With DIANE ROBERTS
Your name: Diane Roberts
Current city or town: Tallahassee, Florida
How long have you lived here? A slightly more complicated question than it would seem. I was born in Tallahassee and lived here till I went abroad to university. I spent ten years in England and fourteen years in Alabama and then came back to Tallahassee. The short answer is that, in my head, I’ve lived here all my life.
MELODY NIXON interviews JUSTIN TAYLOR
Justin Taylor is the author of the short story collection Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever (2010) and the novel The Gospel of Anarchy (2011). His latest collectionFlings is forthcoming from HarperCollins in August. Melody Nixon caught up with him in Brooklyn, New York, to discuss the progression of his work, fiction like a warm bath, and riding reindeer into rivers.
With MATTHEW GAVIN FRANK
Your name: Matthew Gavin Frank
Current city or town: Marquette, MI.
How long have you lived here? 4 years
MARNI BERGER interviews DAVID BRESLIN
David Breslin is a Curator and Associate Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, and a writer of nonfiction on art, feminism and language-based practices. His essay, “Plugs: Five Thoughts on Cady Noland’s Stocks,” was published in Issue No. 07 of The Common. Marni Berger spoke with Breslin at a coffee shop off Washington Square Park in New York City, where they discussed the American art world, how to handle painful subjects, and finding the ideal writing space.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews RON WELBURN
Ron Welburn is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches American Literature, Native American Literature, and American Studies. His ancestors include Gingaskin and Assateague from the Delmarva Peninsula, Cherokee, Lenape, and African American. Professor Welburn received a B.A. in both Psychology and English from Lincoln University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University.His research and teaching interests include ethnohistory of eastern Native America, cultural studies, and jazz studies. S. Tremaine Nelson spoke with Ron over the phone about poetry, New York City, and two authors whom they both very much admire, Ralph Ellison and Leslie Marmon Silko. Ron’s poems “Seeing in the Dark” and “When You Know a Hard Sky” appear in Issue 06 of The Common.
MELODY NIXON interviews RICH BENJAMIN
Rich Benjamin is a journalist-adventurer and the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey To The Heart Of White America. He is a senior fellow at the think tank Demos in New York City, and a frequent commentator on NPR, Fox News, The New York Times and many other media outlets. Melody Nixon caught up with Rich Benjamin this spring, at his office overlooking the Flatiron building in Manhattan.
ZINZI CLEMMONS interviews ELEANOR STANFORD
Eleanor Stanford is the author of the memoir História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands, and of a poetry collection, The Book of Sleep. Stanford’s essay “Geology Primer (Fogo, Cape Verde)” was published in Issue No. 06 of The Common. Fellow Philadelphian Zinzi Clemmons chatted with Stanford about poetic form, the importance of language, and ways to feel at home in the world.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews JOSHUA MEHIGAN
Joshua Mehigan, whose poems “How Strange, How Sweet” and “Believe It” appear in Issue 06 of The Common, was born and raised in upstate New York. His poems have been published in a variety of journals and magazines, including Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, The New Republic, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and The New York Times. His most recent book, The Optimist, was published in 2004 by the Ohio University Press and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prive. His second book, Accepting the Disaster, is forthcoming in July 2014 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. The exchange below took place over email while Winter Storm Janus snarled the streets of New York City.
ZINZI CLEMMONS interviews YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is the recipient of the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “Weight of Whispers.” She is the author of the forthcoming novel, Dust (Knopf, January 2014), an excerpt of which was published in Issue No. 06 of The Common. While in South Africa Zinzi Clemmons talked with Kenyan-based Owuor about “deadlines as flexible soul mates,” lessons in artistic humility, consulting “the passing herdsmen” on the art of reading the landscape, and the up-and-coming literary world of Kenya.
MELODY NIXON interviews CARRIE TIFFANY
Carrie Tiffany is an Australian writer and author of the novels Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction), and Mateship with Birds (2012, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for fiction, winner of the Stella Prize), as well as several short stories. Born in England, Tiffany’s work draws on the complexities of the British migrant experience in the antipodes. Tiffany talked with fellow antipodean Melody Nixon last week, on a call from Canada where Tiffany is currently teaching creative writing at The Banff Center.
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Celebrating 15 Years