Interviews

Allegra Hyde is the author of Of This New World (University of Iowa Press, 2016), which won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Missouri Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, as well as support from the Virginia G. Piper Center, the Jentel Artist Residency Program, The Island School, and the U.S. Fulbright Commission.

Chris Forhan is the author of the memoir My Father Before Me (Scribner, 2016) and three books of poetry: Black Leapt In, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize; The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars, winner of the Morse Poetry Prize and a Washington State Book Award; and Forgive Us Our Happiness, winner of the Bakeless Prize. He is also the author of three chapbooks, Ransack and Dance, x, and Crumbs of Bread, and his poems have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Parnassus, Georgia Review, Field, and other magazines, as well as in The Best American Poetry.

Kathy Fagan’s latest collection is Lip (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2009); her new book, Sycamore, is scheduled to appear with Milkweed Editions in March 2017. She is also the author of the National Poetry Series selection The Raft (Dutton, 1985), the Vassar Miller Prize winner MOVING & ST RAGE (Univ of North Texas, 1999), and The Charm (Zoo, 2002). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, FIELD, Narrative, The New Republic, and Poetry, among other literary magazines, and is widely anthologized. 

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, which received the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation. It was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of 2015 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the American Library Association. Kirstin is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and the 2013 Narrative Prize.

Matt Bell is the author of the novel Scrapper, published in September 2015. His last novel, In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, a Michigan Notable Book, and an Indies Choice Adult Debut Book of the Year Honor Recipient, as well as the winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award. His writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Tin House, The New York Times, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, The American Reader, and other publications. Born in Michigan, he now teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.

Merritt Tierce was born and raised in Texas, graduated from college at 19, and waited tables for ten years before attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She's the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and a 2013 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” author. Her first book, Love Me Back, won the 2014 Texas Institute of Letters' Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction and was shortlisted for the PEN/Bingham prize for debut fiction. Merritt's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, and Southwest Review, among other publications. She lives in Denton, Texas.

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. She won the 2019 Press 53 Award for her poetry collection Bully Love and the 2016 May Swenson Poetry Award for her poetry collection Hemming Flames. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, and American Poetry Review, and most recently in Black Warrior Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and Natural Bridge. A chapter from her memoir in progress was published by New Orleans Review. She has received awards from the Associated Writing Programs and the Academy of American Poets, The Madison Review, Glimmer Train Press, The GSU Review, and The Southern California Review. She reviews books on Goodreads. 

When she was young, her family moved along the New England coast, living in Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Maine, and even for a time in a lighthouse. She received graduate degrees from Umass-Amherst and Bennington College and was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She now lives in Providence, RI with her young son. Cities I've Never Lived In is her first book.

Sjohnna McCray is the author of the poetry collection Rapture, which won the 2015 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in numerous journals including the Chicago Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, and the Tahoma Literary Review. He lives in Athens, Georgia and teaches at Georgia Gwinnett College.