I Wanted To Also Ask About Ghosts

MFA Fiction Candidates Peter Williams and Zeke Perkins interview Chanelle Benz during her visit to UKY. Chanelle Benz has published work in Guernica, Granta.com, The New York Times, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Fence and others, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead was published in 2017 by Ecco/HarperCollins. It was named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also shortlisted for the 2018 Saroyan Prize and longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Story Prize. Her novel The Gone Dead was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June 2019 and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Tonight Show Summer Reads Finalist. It was named a best new book of the summer by O, The Oprah Magazine, Time, Southern Living, and Nylon. She currently lives in Memphis where she teaches at Rhodes College.

MFA Candidate Gabrielle Oliver interviews Shayla Lawson during her visit to the University of Kentucky. Shayla Lawson is the author of THIS IS MAJOR: NOTES ON DIANA ROSS, DARK GIRLS & BEING DOPE (Harper Perennial, 2020) and three poetry collections: I THINK I'M READY TO SEE FRANK OCEAN, A SPEED EDUCATION IN HUMAN BEING and PANTONE. She has written for Tin House, PAPER, ESPN, Salon, Guernica, & others, but she mostly writes for you. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla Lawson curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree (pronounced Shayla, no relation). She was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, is a professor at Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

MFA candidate Emily Goldsmith interviews Keith Wilson during their visit to the University of Kentucky. Affrilachian poet Keith S. Wilson is the author of Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). His poetry and prose have appeared in Elle, Poetry magazine, the Kenyon Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. Wilson's nonfiction has won an Indiana Review Nonfiction Prize and the Redivider Blurred Line Prize, and has been anthologized in the award-winning collection Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. Wilson has received fellowships or grants from the NEA, Cave Canem, Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. He was a Gregory Djanikian Scholar, and his poetry has won the Rumi Prize and been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net.

MFA Candidates Ash Baker and Emily Goldsmith interview Kayleb Rae Candrilli during their visit to the University of Kentucky for the Visiting Writers Series. Kayleb Rae Candrilli is a recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award and is author of Water I Won't Touch (Copper Canyon, 2021), All the Gay Saints (Saturnalia 2020), and What Runs Over (YesYes Books, 2017). What Runs Over won the 2016 Pamet River Prize and was a 2017 Lambda Literary finalist for Transgender Poetry and a finalist for the 2018 American Book Fest's best book award in LGBTQ nonfiction. All the Gay Saints was the winner of the 2018 Saturnalia Book Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. They are published or forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, TriQuarterly, Puerto del Sol, Bettering American Poetry, The Boston Review, and many others. Kayleb has earned a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Creative Writing from Penn State University. They hold both an MFA and an MLIS degree from the University of Alabama. They live in Philadelphia with their partner. Pre-Order All the Gay Saints on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/All-Gay-Saints-Kayleb-Candrilli/dp/1947817124 Available May 5, 2020

MFA candidates Peter Williams and Chantel Kelly interview Tayari Jones during her visit to Lexington, Kentucky for the University of Kentucky Gaines Center for the Humanities 2019 Bale Boone Symposium. New York Times best-selling author, Tayari Jones, is the author four novels, most recently An American Marriage . Published in 2018, An American Marriage is an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list as well as his end of the year roundup. The novel was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize), Aspen Words Prize and an NAACP Image Award. With over 500,000 copies in print domestically, it has been published in two dozen countries.

Poet and MFA candidate Emily McCollister Goldsmith interviews Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of Cenzontle, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer Award, and the Golden Poppy Award from the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. Cenzontle was listed among one of NPR’s and the New York Public Library’s top picks of 2018. His memoir, Children of the Land, is available from Harper Collins now! As of January 28th, 2020, you can purchase Castillo's memoir, Children of the Land, online or in stores!

A Conversation with Gurney Norman by New Limestone Review

Poets Angel Dye and Jeremy Flick interview Morgan Parker. Morgan Parker is the author of the poetry collections Magical Negro (Tin House 2019), There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House 2017), and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015). Her debut young adult novel Who Put This Song On? will be released by Delacorte Press on September 24, 2019. A debut book of nonfiction is forthcoming from One World/ Random House. Parker received her Bachelors in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Columbia University and her MFA in Poetry from NYU. She is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Parker is the creator and host of Reparations, Live! at the Ace Hotel. With Tommy Pico, she co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series, and with Angel Nafis, she is The Other Black Girl Collective. Morgan is a Sagittarius, and she lives in Los Angeles.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin by New Limestone Review

Holy Cow! It's been an amazing first year and a half of I Wanted to Also Ask About Ghosts. We wanted to showcase some of the best interview answers from Season 1 as a special December episode. Please enjoy a selection from all TEN episodes and stay tuned for the Best Of: Season 2!

