Laura Cresté (left) and Victoria Kornick (right)
LAURA CRESTÉ and VICTORIA KORNICK met a decade ago in NYU’s Creative Writing MFA, where they connected over writing long poems. They’ve been friends and readers of each other’s work ever since, including the manuscripts of what would become their first books. They exchanged questions over email about Laura’s debut collection, In the Good Years, and discussed how place, nonhuman animals, time, family history, and the unknown shaped the book.
When Hannibal was loose in Italy and could not be made to leave, the Romans did a strange thing. They consulted their books of prophecy, and the books told them to go get a mother.
By LAKE ANGELA
Akron, Ohio and Opelika, Alabama
Grace: Sunday Services
As a girl in curls and white patent flats, I could criss-
cross worlds—Sicily and Ohio, steaming kitchen
and chilly study. I slipped through serving aperitifs and caffé
corretto, understood Sicilian but wasn’t meant to speak
By QIAN ZHONGSHU
Review by BEN TAMBURRI
Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged takes its namesake and epigraph from a French proverb: “Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out.” The proverb foretells much about this acerbic novel, as its protagonist, Fang Hung-Chien, stumbles into and out of the lives of various women in Shanghai after returning from his years studying abroad in Europe.
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