, as if to avoid affecting the scenes. Had you a particular series of photographs in mind while writing the five poems? What was the […]

Tom Whalen Interviewed by Mitchell Galloway Walser’s short fictions are often difficult to classify. You submitted “Rain” as a poetry translation, but we decided to accept it as fiction. What about this piece lends itself to be more a piece of poetry than prose? “Rain” is prose, yes, but perhaps it’s more poem than story, […]

INTERVIEWS Sarah Edwards Interviewed by Jackson Armstrong Your story “Dead Dog” has deliberation and grace (and a lot of humor). To borrow an adjective from it, it is, in some ways, almost biblical. How conscious were you of the tone of the story, and perhaps the balance, during the process of writing it? That’s nice […]

Interviews Richard O’Brien Interviewed by Hannah Whiteman One of the things that drew me to “Closed Doors” was the personality that every location in the poem seemed to possess. It seemed (for lack of a better word) real. Does this poem draw heavily on your own experiences? If so, how do you balance that autobiographical strain with […]

Interviews Josh Russell Interviewed by Earnest Buck I was hoping to do a shorter interview that focused on some of the themes in “Grownups” that resonated with me. I hope this isn’t too much to share, but I was caretaker to my wife when she was receiving treatment for breast cancer and I found this […]

Interviews Mira Rosenthal Interviewed by Stephanie Maniaci In another interview, you discuss the “cooperative” nature of writing. With whom are you cooperating right now? Which old and new writers are in your head?

Interviews Emily Flouton Interviewed by Gardner Mounce Let’s start off with a hardball question. When did you first start watching The Bachelor?