ISSUE 8.2 welcome issue contents > fiction > nonfiction > poetry contributors interviews featured art our editors Carl Boon“I do make things up at times, but I suspect most readers enjoy the sense of reading or experiencing something with an air of truth to it, even if it’s mere ‘truthiness.'” Fred Bubbers“I’ll start with some sketchy idea for a scene (a bedraggled couple pulling into a roadside seafood stand, for example), start writing and hope something will happen.” Emily Choate “I hold a deep kinship with women whose lives have been shaped by a route of discovery that caught them by surprise. A route forged by the desire for transcendence and transformation.” Dante Di Stefano “My mind contains multitudes of algae and driftwood and underwater volcanoes and angelfish and plesiosaurs and all manner of cephalopods.” Chase Dimock“They pointed to a crack I’d never noticed, and inside was a whole universe. I’ll think, ‘that’s a poem!'” grace (ge) gilbert“Poetry, to me, is another space where an internally rendered world straddles reality—where a parody of the real self interacts with a parody of real objects.” Mariana Graciano“Sometimes those ‘negative’ feelings can be productive. I didn’t know what else to do with that ‘burning’ sensation, I had to let it out somehow.” Kevin Grauke“Insecurity is a natural engine of narrative because conflict always comes with it. Insecure characters are torn by their desire to be (or do) something that they’re simultaneously terribly afraid of.” D.A. Hosek“There is very much a Catholic imagination behind my writing, even in my stories which don’t explicitly touch on religion, with a sense that there is a meaning behind everything…” Cyan James“The wonder of poetry, to me, is how it can fling an unexpected vista into one’s mind, like clicking a kaleidoscope into a new thought arrangement.” Abriana Jetté“I breathe out his name (Sean Woods), and the phrase, the idea, the notion of heaven just floats out.” Rachel Laverdiere“When I am writing about an experience, I am always writing about so many other experiences as well. An image often brings about a chain reaction leading to a source that goes far back in time.” Gina Lee“If I’m putting any word to paper, even if it’s one word that triggers a preliminary thought, that’s the opposite of writer’s block.” Jo Matthews“…and in these intangible and imperceptible gaps I could feel some sense of divinity, of somehow being caught between worlds.” Gabrielle McAree“How does one get from A to B to C? Not just the product, but the journey. So, that is what I tried to do with Shell: create a discombobulated map, or her brain on paper, showing her ride from one idea to the next.” Sarah Swinford“When I’m writing for fun, my inspiration usually comes out of nowhere: a moth gnawing at an artificial plant or an old wallet that I hadn’t seen in a while.”
