“I try to be forthright”: Interview with Michael Chang
With their recent tap to edit Lambda Literary’s Emerge anthology, and timely receipt of the Poetry Project’s Brannan Prize, Fence editor and poet Michael Chang’s influence on this decade has begun. Writer Zachary Issenberg sits down with Chang to talk process and literary inspiration.
“I move like a poet in my entire life”: An Interview with Safia Elhillo
A conversation with poet Safia Elhillio about her subversive collection, her poetic origin story, and her neverending search for the perfect poem.
Evolving Alongside Your Art: An Interview with Fatimah Asghar
"Artmaking is the process of evolving. If you allow yourself to really let the art flow through you in the way that you need it to, you will then allow yourself to be changed by the art, rather than trying to impose your will over the art."
“Shamelessly Lyrical and Ecstatic”: An Interview with Kemi Alabi
"I'm always playing with sound, trying to find the line, and letting language lead me somewhere. I'm satisfied with what I've found when the real shit pops up, and that's what I can revise toward. Black feminist writers taught me the urgency, political potency, and transformative power of truth-telling, and the only truth I'm interested in is accessed through vulnerability—I'm skeptical of its other origins."
“The Beauty Is Where the Play Is”: A Conversation with Paige Clark on “She is Haunted”
Many of Clark’s protagonists are mixed-race Asian women who grapple with how their heritage shapes their relationships with friends, family members, and lovers. More than a few of them are named Elisabeth (or variations thereof) and share overlapping histories and similar lexicons—as if they were parts of a single consciousness refracted across time and space.
The Collective Hungers of Women: K-Ming Chang on “Gods of Want” and the Pluralistic “I”
Chang speaks on the poetic and narrative mechanisms at work in her short story collection, Gods of Want.