With MATTHEW GAVIN FRANK
Your name: Matthew Gavin Frank
Current city or town: Marquette, MI.
How long have you lived here? 4 years
Ask a Local: Matt Frank, Marquette, MI
June 12, 2014
Interviews
All posts tagged: Interviews
Filling Up the Creative Glass: A Conversation with David Breslin
June 3, 2014
Interviews
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.
On the Emergence of Native American Literature: An Interview with Ron Welburn
May 6, 2014
Interviews
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.
Rethinking Utopia: An Interview with Rich Benjamin
April 1, 2014
Interviews
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.
Language as the Homeland: An Interview with Eleanor Stanford
March 4, 2014
Interviews
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.
On Balancing the Visual and the Sonic: An Interview with Joshua Mehigan
February 4, 2014
Interviews
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.
Explosive Possibilities: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor on Writing and Kenya
January 14, 2014
Interviews
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.
On Burning Your Own Books and Bashing Off the Track: An Interview with Carrie Tiffany
October 1, 2013
Interviews
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.
The Writer as Foreigner: An Interview with Terese Svoboda
September 3, 2013
Interviews
ZINZI CLEMMONS interviews TERESE SVOBODA
Terese Svoboda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently the novel Bohemian Girl, which Booklist named one of the ten best Westerns of 2012. Her fourth novel, Tin God, was re-issued this year. Zinzi Clemmons caught up with her during a mild August to discuss Sudan, life in foreign cultures, and multi-genre writing.
Zinzi Clemmons (ZC): Your story “High Heels,” in Issue 05 of The Common, is set on an unnamed island in the Indian Ocean where Swahili is spoken. Which country is this? Did you intend for the reader to gain a sense of a specific location through the story?
Terese Svoboda (TS): It’s Lamu, off the coast of Kenya. It should evoke the disorientation of an extreme change of location for the characters — and, of course, of an island in the Indian Ocean.
Amy Brill on Fires in Nantucket, 19th-Century Sexuality, and the First Female Astronomer
August 6, 2013
Interviews
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews AMY BRILL
Amy Brill’s articles, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in One Story, Redbook, Real Simple, Salon, Guernica, and Time Out New York, among many others. Her debut novel The Movement of the Stars was published by Riverhead Books in April. This month she chatted with S. Tremaine Nelson about the island of Nantucket, historical fiction, and the first American female astronomer, Maria Mitchell, who shares characteristics with Hannah Price, the heroine of Brill’s novel.
S. Tremaine Nelson (SN): You were raised in New York City. Do you identify with a particular hometown neighborhood?
Amy Brill (AB): I strongly identify with the neighborhood I grew up in, Corona, Queens. It was like living in a mini UN, and it was the place I learned how to talk to anyone.
SN: What was the first book that made you say “wow!” out loud?
AB: I can’t remember the name — I was probably in third or fourth grade, and it was a YA book in which a young boy’s friend had died; I vaguely recall it being a case of playing on the train tracks, falling or being hit. What I do remember, vividly, is the gut-punch of the scene, how visceral my sorrow was for this fictional boy and his lost friend. It was the first time a book made me cry.
