Interviews
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“All The Fighting Parts” an interview with Hannah V. Sawyerr (poetry ’22) and an excerpt from her debut YA novel
Interview by Jonathan Kesh
All The Fighting Parts, the debut novel in verse from Hannah V. Sawyerr, is a challenging, poetic tale about overcoming trauma and learning to fight back.
The story follows high-schooler Amina Conteh as she struggles to navigate a tightly-knit community centered entirely around the charismatic Pastor Johnson, who runs the Holy Tabernacle church. When the pastor attacks Amina one night at the church, she finds herself isolated, no longer sure of how to use her voice and unable to connect with her loved ones within Pastor Johnson’s orbit.
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An Interview with MFA ’21 Gina Chung and an Excerpt from her Debut Novel “Sea Change”
Interview by Jonathan Kesh
Gina Chung’s debut novel, Sea Change, applies a touch of the speculative to a deeply interior story.
The protagonist, Ro, is an isolated, directionless woman in her early thirties who spends her days handling sea life at an aquarium. Her mother is estranged, her father disappeared during an expedition to the climate change-induced “Bering Vortex,” and her boyfriend has just dumped her to join an experimental Mars colonization program. All that’s keeping Ro afloat is her bond with an old octopus at the aquarium named Dolores,
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Global Voices Interviews *Germany* Andra Schwarz & Caroline Wilcox Reul in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
A dialogue between authors and translators
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Last month Andra Schwarz’s poetry collection In the morning we are glass (Am morgen sind wir aus glass, 2017) was published in English by ZephyrPress thanks to a wonderful translation by Caroline Wilcox Reul. At LIT, we were delighted to publish five poems from Schwarz’s collection in March 2020. It is tempting when first reading these poems to assume they are about memories of a childhood home or reflections on the irretrievable past.
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Global Voices Interviews *Hungary* Kinga Tóth & Timea Balogh in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Hungarian version of this interview is forthcoming in Aprokrif in early 2021.
In Kinga Tóth’s world everything is alive and moving and coalescing at each moment. Separation and disconnection are notions she considers unnatural in the natural world. In her work, the multimedia artist and poet captures what most of us neglect to see – not so much the interconnectedness of everything – which suggests the possibility of disconnection – but rather the relentless and organic becoming of everything into one living body that contains all animate and inanimate life.
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Global Voices Interviews *Croatia* Marko Pogačar & Andrea Jurjević
In conversation with JP Apruzzese
Reading Marko Pogačar’s poetry is like walking into an empty field only to realize that it is teeming with life. Things begin to crawl up through the surface and emerge from the sky and become more real, more important, more meaningful, more consequential the further we allow him to guide us through this uncertain world, which we soon learn is our own. Perhaps his shift in vision comes from being a child witness to the violent fracturing of his world – what was once Yugoslavia – where the promise of unity,
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Kristen Roupenian on Writing and Getting Your MFA, Interviewed by LaVonne Roberts
Kristen Roupenian will be interviewed on LIVE with LIT as a part of LIT’s Commencement 2020 this Tuesday, May 19th at 7pm. Join here.
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“Cat Person” was published by The New Yorker on Monday, December 4th, 2017, and by that Friday, it was the most-read piece of fiction of all time on the magazine’s website. It earned its author – who was then completing a writing fellowship in Ann Arbor, Michigan – global fame, quickly followed by a seven-figure, two-book deal.
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I read 4.5 million views.
