Franny Choi is a queer, Korean-American poet, playwright, teacher, and organizer. She is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Helen Zell Writers Program, as well as […]
With Care: An Interview With Franny Choi Read More »
Anyone who works in medicine, or who has witnessed a medical procedure, knows that the marvels of modern medicine come with various prices. One of which is trash: many medical tools and devices, like syringes, are used once and then thrown away. And each of these tools is packaged individually, in sterile plastic packaging, which
Against the Triumph of the Mediocre: Matmos’s “Plastic Anniversary” Read More »
A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon is a tender and sharp collection that navigates the history of “comfort women” used by the Japanese Empire during World War II. By bringing these events to the forefront of our minds and conversations, these powerful poems insist on the importance of the past. Yoon
“In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade,” reads the final line of “Checkpoints,” a poem in Ilya Kaminsky’s forthcoming book Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019). In a lyric world uniquely his own, deafness and its sister sound, silence, become the central tropes of Kaminsky’s book-length sequence of poems about war, resistance, death, and love. His
Knowing Silence Moves us to Speak: Review of Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic Read More »
In honor of Sandra Cisneros winning the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature this week, we invite you to a pajama party with Sandra Cisneros and Ruth Behar. From the Archives. Ruth Behar’s interview with Sandra Cisneros appeared in MQR’s Summer 2008 issue. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ I was back in Ann Arbor after a stay of several
In his second novel Coyote Songs, Gabino Iglesias grabs readers by the wrist and guides them through a liminal space most readers believe exists a world away. In doing so, he illuminates the flagrant fallacy that there are some “very fine people on both sides.” Whatever lens a reader may be tempted to attach to
Barrio Noir Knocks Twice: A Review of Gabino Iglesias’s Coyote Songs Read More »
I first heard Eileen Myles read for The Poetry Project’s 43rd Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Benefit Reading at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan. I was in the midst of researching Myles for my undergraduate thesis on their work. Throughout the night, I inched my way closer to Myles after watching them from the back of the church. When
“I Get High From the Radiance of Being Alive”– A Conversation with Eileen Myles Read More »
Donald Quist is the author of the linked story collection, For Other Ghosts (Awst Press, 2018), and the book of essays, Harbors (Awst Press, 2016), which was a Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner and International Book Awards Finalist. His writing has appeared in The Rumpus, AGNI, and North American Review, among elsewhere. He is the creator of the online
Synchronizing the Ghosts: An Interview with Donald Quist Read More »
Photo Credit: Willem van der Mei “Beauty is a constant state/of unrest,” writes Adeeba Shahid Talukder in What Is Not Beautiful (Glass Poetry Press, 2018). In her debut collection, Talukder interrogates the fleeting nature of beauty and the uncomfortable cultural fascination that surrounds it with a deft, sparing hand. Sticky and unnerving in the best way, What Is Not
What Is Not Beautiful: An Interview with Adeeba Shahid Talukder Read More »
We name our children before we know them, and our names express our hopes for them. In doing so, we are not unlike flight attendants welcoming the child to a place we haven’t yet arrived in. But what happens when one’s child is—as Winston Churchill said of Russia—“a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
