Danielle Pafunda
By Betsy Housten “Danielle Pafunda abolishes the stereotype of prissy, dainty girls in her thrilling poetry collection The Dead Girls Speak in Unison,” writes Brittany Capps of Pafunda’s 2016 book. “Set in a surrealistic underworld, [it] takes on the collective voice of empowered female corpses” and “leaves readers craving more of its ‘rotten pages.’ ” […]
Marcy Dermansky
By Ross Nervig Marcy Dermansky is the author of four award-winning novels, Twins, Bad Marie, and The Red Car, and Very Nice. Her novels circle the themes of sex, restlessness, escape, lost souls, and the dawning of self-awareness, with a galloping prose style that picks the reader up in the first paragraph and doesn’t let […]
Mark Doty
By Isabelle Barany Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including most recently Deep Lane; A Swarm, A Flock, A Host: A Compendium of Creatures; and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. He is also the author of six books of non-fiction, including Heaven’s Coast, a memoir about the death of […]
Elizabeth Rush
By Ross Nervig “RISING is not just a book about rising sea levels and the lost habitats and homes,” writes Laura Pritchett of Elizabeth Rush’s book. “[I]t’s also a moving rumination on the rise of women as investigative reporters, the rise of tangible solutions, and the rise of human endeavor and flexibility… A beautiful and […]
Clint Smith
By Kelly Harris Clint Smith, a New Orleans native, is a poet and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University, with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review. He is also a […]
Michael Bazzett
By Ross Nervig Over the past few years, Michael Bazzett has materialized on the poetry scene like an investigator showing up to assess a collection of perplexing clues. He arrived both scrutinous and curious, eyes weathered but not weary. “If poems are buildings erected to house our wonder, then Bazzett has gifted us a metropolis…” […]
Tillie Walden
By Nora Seilheimer Tillie Walden is a cartoonist and illustrator from Austin, Texas. She is the creator of the Eisner nominated works, I Love This Part and On a Sunbeam. She is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies, a comics MFA program in Vermont. We had the opportunity to speak with Walden about […]
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
By Marian Kaufman Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, (Counterpoint Press, 2017) was published to wide acclaim. The novel follows the interwoven paths of three members of the same New Orleans family in 1944, 1986 and 2010 as they each struggle to claim their own definition of family and success. A New […]
David Mura
By Ross Nervig Of Mura’s first novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, Junot Diaz wrote: “There is no writer that dives deeper (or more bravely) into the chasm that is the human heart.” The author of nine books, Mura moves nimbly amongst genres: fiction, poetry, essay, performance art, and Diaz’s sentiment is apt at […]
Kiese Laymon
By Marian Kaufman and Nora Seilheimer Kiese Laymon is the author of the award-winning novel, Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He has written essays, stories, and reviews for numerous publications, including Esquire, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, NPR, LitHub, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, PEN Journal, Ebony, Guernica, and […]