A Conversation with Writer SALLY BAYLEY

One of the key factors of where I came from is that it is a terminus: a railway terminus. I think that the idea of a terminus is very important, the end of the line. So, it’s a place easy to write about in relation to elsewhere because, as a child growing up there, you were always dreaming of leaving and going elsewhere.

A Conversation with Writer BRIAN ARNOLD

I was born and raised in Denver, CO, and do think of this as an important part of my education and worldview. There is nothing like the American West, and living here taught me to appreciate light, space, and history (especially as encoded in landscapes). This sense of place is an important part of the work I do today.

A Conversation with Writer D.C. FROST

My father was a football coach, so we moved around: Atascadero, Palmdale, San Luis Obispo, Quartz Hill, Montclair, Upland. The geography and diversity of Southern California and Los Angeles have infused my writing with an appreciation of a vast and ecologically varied landscapes and a vast appreciation of a diverse population of people.

A Conversation with Poet ROQUE RAQUEL SALAS RIVERA

My parents were political activists during a period known as the "carpeteo," in which the Puerto Rican government actively persecuted, blacklisted, and harassed activists. Information often had to be protected. This has shaped my writing style into one that moves between open, direct language to one that is more obscure and coded.

A Conversation with Writer REMICA BINGHAM-RISHER

I also spent countless hours in libraries and historical archives, piecing together the contextual lives and times of women who are often left out of the archive. Much of the work was writing persona poems in the voices of these women, writing formal verse to try to get some emotional distance from things that would leave me spent and broken, having to recount the hardest circumstances of their lives over and over. I was also determined to build in joy whenever we could because their stories are really a triumph.

A Conversation with Writer NATHAN DUNNE

We lived in a run-down part of Bangalore with no electricity, TV, or a working toilet. My parents were Protestant missionaries, and God was always present: at the dinner table, rickshaw station, or cheese shop. Each year during the Diwali festival, our family gathered on the roof to watch the fireworks. In the morning, I joined the local children to collect the colorful paper shells.

A Conversation with Writer CHARLES BLACKSTONE

Chicago gave my perspective an urban lens. The politics, the architecture, the culture of empiricism, the privileging of intellect over return on investment, I think it all informed my enduring aesthetic. I feel different about it now that I've been in New York for over a decade. The Midwestern reserve that masks deep interiority doesn't exist here, so the way I perceive people, place, and the quiet complexities of human relationships in my writing is a lot different.

A Conversation with Writer MICHELLE GURULE

I spent all of high school reading whatever memoirs I could find and began dreaming of writing one myself. I journaled religiously and often shaped my own experiences into little stories. That journaling habit was a huge gift to my writing—it trained me to capture dialogue. If my mom said something funny, I’d jot it down. That impulse to document became second nature.

A Conversation with Poet MICHAEL BAZZETT

I didn’t know that people growing up among the cornfields of southern Minnesota could end up as poets. But I did know my mundane world of asphalt streets, maple trees, and split-level ranch houses was only a thin veneer laid over what used to be the bed of a huge inland sea. I knew the world existed in layers, and that the world we see is not all there is.

A Conversation with Writer CHRIS HOSHNIC

As a child, I was captivated by the polished dreamscapes of television and literature; the nuclear families with their summer camps, road trips, and Rockwellian kitchens. I longed for that kind of stillness and scripted joy. But my reality was one of caretakers and cousins, of being left in the trusted hands of others while my parents worked hard to sustain us. All of this migration, longing, caretaking, has left an imprint on my writing. It’s taught me that home is not always a fixed structure, but a series of returns.

A Conversation with Poet RUFO QUINTAVALLE

Seeing these people leading a life completely different from my own was fascinating to me and left a big mark. A sense I still have that another life is possible - and maybe even preferable.

A Conversation with Poet EDDIE KIM

When I write poetry, it feels like an explosion of sorts, a desperate need to share, explore, or get out a feeling––it's obsessive. When I write prose, I have a bit more room to meander and excavate as I write. I find the process therapeutic. Often, I end up digging up some subconscious memory or realizing the true impact of an experience. I enjoy that process. It's empowering. It feels special, vulnerable and haunting.

A Conversation with Writer ADDIE TSAI

I've always loved reading. My father acted in a Chinese theater group my entire childhood and during the many hours he rehearsed (in a language I wasn't fluent in) I would read books. There was a lot I didn't learn directly from parents or other family members, and so I also reached out to books to help me with what I needed to learn as a child and adolescent. The book that made me want to be a writer was Lois Lowry's first novel, A Summer to Die.

A Conversation with Writer NKOSI NKULULEKO

I don't have something to say every day, but staying idle is not an option. Sitting in silence, amongst the trees, watching a bird is not being idle either. That's also a kind of research before looking up the kind of tree it perched on.