Robert McKean spoke via email with Caitlin Hamilton Summie about his latest novel, Mending What is Broken, published by University of W. Alabama/Livingston Press on August 20th. While also a writer, Summie is also McKean’s publicist. Their conversation focused on his new book but also included a few questions about craft, as McKean always writes about the same fictional place, across all his books. Each book, however, works as a stand-alone.
Category: Author interviews
An interview with Joe Hutchison
The erstwhile Poet Laureate of Colorado talks about the life of a Poet Laureate & that monster paycheck, Marked Men and the Sand Creek Massacre, A nightmare with Colonel Chivington, William Carlos Williams and Ted Kooser, “Buy local” *What’s a good poem?* Creepy metaphors, Wergle Flomp, University teaching; graduate poets, when bad poetry hits big and much more.
An Interview with Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki
The author of Dancing Into the Light: An Arab-American Girlhood in the Middle East talks about her new book, what it was like growing up with parents who had two very different cultural backgrounds and other childhood memories, dispelling stereotypes, grief and families, dancing, and lots more.
A Conversation with Beth McDermott about Figure 1
Beth McDermott is the author of Figure 1 and a chapbook titled How to Leave a Farmhouse. Interviewer Tiffany Troy talks to Beth about her new book which is rooted in the ekphrastic tradition and features the mind at work framing and dismantling images and exploring what exists beneath the surfaces of our socially constructed selves.
A Conversation with Mary Leader about The Distaff Side
Mary Leader is a poet-lawyer from Oklahoma. She served as the Assistant Attorney General and later as a Referee for the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The Distaff Side, a collection about matrimony at the meeting of just-barely-on-the-surface and just-barely-underneath-it is her fifth collection of poems, The extraordinary visual aspects of the poem serve as the poet’s means for pleasure and defiance. In this interview with Tiffany Troy, Mary talks about her new book and the process of writing it, major themes, and more.
An interview with Meredith Stricker
Meredith Stricker is an artist and poet working in cross-genre media. She is the author of six poetry collections and recipient of the National Poetry Series Award. Her most recent book, Rewild, won the Dorset prize from Tupelo Press. She co-directs visual poetry studio, a collaborative focusing on architecture in Big Sur and projects to bring together artists, writers, musicians, and experimental forms. In this candid interview she speaks to Yasmine Guiga about her new book Rewild and the challenges she faced, reader expectations, inspirations, the search for aesthetic wholeness, TS Eliot, and lots more.
Confronting Invisible Winds: A Conversation with Rachel Rueckert about East Winds
Rachel Rueckert is an award-winning writer, editor, and teacher. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University as well as an M.Ed from Boston University. As a seventh-generation Utahn, her favorite subjects include place, family, mental health, unconventional spirituality, and climate change. In this in-depth interview, Rachel speaks about her new memoir East Winds.
An interview with Kelly Weber, author of We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place
The author of We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place talks about her latest book and how it evolved, her composition process, on writing about alternative erotics in kindship with the ecological world and in platonic relationships, on family stories that directly and indirectly teach about power dynamics, gender and sexuality expectations, and wounds, mythology and symbolism, and lots more.
An interview with Scott Erickson on Mommy, Why Did America Collapse?
Many years after America’s collapse, a young girl asks her mother to explain why it happened. Her mother explains that the tragic story has a good side. The rest of the world was spared America’s fate by learning from America’s example what changes needed to be made.
An interview with Cindy Morgan
Singer/songwriter Cindy Morgan is a two-time Grammy nominee, a thirteen- time Dove winner, and a recipient of the prestigious Songwriter of the Year trophy. In this in-depth interview, she talks about her first novel, The Year of Jubilee, the real-life story behind it, first memory impacts, faith, civil rights, the mother-daughter dynamic, her characters, settings, the “poor mind”, and lots more.