A Conversation with Michael Gruber
By Interview Issue 91
A former marine biologist, cook, speechwriter, and White House policy advisor, Michael Gruber is a New York Times–bestselling writer who work infuses genre fiction with philosophical and supernatural themes. His books include the Jimmy Paz trilogy (Tropic of Night, Valley of Bones, and Night of the Jaguar) and thrillers about Shakespeare (The Book of Air…
Read MoreWhich I is I?
By Book Review Issue 82
Three Poetry Collections Idiot Psalms by Scott Cairns (Paraclete Press, 2014) Seam by Tarfia Faizullah (Southern Illinois University Press, 2013) F by Franz Wright (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013) IN THE LONG HISTORY of the poetry of religious devotion, one often encounters a guileless representation of the self in its attempts to relate to the divine. The…
Read MoreTheodicy after City of God
By Poetry Issue 86
If righteousness remains, it is moonlight glinting on the mica-flecked steps and waxed lips of barren concrete planters as midnight skaters’ kickflips grind oblivion near the courthouse sign’s annunciation where stragglers huddle in a delinquent arc against the wind’s cold dispensation of Guilty and Not in which any joke like How do you make God…
Read MoreShibboleth
By Short Story Issue 60
THIS PLACE SUCKS. You can’t even fuck a guy in your own room.” The girl who said it was on the phone, looking back at the door through a thick tangle of dark hair as Rachel walked in. Her suitcase was already open on the bed by the window, clothes half settled into the dresser…
Read MoreMaking It Strange
By Essay Issue 61
The following four short sermons were delivered at the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between July 28 and August 2, 2008. All Manner of Travesties: Genesis 4:1-17 The hazards of the creative act are the loam out of which true form emerges. There is no way of achieving true form without opening…
Read MoreThe Tragic Sense of Life
By Essay Issue 61
WHEN I first arrived at Oxford University in the early 1980s to pursue graduate work, I was all swagger on the outside, but that was to conceal the soft center of terror within. I had gone from being a big man on a small Midwestern campus situated between two cornfields to a nobody at an…
Read MoreA Conversation with Les Murray
By Interview Issue 64
In 2007, Dan Chiasson wrote in the New Yorker that Australian poet Les Murray is “now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets.” His awards include the Grace Leven Prize, the Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Petrarch Prize, and the prestigious T.S. Eliot Award. In 1999 he was awarded the Queens Gold Medal…
Read MoreWeb Exclusive: Translators on Translation
By Interview Issue 65
The International Issue (#65) includes poetry in translation from Russian, Latvian, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. We asked the translators who contributed work to the issue about how they see their art: What’s the value of reading poetry in translation? That is, if we’re not really hearing the sounds and rhythms of the poet’s original…
Read MoreIf Penetrated by Light
By Book Review Issue 65
If Penetrated by Light: Five Poets Consider the Darkness The Fortieth Day by Kazim Ali (BOA Editions, 2008) Astonishment: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska ——-Translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon (Paraclete Press, 2007) The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado ——-Translated by Ellen Watson (Wesleyan University Press, 1990) Hovering at a…
Read MoreA Conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
By Interview Issue 65
Born in Nigeria in 1977, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in the university town of Nsukka, living for a time in a house once occupied by Chinua Achebe. After briefly studying medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria, Adichie moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut…
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