Issue 4.1 Contributor Interviews

Beth Bilderback

“Like most writers, I’m constantly trying to make sense of things that happen by writing them down, to the point where sometimes an event, or even a feeling, doesn’t feel quite real until I’ve described it.”

Patricia Budd

“Poetry requires that you clarify your emotional responses to experiences, real or imagined. Poetry in some ways simplifies this complicated process. You can choose to use or omit details as you build to the emotional “truth” you wish to convey. This is true for any kind of writing. Check your facts, sure – but you are not a court reporter at a life-or-death trial. Your tools reside right there in your own flesh.”

Michael Chin

“As anyone who reads ‘The Leo Burke Finish’ will surely recognize, wrestling is integral to my life. I had a friend and old workshop partner who had watched wrestling as a teenager and may have said it best–when you’re invested in this world, you don’t so much watch it as live it, because this particular brand of entertainment, for its genre-bending qualities (is it a sport? a reality show? complete fiction?) all but demands immersion from its true fans. ”

Krista Cox

“My Dream Man series emerged after several years of being single after a divorce. Basically, I decided to imagine myself the “perfect” man. It ended up becoming an exploration of society’s and my own expectations of men and relationships, and (of course) told me lots of uncomfortable things about myself.”

Susan Grimm

“For years, I was kind of obsessed with line breaks (and by extension stanza breaks). I really like that position at the end of the line where the word, emphasized, hovers before plunging into more context and possible duality of meaning—the idea of framing, the possibility that you could understand a poem by only reading these last words perhaps.”

Jonathan Harper

“No matter what the writing project is, I’m constantly mining – taking personal experiences and reshaping them to fit into a unique story.”

Ashton Kamburoff

“This piece is about losing music, losing sound. Once I find a silent space, I become very protective of preserving it.”

Carla Kirchner

“When I want to explore an idea or image, I choose poetry; when I want to explore an event, I choose fiction.”

Robert Miltner

“These Eurydice poems are a sort of fractured or fragmented prose poem wherein readers’ expectations are intentionally disrupted. I create a text site that challenges readers to revise their expectation and be open to the possibility of surprise, discovery.”

JoDean Nicolette

“When I claimed my identity as a writer, I began to feel much better about myself, wholer, more complete. And I certainly liked myself more. Writing allowed me to expand my right brain, the part of my psychology and intellect that wasn’t governed by rigid concepts like facts, algorithms, and schedules. I felt more fluid, more intuitive, more creative, more graceful, more able to just be present and observe my life.”

Susan Pagani

“With essays, I try to look at the situation and the characters (myself, other people, a goose) with empathy and humor. I say try because, if there’s conflict involved, in the moment and sometimes for a long time after, empathy can be a hard business — the other person is just bad and wrong and the situation is not funny. Time seems to make it easier to see the shades of a thing and my own missed opportunities and failings. ”

Beth Sherman

“Writing is about control, to a large extent. I always think of it as a balancing act between your creative right brain side and your more logical left brain side, which has to take all those craft elements I talked about before into consideration. I’m definitely more of a left brain person. I don’t like to get messy on the page.”

Adam Tavel

“I’ve tried to embody a writing practice that is as natural as breathing or eating a sandwich. I write with children bouncing around the house, in grocery store parking lots, on little breaks between the classes I teach…these stolen moments compress and focus my attention. I reject ritual or the privileging of writing time separated from the pressures of daily life.”