MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics students and alumni interview recently-published authors

Since 2018, the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics has collaborated with Essay Press on the annual publication of a work or works of innovative prose. The first two books in the series were published this summer, and MFA students and alumni have come together to interview the authors to gain deeper insights into their work and poetics. Stephanie Segura (2020), N. L. Sweeney (2020) and Scott Bentley (2021) interviewed Katherine Agyemaa Agard about their book of colour, an experimental essay about color, hybridity, and art-making that provides a memoir of Agyemaa Agard’s coming to North America and encountering binaries of black and white within global anti-blackness. Cliff Watson (2021), Annika Bunney (2021), and Sabina Livadariu (2020) spoke with Kaia Preus about her book The War Requiem, which was selected by MFA faculty member Rebecca Brown. In the interview, Preus discusses her inspiration and creative processes for the novel’s unique blending of memoir, research, and historical fiction to explore Benjamin Britten’s dynamic piece of choral and orchestral music, The War Requiem. Both interviews are available online through the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics website, inaugurating a series of interviews that will continue next year with the publication of the 2019 selections, Silvina López Medin's Poem That Never Ends and Yanara Friedland's Groundswell.