Interviews | Page 14

An Ivoirian Writer Takes on Genital Excision: An Interview with Fatou Keïta

November 26, 2016 Interviews

JULIA LICHTBLAU interviews FATOU KEÏTA

On a recent trip to Côte d’Ivoire, I walked into the Librairie de France, the crowded, chaotic bookstore on the Plateau, the downtown business district of Abidjan, and asked for books by Fatou KeÏta. They directed me upstairs, where I found most of a bookcase filled by the popular Ivoirian writer’s works. Fatou Keita has written 25 books for children and two novels, including Rebelle (Rebel), about a young West African woman who escapes genital excision, which remains common, despite efforts to eradicate the practice. According to a 2013 World Bank report, “To Be a Woman in Côte d’Ivoire,” 14% percentage of Ivoirian girls under 14 have experienced infibulation, the most traumatizing form of genital excision.

The Drama of the Will: an Interview with Elizabeth A. I. Powell

November 13, 2016 Interviews

S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews ELIZABETH A. I. POWELL

Born in New York City, Elizabeth A. I. Powell is a Vermont-based poet and editor in chief of the Green Mountains Review. She is the author of two poetry collections: The Republic of Self and, most recently, Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances. Her work has appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology 2013, Alaska Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Ploughshares, and many other eminent publications.

Ask a Local: Angela Palm, Burlington, VT

October 27, 2016 Interviews

With ANGELA PALM

Your name: Angela Palm

Current city or town: Burlington, Vermont

How long have you lived here: Five years

Space and Cumulative Erasure: An Interview With Youmna Chlala

October 3, 2016 Interviews

SARETTA MORGAN interviews YOUMNA CHLALA

Youmna Chlala was born in Beirut and is currently based in New York City. Her work investigates the relationship between fate and architecture through video, drawing, books, installation, and performance. She was recently an Open Sessions artist at The Drawing Center and a resident artist at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center’s Process Space. Her work has been widely exhibited at spaces that include Art Dubai Projects; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Camera Austria; Art in General, New York; and San Jose Museum of Art. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals. Chlala is the Founding Editor of Eleven Eleven {1111} Journal of Literature and Art and recipient of a Joseph Henry Jackson Award. Her poetry book, The Paper Camera, will be published by Litmus Press in 2017.

Saretta Morgan met with Chlala at McNally Jackson Books in SoHo, New York City, in the late spring of 2016 to talk about relationships, speculation and space.

Ask a Local: Dagoberto Gilb, Austin, TX

September 11, 2016 Interviews

With DAGOBERTO GILB

Austin Texas Lake Front

In this month’s Ask A Local, Dagoberto Gilb offers us a glimpse of Austin, TX in the form of a micro-interview.

Your name: Dagoberto Gilb

Current city or town: Austin, Texas

How long have you lived here? 15 years

Ask a Local: Alice Burdick, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia

August 25, 2016 Interviews

With ALICE BURDICK

Your name: Alice Burdick

Current city or town: Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia

How long have you lived here: I’ve lived in Mahone Bay since 2008, so eight years, and just outside Lunenburg for five years before that. I moved to Halifax in 2002 and lived there for around a year, after growing up in Toronto and mainly living there, but also in Espanola Ontario and British Columbia—in Vancouver and near Roberts Creek.

Language Ceases to Fail: An Interview with Helen Phillips

August 1, 2016 Interviews

HILARY LEICHTER interviews HELEN PHILLIPS

Helen Phillips was born and raised in Colorado. She is the author of four books, most recently the short story collection Some Possible Solutions. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, and a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her collection And Yet They Were Happy was named a notable collection by The Story Prize. Helen has received numerous awards, including a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, The Iowa Review Nonfiction Award, the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Award, and a Ucross Foundation residency. She is an assistant professor at Brooklyn College.

Ask a Local: Mercedes Cebrián, Madrid, Spain

July 28, 2016 Interviews

With MERCEDES CEBRIÁN

Your name: Mercedes Cebrián

Current city or town: Madrid

How long have you lived here: 45 years, with some interruptions, as I have also lived in Philadelphia, London, and Rome.

Ask a Local: Goce Smilevski, Skopje, Macedonia

June 30, 2016 Interviews

With GOCE SMILEVSKI

Your Name: Goce Smilevski

Current city or town: Skopje, Macedonia

How long have you lived here: Many years

Angela Palm on Riverine and Bending Genres

June 5, 2016 Interviews

S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews ANGELA PALM

Angela Palm is a Vermont-based author, editor, and writing instructor. Her first book, Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here, will be published by Graywolf Press in August 2016. S. Tremaine Nelson met with Palm outdoors at a cafe less than a hundred yards from the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont, on the first warm day of spring this year. They spoke about Palm’s influences, class in Indiana, and the pervasive brokenness of the American criminal justice system.