“So, I’m not saying one’s better than the other, but maybe because [Iraq] had so many wars, they put people first. In our culture, we put profit first. Our whole geopolitical conduct has now become quite transactional. If you say [Trump] is a mandate from the American people, then that’s saying something about the values of voters,” Alex Poppe tells ACM.
“One of the overwhelming and heartbreaking themes of mass incarceration is dehumanization. Time and time again, these stories of what happens to prisoners in any of these systems gets buried under all of the legal jargon. And the back and forth in courts, the many steps that happen take power away from the incarcerated and erase the story of the individual,” Chloe Accardi tells ACM.
“We live in a world of translation—and mistranslation, as between the coexisting people and languages there’s a lot of noise—meaning, all the elements that don’t let the message from the source be appropriately received,” Dimitris Lyacos tells interviewer Toti O’Brien.
“As it relates to Unit 29 specifically, writing offered a rare opportunity to convey a message that would actually be read. For some, it was an opportunity to attempt something they never tried before. The act of writing and the program itself allowed for a structure by which they could order their lives in a chaos that barely ever sleeps,” Louis Bourgeois tells interviewer Mike Puican.
“Book bans have existed as long as there have been books, throughout history, just like war. It’s a form of war; part of war; part of politics and power grabs; part of trying to keep the population ignorant and deny people books. It’s also part of antisemitism and racism and every other oppressive movement you can think of,” Donna Seaman tells interviewer Carol Haggas.
“Each day we wake up to multiple worlds of domesticity, work, society, creativity, and absurdity that inhabit our consciousness as the dream world fades like a new moon,” he tells Karen Corinne Herceg.
“Sometimes if you give away your language, you give away yourself,” Taiyon Coleman tells interviewer Deborah Copperud. “There’s nothing more violent than to do that.”
“Humor is so essential to having a well-maintained psyche, because if we take ourselves too seriously, we’re probably going to be miserable,” Christine Sneed tells interviewer Kathryn O’Day.
” I would really like people who were led to believe they need to fear or hate the LGBTQIA+ community, especially trans and intersex people, to read this book,” Pidgeon Pagonis tells interviewer Sasha Weiss
“A novel is a constructed self, a personhood, a point of view that monologues,” Eugene Lim tells interviewer Ru Marshall.
“One of the biggest things that I think about when I’m writing is trusting the reader,” Giada Scodellaro tells interviewer Erik Noonan.
There’s joy on Easter, and that joy lasts a long time. And Lent, it’s not about food, it’s about self-sacrifice, humbling yourself before God. You’re saying, You’re the big guy. I’m the small guy.
It doesn’t matter which language you speak, because language does not influence your way of thinking.
When my family was escaping, my great grandmother saw that all of the grain that was collected from them was being thrown in the sea.
The older generation of course, they didn’t teach their kids about the horrors of Stalin, because they didn’t want them to have that memory.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
There was an air alarm, so an ambulance couldn’t get to us and bring this child to the hospital, so we decided to treat him right there.
(Dispatches From Ukraine)
I told my wife I was opposed to leaving Vinnytsia. She said, What happens to you, happens to me.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
Now I remember it like a dream, but it was terrible.
(Dispatches from Ukraine)
“If I go into the forest, I can hear the birds and crunching of the leaves. It’s about the sound of the whole forest, not isolating the sounds,” Janice Lee tells interviewer Margaret Juhae Lee.
“Being a mother is dynamic, and the dynamism of motherhood lends itself to narrative,” Julie Phillips tells interviewer Margaret Juhae Lee.
“If a doctor says, ‘The curve of your spine makes me think of a river, or a snake in action,’ that would make me feel like part of nature instead of an unnatural aberration,” Riva Lehrer tells interviewer Irina Ruvinsky.
I go to the county jail to see one father and discover that the other one is there.
(interview)
“I think that as long as you treat your characters with compassion, and you’re thoughtful and empathic and you do what you can to support their narrative and their truths,” Emily Maloney tells Barbara West.
(interview)
“If you want to be a writer, you get to be one forever. Sometimes that means big chunks of time where you are not building sentences because you’re living the experiences that you’re going to build the work out of. So drop the shame about it,” Megan Stielstra tells Barbara West.
(interview)
“Really it was like possession . . . Renata is her own complete being as far as my psyche and processes know,” Frank X. Gaspar tells Millicent Borges Accardi.
“My son’s mind had turned against him but the need for process moved him through a different portal,” Miriam Feldman tells Tanya Ward Goodman.
“I overcome the tension of trying to write by cooking. Next to smell, taste is the strongest sense in terms of conveying emotions,” Maggie Kast tells Jan English Leary.
“I did not live any of my life in a literary community. Holding an array of different jobs for almost thirty years, I used to think I could publish my resume as a novel,” Sari Rosenblatt tells Avani Kalra.
I’ve chosen to work with concrete to speak about the impulse to create permanent structures, but also to speak about impermanence, change, and loss, Ledelle Moe tells Helena Feder.
Humanizing the effects of Chicago gun violence, editor Chris Green chose a form for his latest anthology that mirrors the way a semi-automatic weapon fires. Interviewed by Donald G. Evans.
Another Chicago Magazine 