interviews

"I Want to Write a Book that I Think No One Will Want to Read:" An Interview with Rachel Louise Snyder by LaVonne Roberts

| Rebecca Valley

You can find LaVonne’s review of No Visible Bruises here.

Rachel Louise Snyder is a journalist and professor of creative writing at American University. The author of No Visible Bruises—winner of the prestigious 2018 Lukas Work-in-Progress Award from the Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation—and Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The
New York Times Magazine, Slate, Salon, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the New Republic. Originally from Chicago, she currently lives in Washington, DC.

Continue reading →

“You Are No Damsel in Distress:” An Interview with Susan Vannatta by Bianca Glinskas

| Rebecca Valley

A Brief Disclaimer: Susan, author of Whiskey Letters (Arroyo Secco Press 2018) and I met in college while attending California State University of Long Beach. We had just about every class together, and so our friendship was sealed by fate. I have heard many stories from these pages firsthand and I have seen many of the pieces which appear in Whiskey Letters in their earliest drafts. I have also witnessed her personal growth and artistic development as a friend and fellow poet.

Continue reading →

Resistance, Multiplicity, and The Literary Canon: An Interview with Victoria Chang

| Rebecca Valley

71rXad9D74L

Contributing editor Leonora Simonovis interviews poet Victoria Chang about her fourth collection of poems, BARBIE CHANG, out from Copper Canyon Press in 2017. They discuss resistance, the idea of being and representing otherness, the playfulness of poetry, and Chang’s forthcoming collection, which features short obituary poems written after the death of her mother. Continue reading →

STICKS: An Interview with Catie Rosemurgy

| Rebecca Valley

For our second special issue on writing from rural America, I talked with Catie Rosemurgy, a poet who understands and writes intimately about the realities of small-town American life. I fell in love with Rosemurgy’s winding narrative collections and shape-shifting characters nearly ten years ago now, and in our conversation I asked her some difficult questions about writing rural in this political climate, the stories behind her characters, and how she constructs the cozy, strange worlds that shape her collections. 

Continue reading →

“All writing is raveling and unraveling:” An Interview with Maryrose Wood

| Rebecca Valley

incorrigible children

We began our Droplet series on young adult literature with a review of the first book in Maryrose Wood’s series The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, so it felt appropriate that she kick-off our interview series as well. We caught up with Wood as she finished the draft of the sixth book in the Incorrigibles series (get a sneak preview of Eliza Wheeler’s cover for book 6 at the bottom of the interview!) to ask about her rambunctious cast of characters, the influence theatre has had on her writing, and the books that inspired her as a child. Continue reading →