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Catching up with Poetry Prize Winner Purvi Shah

October 8, 2024 | blog, interviews
Her most recent book, Miracle Marks (Northwestern UP, 2019), investigates gender violence and sacred survivals. Her prize-winning debut, Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), plumbs migration and loss. With Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive public art like Missed Fortunes, a community healing archive which documented pandemic rituals through poetry & visual art prints. Purvi relishes sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice. SP: Throughout the piece you make use...

Catching Up with 2024 Nonfiction Prize Winner Max Pasakorn

October 8, 2024 | blog, interviews
Max Pasakorn (he/she/they) is a queer writer of creative nonfiction and poetry. A Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Lambda Literary Retreat alum, Max has roots in Singapore, Thailand and the United States. Max is the author of creative nonfiction chapbook A Study in Our Selves (Neon Hemlock Press). Read Max’s other work in Split Lip Magazine,...

Catching up with 2024 Fiction Prize Winner Aelita Parker  

October 8, 2024 | blog, news
Aelita Parker is a Japanese and Irish American writer based in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and her BA in psychology, religious studies, and Japanese from the University of Pennsylvania. Her short fiction, “Maybe a Lion” can be read in the 9th issue of the Vassar Review. She is currently...

An Interview with Afabwaje Kurian, author of Before the Mango Ripens

September 19, 2024 | blog, interviews
Having been born in the United States and raised in a family of immigrants, I (Anik Nalbandian, MFA ’26) was excited to read and navigate the perspectives and paths represented in Afabwaje Kurian’s Before the Mango Ripens. This book braids the experience of native Nigerians with American missionaries to tell a tale of what it...

An Interview with Iheoma Nwachukwu, author of Japa and Other Stories

September 12, 2024 | blog, interviews
Having lived and grown up in North Charleston, South Carolina, I (Mary McCall, MFA ’26) was intrigued to read and traverse the many perspectives represented in Iheoma Nwachukwu’s Japa and Other Stories. This short fiction collection interweaves both stories of the Nigerian experience and immigration with the simultaneously individual and universal tale of what it...

An Interview with Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn, author of Loose of Earth

April 12, 2024 | blog, interviews
Having grown up in the rural Bible Belt of the South as a homeschooler, I (Suz Guthmann, MFA ’25) connected deeply with Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn’s memoir, Loose of Earth. Recounting her childhood in Lubbock, Texas, Blackburn brings to the light her experience of faith healings, forever chemicals, and religiously driven homeschooling. At its core, Loose...

Demand To Be Heard: A Review of Halle Hill's Good Women

March 14, 2024 | blog, book reviews
Good Women, the debut collection of stories from Halle Hill, follows the intimate lives of Black, southern women as they navigate the socially and politically fraught waters of what it means to be, as the title suggests, “good” women.

An Interview with Chachi Hauser, author of It’s fun to be a person I don’t know

October 31, 2023 | blog, interviews
Being a Disney enthusiast and once a Cast Member at Walt Disney World, Campbell Sullivan (MFA ’24) was overjoyed to learn that this book existed. A book of personal creative nonfiction essays that interweave stories of love, loss, “disneyfication,” familial history, legacy, gender identity, place, and a personal tie to one of the founders of the Disney Corporation, It’s fun to be a person I don’t know sits with the reader long after the book is closed.

Catching Up with 2023 Fiction Prize Winner Mengyin Lin

October 26, 2023 | blog, interviews
Born and raised in Beijing, Mengyin Lin is a Chinese writer living in the U.S. Mandarin is her mother tongue and she writes in English as her second language. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College where she won the Himan Brown Award and a BFA in Film from New York University. Her...

Catching Up with 2023 Nonfiction Prize Winner Donna Steiner

October 26, 2023 | blog, interviews
Donna Steiner’s poetry chapbook, Part Horror, Part Magic, Holy Ourselves, was published by Thornwillow Press. Lost and Found in Ocean County, New Jersey, a chapbook of essays, was published by Tolsun Books, and Elements, a chapbook of essays, was released by Sweet Publications. Other work has been published in literary journals including The Sun, River Teeth, Radar Poetry, Under the Gum...

Catching Up With 2023 Poetry Prize Winner Lance Larsen

October 26, 2023 | blog, interviews
Lance Larsen’s most recent poetry collection is What the Body Knows (Tampa 2018). His poems have appeared in Southern Review, APR, River Styx, Ploughshares, Poetry, New York Review of Books, Best American Poetry 2009, and elsewhere. His awards include a Pushcart Prize and an NEA fellowship. He teaches at BYU and fools around with aphorisms: “Gesundheit!-as...

Kangkang Kovacs Interviews Shubha Sunder, author of Boomtown Girl

April 4, 2023 | blog, interviews
KK: Almost every story in this collection happens in Bangalore, and several stories deal with change. As a reader, I often get a sense of confusion and hurt juxtaposed with nostalgia. Tell us a little more about how you feel about Bangalore, its development, and the clash of generations as the writer. SS: I was...