Years after reading the story (Junot Diaz' "Drown"), after teaching it to high schoolers (many of them POC), I set out to rewrite this queer of color narrative in my story, "The Monks." I wanted to show how a straight, masculine guy of color could brush up against queerness and feel empowered by it, not scared, even if in the slightest of ways, the slightest of spiritual progressions. 

Really I think all art should be freely available

To try to allay his doubt, or figure out of it’s real, [Li] mentally consults his in-progress novel, as if it were a friend. He intuits, in an intuition described by the line you quoted, that his doubt is wrong, is habitual and self-sabotalogical.

AR: This is a boundary and you are going to push against it

In April I had the good fortune to zoom with Justin Jannise just a few days before his debut poetry collection, How to Be Better by Being Worse, was released by BOA Editions, Ltd. A wonderfully

I wrote this book manic, in psychosis, in withdrawal, while feeling like I was overdosing,

I think I give non-important people dignity. I still believe there is magic in this world.

Bill Peace  12:49

If I gotta start explaining ableism...

Jillian Weise  12:51

I know, in the fricking hospital.

I suppose a meaningful conclusion I came to was that it's often fruitful to follow diversions and accidents, but that you have to create the conditions to experience them.

My favorite blurb about Amy Long's essay collection, Codependence, is Joshua Mohr saying: "Long leads her readers into emotional investigations and she has the courage to never flinch." To do what

I had the pleasure of meeting the poet Richie Hofmann for the second time this February when he came to Bloomington to give a reading. We spent the afternoon laughing and touring the recently-reopened

i used to write on adderall like a million years ago or when drinking also but thats stopped. like once, last year, i wrote a short story while drinking, and i cant even remember where i saved it so idek if its any good, bc after a while i got distracted and started watching YouTube makeup reviews.

I write about dark things a lot but not without at least some hope…or hope for hope.

I wrote for twenty years without anyone paying me or offering me confirmation or telling me that what I wrote would be welcomed by the world. Quite the contrary. 

"Gary” always felt like a misnomer to me, something I had to put up with to keep the peace.

Jenny Irish and I sat down to discuss her stunning debut, Common Ancestor, with Black Lawrence Press. Her prose poem, "A Brief History of Motivations" was published on our site in

A Flash Book Review of ‘50 Barn Poems’ and Brief Interview with Zac Smith

I think they mean they just don't like a woman going around going "cunt cunt cunt."

...a person is like an ocean, or a country, or a forest...

The 550-page the Internet is for real by poet, activist, educator, and underwear model Chris Campanioni struck me earlier this year as a much-needed treatise on "post-Internet" culture. Yes, I found

I'm four months late posting this interview, and that's on me, but it's a testament to Sam Ross's debut collection, Company, that I've thought of it at least weekly since. His poems are deceptively

When I was younger, if you had a hard time following rules, you became an artist.

Now, if you have a hard time following rules, you become an entrepreneur.

People in the literary world follow rules the most.

From a Wisconsin "Dogman," to a 400-pound giant turtle, to Martians that serve pancakes, B.J. Hollars' latest book, Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover

A conversation with Patrick Coleman, loosely around his new book, The Churchgoer (Harper Perennial).

This is a story about humanity. It makes sense in that it proves most things don’t make sense. A

"Honestly, I don't care if language overtakes story."