October/November 2015 
A Conversation with Valerie Miner
R.A. Rycraft
What matters is the doing. The teaching and learning I do in the classroom. The writing and learning I do on the page. The most important gift is the writing itself, the pleasures of discovery through creation.
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It's All Anguish: An Interview with Vijay Seshadri
Leslie McGrath
Well, are all American poets publishing books every couple of years? If they are, I'm definitely an anomaly. I feel, in fact, not a pressure but a desire to publish more, and not because of the Pulitzer but because I feel time gaining on me.
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Poetry and Originality: Have You Been There Before?
Mark Irwin
What a writer leaves out creates mystery and becomes equally as critical to the imagination as what one adds. A partially assembled puzzle incites the imagination and creates mystery just as a partially destroyed text might.
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Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud: Approaches to Building Character
Clint McCown
Mr. Potato Head was one of the early devices that showed us how to create characters through external means. There were others, of course. For example, the only difference between Malibu Barbie and Brain Surgeon Barbie is the outfit she wears. The external difference is what defines the character.
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The Wreckage of Reason: Women Writers of Contemporary Experimental Prose
Aimee Parkison
Experimental prose is traditionally divorced from the mainstream publishing market regardless of a writer's gender.
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The Last Word: The Slick Writer
Benjamin Percy
If I stumble upon something of interest—great. If an editor approaches me about an idea—great. But fiction is my religion. I view nonfiction as a way to support it, an artsy but business-minded day job.
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The Self as Antihero: In the Essays of Nora Ephron, David Sedaris, and Steve Almond
Deborah Sosin
If we agree that a full, rich, relatable protagonist embodies strength as well as weakness, a balance of good and not-so-good, then it falls to the first-person writer to create a similarly well-rounded protagonist. Except that character is him or herself.
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