“When I teach, my analogy is that fiction is a huge tree while poetry is a bonsai. It’s immensely helpful to toggle between working on different scales. Fiction helps me infuse my poems with narrative. Poetry makes my fiction more deft, descriptive, and concise.”
On Writing Place: An Interview with Inez Tan Read More »
Pittsburgh’s self-styled Premier Poet answers the door in a shimmering, jewel-blue blouse, hair teased into a softer version of a mullet. He’s wearing understated make-up and a mild perfume, something between vanilla and baby powder. On his fingers, rings set with blue jewels catch the early evening light.
Who Is Billie Nardozzi a.k.a (((Rachel)))? Read More »
The thing about identity is, people are always trying to define who you are for you, to tell you what you mean. And we should be interrogating our positions in society, our privilege relative to our oppression, but we should also be skeptical of those who insist we are definitively one thing or another.
Writing My Way into Jewishness Read More »
So here’s the thing: I didn’t learn how to diagram a sentence until I was twenty-eight.
It Happened to Me: I Don’t Know Grammar Read More »
We don’t owe it to anyone to make our writing nice, or easy, or palatable. Maybe we should start asking ourselves who we’re protecting when we pan away, and why we’re protecting them.
Abject Horror: The Gratuitous Honesty of Hanya Yanagihara and Stephen King Read More »
I had just enough experience working with teenagers to know they’re merciless bullshit detectors. I also remembered how my classmates and I had treated some of our teachers—teachers who would now be my colleagues.
“It was kind of the perfect confluence of viability and personal interest — I’ve wanted to write queer stories for a long time, and suddenly I found that there was a market for it.”
Odd Jobs #1: An Interview with Ruthie Luhnow Read More »
