Find out how writers think
Recent interviews
-
An Interview with Carla Funk
Interviewed by CV2
CV2: What is your process for preparing a manuscript for submission? What is most important about creating a package of work for a publisher?
Carla Funk: In my experience, I’ve only ever sent out sample selections from the manuscript—20 pages of poetry from a collection I’m working on. I choose poems that give a range of voices and tones, and, obviously, I’ll choose the poems I feel are strongest and ...
-
An Interview with Alana Wilcox, Editor-in-Chief of Coach House Books
Interviewed by CV2
CV2: What got you interested in book publishing, and why have you chosen book publishing as a career?
Alana Wilcox: Like many people, I fell into publishing by some combination of accident and inevitability. At university, I worked on a number of campus literary journals, a few of which were printed at Coach House; I was fascinated by the process. After graduating with a Master’s degree in English, ...
-
An Interview with Alison Calder
Interviewed by Sharon Caseburg
Sharon Caseburg: If you could be something other than a university professor, what would you be?
Alison Calder: If I were independently wealthy, I’d take my husband Warren and the cats and move to some small piece of land on one of the Gulf Islands, where I’d bake bread and make jam and raise sheep and spin my own yarn. Back in the days when it looked like neither Warren, who also is a professor, nor I ...
-
An Interview with Di Brandt
Interviewed by CV2
CV2: How can technology, which seems to so many writers and poets to be the antithesis to the natural creative process, and therefore viewed by many to be a kind of “art on steroids,” be the means to more effective poetics?
Di Brandt: As I said, I think the electronic media need poetry more than poetry needs the electronic media. They are the most powerful mode of public communication in our time and ...
-
An Interview with Kitty Lewis and Barry Dempster of Brick Books
Interviewed by Sharon Caseburg
Sharon Caseburg: Brick must receive a considerable number of unsolicited poetry manuscripts each year. What process must a writer go through in order to be considered and ultimately published by Brick Books?
Barry Dempster: We receive over 110 manuscripts a year and, as senior editor, I give every one of these serious consideration. Those that stand out go on to a second stage, which sometimes includes ...
-
An Interview with Alison Pick
Interviewed by A. J. Levin
A. J. Levin: You seem to have started off as a poet and moved to fiction. Did you always write both, or did one come first?
Alison Pick: Originally I wrote neither. Although I loved to write as a kid, and wish that I still had a copy of a novel I started in a Hilroy notebook in Grade 2 (evil twins: how original), it never occurred to me to pursue writing as a vocation until my final year of ...
-
An Interview with Daniel David Moses
Interviewed by Joanne Arnott
Joanne Arnott: With your permission, Daniel: I find my questions are all about the inside of your writing life, so I’ll start off there, and work toward the outer manifestations as we go. How does it feel to be Daniel David Moses writing a poem? Can you describe the sensations, a usual way or flow, share an image of yourself writing a poem?
Daniel David Moses: This image of working on poetry comes from ...
-
An interview with Poor Tree
Interviewed by CV2
CV2: Describe a typical performance of Poor Tree. Obviously each one is different, but how do you approach each performance?
Dana Landry: Well, we tend to spend a little bit of time together beforehand. And just get into a sense of what everyone’s rhythm is so we can come to the performance having a sense of each other and where we’re at. It’s interesting because, when we get up there, as much as that ...
