Web Exclusive: A Conversation with Mohammed Ali (a.k.a. Aerosol Arabic)
By Interview Issue 89
Issue 89 features the work of graffiti and installation artist Mohammed Ali, whose murals appear in cities all over the world, from his native Birmingham to Melbourne, Dubai, and Kuala Lumpur. He also performs collaboratively with musicians and poets. In the accompanying essay, George Dardess describes the way Ali sees his work as part of…
Read MoreA Conversation with Charles Wright
By Interview Issue 89
Charles Wright is the author of nearly thirty collections of poetry, most recently Sestets, Bye-and-Bye, and Caribou (all from Farrar, Straus and Giroux), as well as two books of criticism and a collection of translations of the Italian poet Eugenio Montale. Born in 1935 in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, Wright attended Davidson College and the Iowa…
Read MoreOnly What You Do For Christ Will Last: A Conversation with Tim Rollins
By Interview Issue 60
Painters Frame Contemporary Painting Painting has died and been resurrected several times in recent decades. Challenged by theory-laden conversations about art’s “post-medium” condition and a welter of deconstructionist propositions, painting seems nevertheless to have thrived in the face of adversity. Some would say it remains as manifold and imaginative as ever. In order to take…
Read MoreA Conversation with George Saunders
By Interview Issue 88
George Saunders is the author of four collections of short stories—Civilwarland in Bad Decline (1997), Pastoralia (2001), In Persuasion Nation (2007), and Tenth of December (2014)—as well as a book of essays, The Brain-Dead Megaphone (2007), and an award-winning children’s book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2005). Civilwarland in Bad Decline was a finalist…
Read MoreKhaled Mattawa Interview
By Interview Issue 88
Khaled Mattawa on Adonis Our new issue includes Khaled Mattawa’s translation of “A Bridge to Job” by leading Syrian poet Adonis. We asked Mattawa to talk with us a little about Adonis’s work, the challenges of translation from Arabic, and what poetry in translation can uniquely offer us. This project is supported in part by…
Read MoreWeb Exclusive: A Conversation with Lisa Ampleman
By Interview Issue 87
In issue 87, poet Lisa Ampleman reviews three new books by Jericho Brown, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and Rickey Laurentiis—three African American poets who each write about faith, identity, and injustice in different ways. We asked her to reflect a little on the connection between poetry, empathy, and justice. She was interviewed by Mary Kenagy Mitchell.…
Read MoreA Conversation with Phil Klay
By Interview Issue 87
Phil Klay was born in Westchester, New York, in 1983. He studied creative writing and literature at Dartmouth College and graduated in 2005. That spring he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and in 2007 was deployed to Iraq during the troop surge. He served as a public affairs…
Read MoreWeb Exclusive: A Conversation with Samuel Gray Anderson on Nick Cave
By Interview Issue 86
In Image issue 86, filmmaker Samuel Gray Anderson writes about darkly poetic rocker Nick Cave—and how a nice guy became a fan of such violent, discordant music. Image: You write that you sometimes describe the last decade of your life like this: ten years ago you were a U2 fan and now you’re a partisan…
Read MoreA Conversation with Li-Young Lee
By Interview Issue 86
Li-Young Lee’s books of poetry include Rose (1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award; The City in Which I Love You (1990), which was a Lamont Poetry Selection; Book of My Nights (2001), which won the William Carlos Williams Award; From Blossoms: Selected Poems (2007), and Behind My Eyes (2008). His other work…
Read MoreA Conversation with Ron Hansen
By Interview Issue 57
Ron Hansen’s novels are Desperadoes, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (both from Knopf), Mariette in Ecstasy, Atticus, Hitler’s Niece, and Isn’t It Romantic? (all from HarperCollins). Atticus was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Hansen is also the author of the story collection Nebraska…
Read More