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.
MARNI BERGER interviews 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.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews LAUREN GROFF
Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia, as well as the enviably acclaimed short story collection Delicate Edible Birds. Her forthcoming novel Fates and Furies will be published by in September by Riverhead. Lauren and S. Tremaine Nelson connected over Skype for a few minutes, inexplicably without sound, communicating with primitive hand gestures and unrecognizable symbols, until they agreed to give up on that futuristic technology and connect the old-fashioned way, over the phone. They spoke for about an hour, covering a variety of topics like tailgating, running, reading, and, of course, writing.
MELODY NIXON interviews WENDY S. WALTERS
Wendy S. Walters’ work blends poetry, nonfiction cultural commentary, and playful lyric essay to excavate deeply rooted themes of race, identity, and belonging in America. She has published two books of poems: Troy, Michigan (2014) and Longer I Wait, More You Love Me (2009), and a chapbook, Birds of Los Angeles (2005). Walters is active in the literary world, as a founder of the First Person Plural Reading Series in Harlem, New York, a contributing editor at The Iowa Review, and an Associate Professor of creative writing and literature at the Eugene Lang College of The New School University in the city of New York.
With ELIZABETH ENSLIN
Your name: Elizabeth Enslin
Current town: I live in Wallowa County, Oregon, five miles from the near ghost town of Flora and 45 miles from a town with amenities: Enterprise.
How long have you lived here: I’m a fourth generation Oregonian and have lived full-time in this northeastern corner of the state for about two years now.
With KENT WASCOM
For the month of August we are revisiting some of our favorite content from the past year. Publication of new work will resume September 1.
***
Your name: Kent Wascom
Current city or town: Covington, Louisiana.
How long have you lived here? My parents grew up here: I drew my first breath across the lake in New Orleans and spent my first six years down the interstate in Slidell before spending the majority of my youth in Pensacola, Florida. So in many ways Covington and the area have existed for me as a sort of imaginative heritage for all my life. Boots on the ground, though, 1.4 years.
MARNI BERGER interviews A.L. KENNEDY
For the month of August we are revisiting some of our favorite content from the past year. Publication of new work will resume on September 1.
***
A.L. Kennedy was born in Dundee, Scotland. She is the author of 15 books: six novels, six short story collections, and three works of nonfiction. She is a fellow of both theRoyal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Literature. She writes for publications in the UK and overseas and has a blog with The Guardian Online. In addition to author, she is a dramatist for the stage, radio, TV, and film, and a standup comedian. Her All The Rage—a collection of short stories—was published by Little A Books in spring 2014. Marni Berger and A.L. spoke about the culture of humor, constructing the landscapes of characters’ minds, and what it means to “write to please.”
MARNI BERGER interviews JACQUELYN POPE
Jacquelyn Pope is the author of the poetry collection Watermark (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005). Her next book, Hungerpots—translations of the Dutch poet Hester Knibbe—is due out in October from Eyewear Publishing in the UK. Jacquelyn is the recipient of a 2015 National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
With JAQUIRA DÍAZ
Your name: Jaquira Díaz
Current city or town: Miami Beach, FL
How long have you lived here? I grew up in South Beach, and I’ve been back here (in North Beach) for about a year. But most of my immediate family lives in Miami, and I’ve been leaving and coming back since I was 19.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews SARA NOVIĆ
Sara Nović’s first book, Girl at War, was published by Random House earlier this year and was immediately well received: described by critics as “outstanding,” “intimate and immense,” The New York Times concluded it is “a brutal novel, but a beautiful one.” American-Croatian Nović recently graduated from the MFA program at Columbia University, where she studied fiction and literary translation. She is the fiction editor at Blunderbuss Magazine and the founder of ReDeafined, as well as an advocate for the Deaf community. S. Tremaine Nelson spoke with Nović in June while she was on a book tour in London.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.
Celebrating 15 Years