“I think that the beauty of Blackness and Black people is that we code-switch all the time. We just know how to talk depending on where we are and to whom we’re speaking, so I don’t think about it too much when I’m writing, but I do think about who’s going to be on the inside of the stories and who’s going to be on the outside,” Amina Gautier tells ACM.
“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.
“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 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)
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)
“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.
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.
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.
“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.
Another Chicago Magazine 