“Among this book’s major themes and images is that of the house—that structure that is often what holds a family. What happens when that house is emptied of its inhabitants? When that house has grown vacant, or has become abandoned by the departure or passing of those who lived there?”
On “Our Sudden Museum”: An Interview with Robert Fanning Read More »
“Simple images, such as the dandelion in the sidewalk crack or ice in lemonade, invite us to compare our own experience and find meaning where there was none before. More complex, but equally intangible experiences can be found in poems like ‘Rearrangements,’ which explores the aftereffects of covert child abuse, although each victim is different.”
A Review of Carol Smallwood’s “In Hubble’s Shadow” Read More »
“This intense, absurd tragedy, I realize now, is my invisible foundation. The myth of Pei Pei is born here—an image that picks up the devastation between Nietzsche and the world and between me and Hong Kong. The dead part of me still lingers in Hong Kong through Pei Pei.”
Climbing Lion Rock: An Interview with Wawa and Henry Wei Leung Read More »
“I think that good writers can create a fully-developed, lived-in physical space for any location and time, and I consider myself lucky that I grew up in–and am able now to write about–a place as physically interesting and beautiful as northern Michigan. As a writer, it’s a great place to hang out in and explore, and as much as anything continues to drive my interest in the landscape.”
On Writing Michigan: An Interview with Travis Mulhauser Read More »
Think of Shapero instead as a kind of poetic Louis C.K. — the misery is part of the act. Yes, you’re supposed to laugh: “All I have coming in this / world is a joke that hits me later.” And like the best stand-up comedy routines, her poems have solid opening hooks, a finely wrought structure, and a resonance, a truth, beyond what is directly expressed.
A Joke That Hits You Later: A Review of Natalie Shapero’s “Hard Child” Read More »
I had so many of these little notes that I would sometimes scroll down the screen just to see them riffle up, a blur of words that sang of possibility. They belonged to the future, and I carried them, clustered, in my pocket.
Hoarding Notes: The Uselessness of the Writer’s Notebook Read More »
Festival season is coming, so here are some literary events (most of them free) worth checking out this summer. We’d love to add to this list, so let us know if we’ve missed a good one!
2017 Guide to Michigan’s Summer Literary Festivals Read More »
“FoCo Technique is rooted in classical dance training, in my case, Chinese classical dance, and cushioned in contemporary dance.”
A Sense of Flow: An Interview with Yin Yue Read More »
“I like drawing because it’s immediate — it hits us faster than prose writing. And I like pairing writing with images; you can get a sense of the background space and scene — stuff that wouldn’t necessarily move the narrative forward in standalone prose writing.”
On “Imagine Wanting Only This”: An Interview with Kristen Radtke Read More »
The act of keeping a diary has a long history, and a tangled relationship with subjective “truth.” Although diaries have long been associated with women, Margo Culley argues in the essay “I Look at Me: Self as Subject in the Diaries of American Women” that diary-writing was not a feminized form until the second half of the nineteenth century — with the era’s shifting notions of self, the private sphere, and inner life — and again in the feminist 60s and 70s.
Truth, Sex, and Ego: On Women’s Diaries Read More »