Editor-in-Chief Omaria Pratt talks with Leesa Cross-Smith about her book "Whiskey & Ribbons," life as a writer without a MFA, and her short fiction literary journal Whiskey Paper. Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and writer from Kentucky. She is the author of Whiskey & Ribbons (Hub City Press, 2018) and Every Kiss a War (Mojave River Press, 2014) and the forthcoming short story collection So We Can Glow (Grand Central Publishing, 2020) and the forthcoming novel This Close To Okay (Grand Central Publishing, 2021.) Every Kiss a War was a finalist for both the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction (2012) and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2012). Her short story “Whiskey & Ribbons” won Editor’s Choice in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest (2011) and was listed as a notable story for storySouth‘s Million Writers Award. The novel Whiskey & Ribbons was longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and listed among Oprah Magazine’s “Top Books of Summer.” She was a consulting editor for Best Small Fictions 2017. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, Best Small Fictions 2015, NYLON, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, SmokeLong Quarterly, Little Fiction, Wigleaf Top 50, Longform Fiction, Carve Magazine, Synaesthesia Magazine, Paper Darts, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, Gigantic Sequins, Folio, American Short Fiction (online), Midwestern Gothic, Juked, Word Riot and many others. She and her husband Loran run a literary magazine called WhiskeyPaper. Find more @ LeesaCrossSmith.com and WhiskeyPaper.com.

Editor-in-Chief Omaria Pratt talks with fiction author Garth Greenwell about his book What Belongs to You, queer culture, and Kentucky. Original music composed by Evan Flick. Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City.

Editor Jeremy Flick sat down with Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo to talk about his new book "Air Traffic", his poetry, and other interesting things. Original music composed by Evan Flick. Gregory Pardlo's ​collection​ Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His other honors​ include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts; his first collection Totem was selected by Brenda Hillman for the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007. He is Poetry Editor of Virginia Quarterly Review. Air Traffic, a memoir in essays, was released by Knopf in April 2018.

For this month's interview, Editor Jeremy Flick talks to Kelly Forsythe about her upcoming book of poetry, PERENNIAL. They discuss writing, Columbine, and other things (including Kelly's favorite car-jams). Music composed by Evan Flick. Bio: A native Pittsburgher, Kelly Forsythe is currently living and writing in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Perennial (Coffee House Press, forthcoming August 2018), and a digital chapbook of poems, Helix (Floating Wolf Quarterly). Her work has been published in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, The Literary Review, The Minnesota Review, and Columbia Poetry Review, among others. She was recently featured in American Poet as an Academy of American Poets "Emerging Poet," with an introduction by Noelle Kocot. For over half a decade, Forsythe was the Director of Publicity for Copper Canyon Press. Prior to working with Copper Canyon, she was a consultant for the web team at the Poetry Foundation, and worked with the marketing team at Poets & Writers Magazine. She has given lectures on publishing and book publicity at NYU, The Academy of American Poets, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and Manhattanville College. Her publicity endeavors at Copper Canyon include Natalie Diaz’s “When My Brother Was an Aztec,” Ocean Vuong’s “Night Sky with Exit Wounds,” and “Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda.” She is on the Board of Directors for Alice James Books. In addition to her work with Copper Canyon, she was the founder of PHANTOM, an online journal. Forsythe works at National Geographic, where she helps to manage the literary PR strategy for the books division.

Shay Alexi is a radically tender poet and performance artist based out of Atlanta, GA. Her work explores the intersections of girlhood, mental health, sexuality, and self love in an effort to dismantle patriarchy and cultivate joy. Her chapbook, DIARY OF A GHOST GIRL, is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press. She was the winner of the 2017 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins poetry prize and the 2017 Java Monkey Slam champion. Shay was a Whitinger Scholar at Ball State University where she earned her BFA in Acting, creating the foundation for her work's innovative blend of traditional spoken word and physical storytelling. Her work has been featured by Button Poetry, Write About Now, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Glass: a Journal of Poetry, and FreezeRay Poetry. Music composed by Evan Flick.

Margaret Lazarus Dean is the author of the novel, The Time It Takes to Fall (Simon and Schuster), and the book, Leaving Orbit : Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight (Graywolf Press), which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. She is the co-author, with Scott Kelly, of the forthcoming memoir, Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery (Knopf), be published October 17, 2017. Dean is an Associate Professor and the Director for Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She lives with her husband and son in Knoxville, TN. Music composed by Evan Flick.

Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others. Her debut collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin in 2014. Fountain is the host of NPR's This Is Just To Say, a radio show and podcast where she talks to contemporary poets about the poems they make and the poems they love. Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward's University and Visiting Professor at the Michener Center, she lives in Austin with her husband, playwright Kirk Lynn, and their children. Fountain's debut novel, I'm Not Missing, will be published July 10, 2018 by Flatiron Books (Macmillan) and is available for pre-order wherever books are sold. Music composed by Evan Flick.

Yona Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University and finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award. Her work has been anthologized in many publications including A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry and The Force of What’s Possible: Accessibility and the Avant-Garde. She contributed to Marvel’s World of Wakanda anthology and co-wrote with Ta-Nehisi Coates Marvel’s Black Panther & The Crew. She is an assistant professor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Kelly Luce is the author of Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (A Strange Object, 2013), which won Foreword Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize for Fiction, and the novel Pull Me Under, out November 1, 2016 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years. Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Sozopol Fiction Seminars, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Salon, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, and other publications. She received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin in 2015 and lives in Charlestown, MA. She is a Contributing Editor for Electric Literature and a 2016-17 fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where she is working on her next novel.

Kayla Rae Whitaker is the debut author of The Animators, the dazzling story of a friendship between two women bound by their passion for art. Her work has appeared in Buzzfeed, Literary Hub, Split Lip Magazine, Bodega, Joyland, Five Quarterly, American Microreviews and Interviews, and others. She has a BA from the University of Kentucky and an MFA from New York University. After many years of living in Brooklyn, she returned to Kentucky, her home state, in 2016 with her husband and their geriatric tomcat, Breece D’J Pancake.

Adam Ross, editor of Sewanee Review, is the author of Mr. Peanut, a 2010 New York Times Notable Book, named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Philadel­phia Inquirer, The New Repub­lic, and The Econ­o­mist. Ladies and Gen­tle­men, his short story col­lec­tion, was included in Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2011 and included “In the Base­ment,” a final­ist for the 2012 BBC Inter­na­tional Story Award. Ross was a 2013–2014 Hod­der Fel­low at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and the 2014 Mary Ellen von der Hey­den Fel­low in Fic­tion at The Amer­i­can Acad­emy in Berlin. Ross' non­fic­tion has also been pub­lished in The New York Times Book Review, The Daily Beast, The Nashville Scene, Tin House, and The Wall Street Jour­nal. His fic­tion has appeared in The Berlin Jour­nal, the Car­olina Quar­terly, and The Sun­day Times of Lon­don.

Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years was praised by publications including The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Times of London. Jackson is the winner of a Whiting Award. His novel also won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First novel prize, the PEN/ Hemingway award for first fiction, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. Jackson’s honors include fellowships from TED, the Lannan Foundation, the BreadLoaf Conference, and the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and Tin House. He serves on the faculty at New York University. A well-regarded speaker, Jackson has delivered lectures and key note addresses at events and institutions including the annual TED Conference, the Yale Law School RebLaw Conference, the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Brown University, UMASS Amherst, and Columbia University. Jackson is also an advocate for criminal justice reform who has visited prisons and youth facilities in the United States and abroad.

John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. He writes for GQ, Harper’s Magazine, and Oxford American, and is the author of Blood Horses and Pulphead: Essays. Sullivan lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Tyehimba Jess is the author of leadbelly and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Olio. leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the "Best Poetry Books of 2005." Jess's second book, Olio, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the 2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the 2017 Book Award for Poetry from the Society of Midland Authors. It was also a finalist for the 2016 National Books Critics Circle Award, 2017 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Library Journal called it a "daring collection, which blends forthright, musically acute language with portraiture" and Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it "Encyclopedic, ingenious, and abundant" and selected it as one of the five best poetry books of 2016. (Photo from Wave Books website, credit: John Midgley)

Eileen Myles is the author of nineteen books including I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems, and a 2015 reissue of Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in non-fiction, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, and the Shelley Prize from the PSA. In 2016 Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. Currently they teach at NYU and Naropa University and live in Marfa TX and New York

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of Gold Fame Citrus and the multiple-prize-winning Battleborn. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and on the faculty at the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and at the Mojave School. Derek Palacio is the author of The Mortifications and How to Shake the Other Man, and teaches in Ann Arbor Michican, as well as at the Institute for Indian American Arts, and at the Mojave School.

Ada Limon is the author of four books include Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the National Books Critic Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by the New York Times. Her other work includes The Lucky Wreck, The Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers.