Interview with Sarah Kravitz

 

 

Here’s an interview with Sarah Kravitz, who gave Bop Dead City “Type Anatomy.”

 

She’s on the right.

Describe your work in 25 words or less.

There are poems that feel tangible. Those poems are not mine. My poems shatter into abstraction when they hit the concrete.

 

Tell me about your poem “Type Anatomy.”

I have teased letters all my life—in “Type Anatomy,” I wanted to expose text, to caress the aesthetics of font, to undress Helvetica and explore the sensuality of typographic representation.

 

What or who inspires you to write?

Fleeting expressions on my students’ faces. A cringe. A silence. Family legends. All the dark crevices of the mind.

 

What authors have influenced you as a writer?

Pablo Neruda. Allen Ginsberg. Thomas Pynchon. Joyce Carol Oates. Sylvia Plath. Aldous Huxley. Philip K. Dick. Haruki Murakami. Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. Raymond Carver. Margaret Atwood. Sandra Cisneros. Virginia Woolf. Jonathan Safran Froer.

 

Do you have a blog/website?

http://holonymy.wordpress.com/

 

Where can we read you next?

My piece “Punishing a Fig Tree” was recently published in Stone Highway Review. http://www.stonehighway.com/uploads/8/0/0/8/8008182/shr_sept_13_pdf_large.pdf

 

What are you working on right now?

I have abandoned two consecutive novels on page 280. I hope to return to these neglected works, particularly 00:11 Universal, a work of speculative fiction that describes a man who is a prisoner of introspection. However, my current focus is on academic publications.

 

Any advice for other writers?

Persistence. Patience. Perspective. Seek the profound within the personal. 

Interview with Jacob Euteneuer

Chugging right along on schedule (for once), I’m bringing you another interview with one of our fabulous writers, Jacon Euteneuer. He contributed “The Third Known Photograph of Emily Dickinson.” That makes the second Emily Dickinson-inspired poem in two issues, so if you submit a poem about her childhood home this time around, you presumably have guaranteed yourself twenty bucks.

 
Describe your work in 25 words or less.
Midwestern/Great Plains fabulist prose with a slight surrealist bent that usually centers around brothers or fathers.

Tell me about your poem “The Third Known Photograph of Emily Dickinson.”
The poem started in an MFA workshop about prose poems. The professor (Robert Miltner) mentioned that poetry geeks were in ecstasy because a second photograph of Emily Dickinson had been found and identified. I used that idea to start thinking about what would be a really exciting find: a nude picture of Emily Dickinson. The rest came from there, with help from my classmates.

What or who inspires you to write?
My wife and son are my greatest inspiration. I probably would sit around all day and do nothing if it wasn’t for them.

What authors have influenced you as a writer?
I primarily write fiction, so most of the authors I would list here would be short story writers such as George Saunders, Kelly Link, and Karen Russell. In terms of poets, I got really into Russell Edson while researching prose poetry.

Do you have a blog/website?
I do not. I should get on that.

Where can we read you next?
I have a poem coming out in Booth soon as well as a piece of flash fiction in Eunoia Review.

What are you working on right now?
Right now I am working on a novel. Novels are hard. I take breaks from it to write flash fiction and prose poetry which seems to involve a totally different part of my brain.

Any advice for other writers?
It sounds obvious, but just write a ton and throw away anything you don’t like.

Anything else you’d like to say?
I am a man of few words.

Interview with Art Heifetz

 

 

 

 

 

Hope everyone’s having a fine Tuesday morning, or at least one better than the store is. Today’s interview is with Art Heifetz, who contributed “Bargains” to Issue 5. 

 

 

Describe your work in 25 words or less.

I enjoy telling stories, simply and musically. I want to make you smile, laugh, cry. Anything but leave you cold.

 

Tell me about your poem “Bargains.”

It’s about my father, his obsession with getting a good deal, and our visits to the “discount house.”

 

What or who inspires you to write?

My wife, Mayela, a Nicaraguan beauty. My old Peace Corps buddy Ray and his wife, Aouicha.

 

 

What authors have influenced you as a writer?

William Carlos Williams ( the subject of my never-to-be-completed dissertation), my namesake Malka Heifetz Tussman (a Yiddish American poet) and Nicaraguan poets such as Ruben Dario.

 

Do you have a blog/website?

Yes. polishedbrasspoems.com

 

Where can we read you next?

Writers Tribe Review, current issue.

 

What are you working on right now?

Storypoems about my family. Poems about Nicaragua. Poems about the crazy modern world.

 

Any advice for other writers?

Keep it simple. Write straight from the heart. Work on the rhythm of the words.

 

Anything else you’d like to say?

Even at 67, life still has a lot of surprises in store.

Interview with Carly Berg

Finally, interviews with Issue 5 are set to start! This one’s with Carly Berg, writer of “Salamander Kiss,” winner of our last fiction contest. If you’d like to read it, buy an issue and enjoy her story and everyone else too.

Describe your work in 25 words or less.

I mostly write flash fiction. I have almost 100 pieces published, and a collection of them making the rounds at the small presses (fingers crossed!)

 

Tell me about your story “Salamander Kiss.”

When I wrote it, I was thinking back to the days when all the grown-up stuff was new. If I remember correctly after, ahem, all these years, it was painful but also exciting. Knowing now how routine life gets for us real grown-ups, sometimes it’s lovely to recapture some of that sense of newness.

 

Is this your first contest win?

No. Once in awhile I get lucky. 🙂

 

What or who inspires you to write?

I really don’t know. I would not rule out calling it a mental illness, haha.

 

What authors have influenced you as a writer?

Right now, I’m kind of stuck on Dorothy Parker.

 

Do you have a blog/website?

Yes, I do!  http://www.carlyberg.com/index.html

 

Where can we read you next?

Well, I’m kind of all over the place. One of the joys of writing the short stuff. 🙂

 

What are you working on right now?

I’m working on a non-fiction “how to write” book for newer writers. Several chapters of it have been published here and there so far. It’s called (tentatively) The 100 Credits Club. As the title implies, it’s aimed at helping writers get their first hundred publishing credits.

 

Any advice for other writers?

If I could just say one thing, it would be “have fun with it.” I don’t force myself to sit in a chair for a certain number of hours per day or anything like that. If I make it too much into a chore, for me anyway, that takes the fun out of it. I like to let it be what I want to do, not what I have to do. When I’m just doing flash, I shoot for two stories done and out per week. But if I let a week or a month slip by or just feel like doing something else instead, meh, it’s okay.

 

Anything else you’d like to say?  

I can’t think of anything right now, but thank you for this opportunity to blab on about myself!

Issue 6 Contest Announcement: Home

It’s become a tradition to have a contest for every issue, and every time I have to rack my brain to figure out what it’ll be. I can’t just stop giving away FORTY DOLLARS, you know? So I settled on home as the theme for this issue. Makes sense, with people coming home for the holidays, good or bad. My wife and I also gave twenty bucks to a couple of train hoppers with adorable mutts, which got me thinking about what exactly home is, since I didn’t truly consider three people with two dogs to be homeless for some reason.

Anything that you feel is about home or your hometown or what home is or isn’t whatever (we’re pretty broad here), send it on in with a note saying you’d like it to be considered for the contest (all entries will also be considered for regular ol’ publication too).

All the other submission guidelines are the same as those listed here. The contest deadline, like the general deadline, is January 1. $20 goes to the winner for fiction, and $20 to the poetry winner. 

Good luck to you all, and I’m excited to read your work!