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
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.
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.
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.
With GOCE SMILEVSKI
Your Name: Goce Smilevski
Current city or town: Skopje, Macedonia
How long have you lived here: Many years
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.
With SALLY BALL
Your name: Sally Ball
Current city or town: Phoenix
How long have you lived here: One year in Phoenix proper, but in the Valley since 1999
MARNI BERGER interviews RICHARD MICHELSON
Richard Michelson is a poet and children’s book author who has written sixteen children’s books and three books of poetry—More Money than God, Battles & Lullabies, and Tap Dancing for Relatives—as well as two fine press collaborations with the artist Leonard Baskin. Michelson’s poetry has been published in many anthologies, including The Norton Introduction to Poetry, and has appeared in The Harvard Review, The Massachusetts Review, Parnassus, and Issue No. 09 of The Common. He has served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton Massachusetts and in 2009 he received both a Sydney Taylor Gold and Silver Medal from the Association of Jewish Librarians, becoming the only author so honored in AJL’s 47-year history. Most recently, Michelson was awarded the 2016 Poetry Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
MELODY NIXON interviews ELLIS AVERY
Ellis Avery is an accomplished author, editor, and teacher. Her first novel, The Teahouse Fire, won a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction, a Stonewall Book Award, and an Ohioana Library Award. Her second novel, The Last Nude, also won a Stonewall Award. Avery edits the Public Streets column at Public Books, and writes daily haiku poems on Twitter—a year’s selection of which have been recently published as her first volume of poetry, Broken Rooms.
SARETTA MORGAN interviews MAURICE EMERSON DECAUL
Maurice Emerson Decaul is a poet, essayist, playwright, and librettist, whose work has appeared in The Common, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Narrative, Callaloo, and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project, among others. A graduate of Columbia and New York Universities, he is currently working toward his MFA at Brown University.
Saretta Morgan corresponded with Decaul over several weeks by email, in person, and on the phone during the winter of 2015–2016. Both poets and military veterans, Morgan and Decaul talked about New Orleans, theater, race, and the military, as their conversation moved between themes of structure, dreams, and collectivity.
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