July 11, 2018
Goth Tendencies, Cy Twombly, and Turnstile Hearts: a conversation with Dean Rader and Melissa Stein
Recently Melissa Stein and Dean Rader, two San Francisco Copper Canyon poets, chatted at length about short poems, oxymorons, killing their darlings, lyrical gears, and inner/outer worlds on the occasion […]
May 11, 2018
A Conversation with poet July Westhale
The Necessity of Dangerous Poetry and the Power of Voice July Westhale visited Kirsten Ogden’s class at Pasadena City College in April 2018 and continued a conversation with students over […]
May 7, 2018
Nepantla: An Anthology (Q&A with Editor Christopher Soto)
To celebrate the release of Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, published by Nightboat Books, anthology editor Christopher Soto and I discussed both the editing process and […]
May 3, 2018
“It’s sexy, filthy, viscous, vicious. It’s religious. It’s archaic”–an interview with Montreux Rotholtz
A mélange of language by turns surreal and objective, with narrative poems intertwined with those more driven by sonics and music, Unmark is Montreux Rotholtz’s first book, and it’s a […]
April 26, 2018
Micro-Interview: LA Poet Emily Fernandez
This is the fifth interview in an ongoing series about the intersections of writing, teaching, and identity. Read Past Interviews in the series: Kathy Kottaras, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Mike Rose, Virginia […]
April 11, 2018
Marty Skoble on Why Poetry Matters
(Photo Credit: Noah Davis) For National Poetry Month, I spoke to Marty Skoble, the brilliant man who “teaches” poetry to the students (from lower school to high school) at Saint […]
April 5, 2018
An Interview With Leslie Jamison
Caroline Hagood: In The Recovering you braid literary criticism, memoir, and cultural criticism in an innovative manner. How do you see these different strands interacting with and enriching one another? […]
March 30, 2018
On Writing, Workshop & Mental Health: A Roundtable (Part 2)
Poetry is absolutely necessary for my mental health. Growing up, we never talked about well-being in my family– that is, directly. While my mother was easier to talk to, as […]
March 14, 2018
Poeta, You Resist
Author’s Note: The following was read at the Women of Resistance book launch last night, March 13th, 2018, at Strand Bookstore in NYC. I wanted to write a piece that incorporated the […]
March 2, 2018
Mix-Tape IV: On Sympathetic Werewolves, Transformations & Tampa
Last year, I wrote about the challenges of trying to have meaningful conversations in such a public, frantic-paced space like AWP. This year, I’m looking forward to my time in […]
February 28, 2018
Anyway What’s Left Of These Two Worlds Collided
I I was standing You were there Two worlds collided And they could never tear us apart —“Never Tear Us Apart,” INXS A year ago, when we first met, you […]
January 29, 2018
An Interview with Rachel Lyon
In Self-Portrait With Boy, Rachel Lyon has written a powerful debut novel. Self-Portrait examines the aftermath of the moment Lu Rile takes a photograph that inadvertently captures a boy’s fatal […]