Contributor Interviews

"It's not just about the words, but it's also about how you put the words onto the paper."

"How does someone process and grieve being separated from their entire biological family — by distance, language, and culture? What does that feel like?"

We live in a world with so many distractions, but syntax, getting the words to work together to form a new thing, pulls me out of the chaos and keeps me coming back.

"I return to the page because it has always felt like the most natural thing to do, and because it is most often the only thing I know to do."

"Sometimes I will write a draft just to push through something and get it out, and then I'll let it sit for months on end and come back to it."

"When we are on the receiving end of news, there is a lack of transparency, and that actually gives birth to indifference. How do I feel about someone when I don't even know their name?"

I think storytelling is a trauma response. You live in a world that crushes you, so you try to build a world that snowglobes you out of there.

“There are poems that teach us how to read in such a manner as to eclipse our normal perceptions, our normal state of being. That's something that I think is really powerful about the hybrid form: you can portray things not just through words but through presentation.”

"When I'm inspired, there gets to be a hot feeling behind my eyes, and I need to get it out."

Sara Lynne Puotinen lives in south Minneapolis, near the Mississippi River Gorge, where she reads and writes and…

"I have a never-ending stream of narratives in my mind that I have to get out and refine into something worth reading."

As much as I do love a tidy ending, I love something with no resolution, and I try to do that in my own work as much as possible.

"My motivation to return to the page is the belief that poetry is magic."

"My number one ambition, always, is to create a community in which competition is banished (there shall be no "best") and personal growth is celebrated. Within such a trusting, open, can-I-say-loving environment, extraordinary things unfold."

"I’m always interested in how relationships grow and change over time, especially long-term friendships that start in childhood."

"I hope my work will inspire readers to think of how the mistreatment of nature leaks into our day-to-day lives. I want people to think of how patterns in our personal lives echo patterns that occur in the natural world."

S.S. Mandani runs a coffee shop and writes in New York City. He studied fiction at the University…

"My authority is that I often know I’m not an authority, which means I’m usually asking something in poems."

"The more of these unusual pieces I wrote, the more I wanted to write, and the more I wanted to read from other parents."

"Sometimes it takes months to return to a piece because I need time to become the version of myself who knows how the piece ends. It might be a new life experience or friendship — or temporal distance from an experience or relationship ending — that helps contextualize the missing pieces, and I love the process of discovery that comes with writing."

"A lot of times we writers create these beautiful pieces that highlight trauma, and then we share that work, and we live in those trauma-tinged words, and it feels immense."