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.
Category: Interviews
If countries were people, we wouldn’t invite them to our parties because they are too monstrous, Robin Hemley tells Julia Lieblich.
Donald Ray Pollock’s Hillbilly Gothic peels back the sanitized “heartland” image of the Midwest, revealing the often-overlooked rural people. An interview by Jarrett Kaufman.
Lexie Pitter is a newfound activist, bringing police brutality protests to Chicago’s North Side, where residents perceive police as benign protectors, as opposed to threats to the innocent. An interview by Avani Kalra.
“Stories of immigration, grieving, displacement, disaster, and language itself explode in this debut by Chicago-based writer Michael Zapata.” An interview by Samuel Schwindt.
Although Donald Trump is never mentioned in his new book, “King of Confidence,” Miles Harvey admits the current president “hangs over every sentence in the book.” An interview by Donald G. Evans
“I was in the convent at the time. I knew that I was lesbian. I was twenty-six. I was in a new program that allowed us more latitude than your ordinary canonical novice has. I had heard about, probably read an article in the newspaper, about this uprising, and it’s as if it drew me – not the riot, but the act of rebelling,” Ginny Apuzzo tells Tamika Thompson.
I should note, as a white person among the white majority of Americans, that white people need to be more reminded of this history because it’s easier for white people to ignore that history.
African American children have to be educated about contemporary racism because they are still victims of it. Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old kid in Cleveland, can be shot and killed by the police because he intimidated those police even though he was a child.
“People have certain views even about building walls, etc., but that doesn’t mean they’re racist, it means they’re genuinely afraid. Of course there were the weird, psychotic people but the majority of people it seemed to me were reasonable and kind, even the ones who hold certain views,” Tarek Mounib tells ACM.
“Black people often comment on the fact that when you see some person’s name trending on Twitter among your circles, someone Black who you’ve never heard of, your first thought is, ‘My God, someone has been murdered again,'” Eve Ewing tells ACM poetry editor Tara Betts.
“When I was young I really thought if you just wrote the right book, you could stop evil in its tracks.” An interview by Cara Suglich.
The author of “Tales of Falling and Flying” talks humor in fiction, Kafka, and whether humans are doomed. An interview by Matt Rowan.
