Q&A with Poetry Contributor Jennifer Martelli

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Jennifer Martelli

"When I’m at a loss for words (for poetry), I mix a cocktail of Sylvia Plath and Laura Jensen (a poet who should be lauded far more)."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor David Salner

Q&A with Poetry Contributor David Salner

"As a child I lived in the country, and those cold fall days after the harvest stick in my memory."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor John Sibley Williams

Q&A with Poetry Contributor John Sibley Williams

"I’m not sure if I have favorite tools. Each poem makes its own demands."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Mag Gabbert

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Mag Gabbert

"So, once I saw how those writers conceptualized their own worlds, I wanted to emulate that perspective. I wanted my pieces to end with someone kicking the door open, or picking the mic up for once."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Kathryn Merwin

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Kathryn Merwin

"I like to write anatomically and explore the way a person's body interacts with and is influenced by her surroundings."

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Amanda Parrish Morgan

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Amanda Parrish Morgan

"I used to encourage my students to use the literature we read as a way in to more personal essay writing, and so bringing the novel to my own experience felt like what I, as a teacher, would have told myself to do."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Marianne Chan

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Marianne Chan

"Editing has helped my writing because reading poems only makes me want to read more poems and write more poems and see, hear, and taste more poems—and learn more about what makes poetry poetry."

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Andrew Wingfield

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Andrew Wingfield

"Artists embrace the challenge of making the familiar new again by uncovering what is unique in their experience and resisting the constant temptation to succumb to cliché."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Cady Vishniac

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Cady Vishniac

"It’s about the individual, and my individual tendency is to ramble."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Anne Champion

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Anne Champion

"I think that poetry, no matter what its topic is, makes us reach for hope."

4 Mistakes You’re Making in Your Cover Letter

4 Mistakes You’re Making in Your Cover Letter

Although no two cover letters are exactly alike, there are certain mistakes that seem to surface over and over again.

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Dahlia Seroussi

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Dahlia Seroussi

"As someone who is pretty attached to reality, it felt very transgressive to “write away” from my experience—but it was also liberating."

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Jacob Sunderlin

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Jacob Sunderlin

"But form is best for me when it’s the most invisible, and the single-stanza whoosh is somehow both almost-invisible in its proximity to prose as well as it is hyper-visible in its looking like a brick wall."

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Sharon Dilworth

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Sharon Dilworth

"I tend to transform and twist the more immediate narratives into something unrecognizable from reality. Over time nostalgia pushes me toward the truth."

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Andrea Cheatham

Q&A with Nonfiction Contributor Andrea Cheatham

"If anything, the American Dream in this story is as elusive for me, my grandmother, and Catherine as it was for Gatsby. You never reach it, or never feel yourself to have reached it. It only exists as a possibility, not really as a clean and finished fact.

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Eric Cruz

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Eric Cruz

"This newness is incremental and barely perceptible in real time, but the speaker in each section conveys an understanding and, I think, an appreciation for their transformation.

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Joannie Stangeland

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Joannie Stangeland

"For example, “shroud, shrugged” really takes some time to say out loud, because you have to use your whole mouth."

The Case for Paying Writers

The Case for Paying Writers

In the face of such real and seemingly insurmountable financial barriers to do so, literary magazines—and I mean all of them, at least those who have been around for more than a year—can and should pay their contributing writers for their work.

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Devi Laskar

Q&A with Poetry Contributor Devi Laskar

"I wanted to write a collage poem about how people have a habit of ranking things—the items on their bucket lists, their favorite foods, their favorite sports teams."

Interview Excerpt: Lori Ostlund

Interview Excerpt: Lori Ostlund

Once, as we passed Sauk Centre on a rare family outing, my father said to me, "You know that Sinclair Lewis got run out of town for his books. Maybe someday you'll write a book that gets you run out of town."