Interviews | Page 16

Horizontal Feminists: An Interview with Alexander Chee

February 2, 2016 Interviews

Alexander Chee’s new novel The Queen of the Night, set almost entirely in France under the Second Empire (1866–1872), is the first-person narrative of a silver-voiced American orphan who maneuvers her way to acclaim as an opera singer, via the circus, can-can dancing, prostitution, and service as the Empress’s maid. Three desires drive Lilliet: to free herself from the tenor who literally owns her (having bought her from a whore house), to become a singer, and to reunite with the man she loves. Chee’s novel sumptuously recreates the intertwined worlds of les grandes horizontales or courtesans, the opera, and the court of Emperor Louis-Napoléon and Empress Eugénie with its spies and secret police.

This winter in Manhattan, New York, The Common’s Book Reviews Editor Julia Lichtblau talked at length with Alexander Chee about his forthcoming novel.

Ask a Local: V. Penelope Pelizzon, Willimantic, CT

January 21, 2016 Interviews

With V. PENELOPE PELIZZON

Your name: V. Penelope Pelizzon

Current city or town: Willimantic, Connecticut

How long have you lived here: 13 years.

On Translation, Proust, and Advice for Young Poets: an Interview with Gregory Rabassa

January 10, 2016 Interviews

S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews GREGORY RABASSA

Gregory Rabassa is a genius you might pass on the streets of New York City without even knowing it. Born in 1922, he lived the early years of his life in Yonkers, New York before moving to a farm near Hanover, New Hampshire, four miles from Dartmouth College, where he studied as an undergraduate. In 1967, in his very first attempt at translation, Gregory Rabassa won the National Book Award for his translation of Julio Cortázar’s novel Rayuela (Hopscotch in English). Rabassa’s translation schedule filled up, and, in his own words, he was “too busy” with other projects when Gabriel García Márquez approached him about translating Cien Años de Soledad. At Cortázar’s urging, García Márquez agreed to wait three years until Rabassa’s schedule cleared. Upon the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1970, García Márquez famously declared that Rabassa’s English version of his book was better than the Spanish original.

Ask a Local: Arna Bontemps Hemenway, Waco, TX

December 13, 2015 Interviews

With ARNA BONTEMPS HEMENWAY

Your name: Arna Bontemps Hemenway

Current city or town: Waco, TX

How long have you lived here: Going on three years

Pressure Makes Diamonds: an Interview with Rowan Ricardo Phillips

December 8, 2015 Interviews

MARNI BERGER interviews ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS

Rowan Ricardo Phillips was born and raised in New York City and is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Brown University, where he earned his doctorate in English Literature. He is the author of two books of poems, Heaven and The Ground: Poems, as well as a book of essays, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness, and a book of translations of Salvador Espriu’s Catalan collection of short stories, Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth. Rowan is the winner of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2013 PEN/Osterweil Prize for Poetry, a 2013 Whiting Writers’ Award, and the 2013 GLCA New Writers Award for Poetry. In 2015 he made the National Book Awards Longlist for Poetry. He has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Stony Brook, and he is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. He lives in both Barcelona and New York City.

Phillips and Berger discussed the stenography of poetry and the “beautiful challenge” of geography as “fate.”

Ask a Local: Dorthe Nors, Vedersø, Denmark

November 12, 2015 Interviews

With DORTHE NORS

Your name: Dorthe Nors

Current city or town:Vedersø, Denmark

How long have you lived here: A year

How We Do Persist—Tracy O’Neill Talks About Her Novel “The Hopeful”

October 19, 2015 Interviews

NICOLE TRESKA interviews TRACY O’NEILL

It’s a drizzly summer night, and I’m meeting Tracy O’Neill in Manhattan’s East Village to talk about her debut novel, The Hopeful, the story of a figure skater who breaks her back on the cusp of Olympic competition. O’Neill skated as a child, and in her pearl raincoat, cinched at the waist and hooded, it’s not hard to imagine a younger Tracy, her hooded warm-up hiding a sequined costume, awaiting her moment on the ice.

Ask a Local: Rose Bunch, Fayetteville, AR

October 15, 2015 Interviews

With ROSE BUNCH

Your name: Rose Bunch

Current city or town: Fayetteville, Arkansas

How long have you lived here: Most of my life, give or take a decade or so.

Writing and Violence: An Interview with Judith Frank

October 7, 2015 Interviews

MARNI BERGER interviews JUDITH FRANK

Judith Frank

Judith Frank is the author of the novel, Crybaby Butch, and a professor of English at Amherst College. She received a B.A. from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in English literature and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Cornell. She has been the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, and support from both Yaddo and MacDowell. Marni and Judith spoke online about Judy’s new novel, All I Love and Know, and what it means to write about violence in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Risk of Being Human: an Interview With Rachel Eliza Griffiths

October 4, 2015 Interviews

SARETTA MORGAN interviews RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. Her most recent collection of poetry, Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books), was published in April. Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Saretta Morgan corresponded with Griffiths via email over the course of four weeks this summer, during which time they each traversed several locales—Upstate New York, Mexico, Colorado, Vermont and Washington, D.C.—as they discussed form, representation, and the risks of opening oneself up artistically.

Saretta Morgan (SM): Your fourth book of poems came out this year, and you’re very close to completing your first book of photographs and your first novel. You also work in photography and video. Could you share a little bit about your relationship to these modalities? What complications and limitations do you find in each?