Issue 7.1 Contributor Interviews

Tory Adkisson

“I’m particularly drawn to figures of metamorphosis and transformation and figures associated with deviance and monstrosity. Medusa, Grendel, Orpheus beheaded by the Furies—I feel an odd kinship with these characters…”

C.L. Bledsoe

“When people talk about heartbreak, they often hide behind blame – of the other person or themselves – rather than examining the situation honestly. You’ve got to be willing to be vulnerable.”

Jan Carroll

“To thrive and flourish, there has to be an attitude of bringing everyone along, both the seasoned and experienced as well as those just starting out and everyone in between.”

Chelsea Catherine

“There are many things about my life right now that I had imagined being different as a child.”

Andrew K. Clark

“I think we live in a time where people have more of an appreciation that gender identities are not necessarily binary, and a greater understanding of children and adults who do not fit into a conforming cisgender category.”

Caitlin Cowan

“And if you believe, as I do, that creative nonfiction must be true of heart (a phrase I scribbled from the wonderfully talented Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman) if not welded to meticulously researched fact, then the act of bringing that truth into the world is its own defense.”

Anthony DiPietro

“Excess in poetry is a sort of challenge to the status quo, because we’re taught that poems are artifacts of concision and precision, with no room for redundancies or overlap. Well what if the precise way to express something is to say it three times, or three ways?”

Jacqueline Doyle

“I like to break rules when I write, so I don’t burden the students in my creative nonfiction and flash workshops with a lot of rules.”

Lois Dubois

“My work as a psychotherapist for over 30 years certainly informs my writing, by giving me hours and hours of experience meandering through people’s hearts and psyches”

Wendy A. Gaudin

“Our Lady Star of the Sea is also a name for the Virgin Mary and for Yemaya, goddess of the ocean, so poetry gives me the space to play with many meanings that are also historical.”

Melody S. Gee

“But within every poem, I want some lines to carry you into a thought or image and then upend your expectation—giving you a double reading, or suddenly altering the tone.”

Jules Jacob

“One exercise I like—if you can call it that—is to free write on a legal pad while I’m driving. (I do not recommend this exercise unless you can steer well with your left knee.)”

Kamal E. Kimball

“I fell in love last year. Being a writer, I couldn’t just fall in love quietly. I found myself exploring desire, love, and lust in almost every poem.”

Robin Kozak

“Atrocities begin with small steps, like the ones Ross is taking.”

Devon Miller-Duggan

“[the cashier] said something like, ‘You know, I’m not very religious, but I’ve always admired her. After all, she’s the only woman in history who got to make God stand in the corner.’”

Sam Rebelein

“I feel drawn to the ways certain people interact with losing control.”

Matthew Roth

“The image of the peach was for me a meeting place for the linked emotions of anticipation and disappointment—emotions deeply familiar to gardeners and parents alike.”

Jess Smith

“Fire occupies this space in the imagination – it can quickly shift from soothing to menacing, from a source of warmth to a source of destruction.”

Leanne Sowul

“Teaching isn’t often talked about as a creative act, but I feel just as creative when I’m in a classroom as when I’m putting words on the page.”

Michael VanCalbergh

“While I often can see a truth I was trying to get at in the draft, when I revise, I’m always trying to balance the dark with the light.”

David G. Walker

“If I find myself stuck in the ‘real world’ for an entire poem, I’ll try to find places to elevate it with some abstraction. In that same vein, I don’t want to float out past the cosmos into utter philosophy; I’ll always look for something to pin us in reality.”