Contributor Interviews

MAR Asks, Brenda Peynado Answers

Brenda Peynado’s fiction and nonfiction appear or are forthcoming in The O.Henry Prize Stories 2015, The Threepenny Review, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from Florida State University, where she held a Kingsbury Fellowship and was Fiction Editor of The Southeast Review. Last year, she lived in the Dominican Republic on a...

MAR Asks, Becky Hagenston Answers

Becky Hagenston’s first collection of stories, A Gram of Mars, won Sarabande Books’ Mary McCarthy Prize; her second collection, Strange Weather, won the Spokane Prize and was published by Press 53. Her stories have appeared in Subtropics, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, and many other journals, as well as the O. Henry anthology. She...

MAR Asks, Yael Massen Answers

Yael Massen is a first-year MFA student in poetry at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her work can be found in Ilanot Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and DIALOGIST. Her poem, “The Cartographer’s Daughter,” appears in MAR 35.1. What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication? “The Cartographer’s Daughter” is actually an ekphrastic poem, based on...

MAR Asks, Andrea Witzke Slot Answers

Andrea Witzke Slot lives between London and Chicago. She writes poetry, fiction, essays, and academic work, and is particularly interested in the ways and means in which cultures, ideas, and genres intersect. She is author of the poetry collection To find a new beauty (Gold Wake Press, 2012), and her work is forthcoming or has...

MAR Asks, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura Answers

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura was the 2014 John K. Walsh Residency Fellow at the Anderson Center at Tower View, the 2014 Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellow at Ragdale, and a 2013 Robert Pinsky Global Fellow in Poetry. She holds an MFA from Boston University. Born in Colombia and raised in New York City, Luisa, a former attorney, left...

MAR Asks, Emily Schulten Answers

Emily Schulten is a poet from Bowling Green, Kentucky. She is the author of the collection Rest in Black Haw, poetry available from New Plains Press. Her poems appear widely in nationally recognized journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, New Orleans Review, Fifth Wednesday, North American Review, Salamander, The Los Angeles Review, and others. She’s here to...

MAR Asks, Nina Boutsikaris Answers

Nina Boutsikaris is a nonfiction MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, where she is the nonfiction editor of Sonora Review. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Puerto del Sol, Hobart, Brevity, Booth, Phoebe, Spartan and elsewhere. Her short nonfiction piece, “What Doo-Wop Does” was a finalist in MAR’s 2014 Fineline competition...

MAR Asks, Bryce Emley Answers

As a finalist in the 2014 Fineline Competition for prose poems, short shorts, and everything in between, Bryce Emley’s piece, “Diving Deep (My Father as Octopus)” appears in MAR 35.1. He’s here today to discuss science as artistic inspiration, bizarre birthmarks, and his rather unorthodox reaction to his MAR acceptance. Bryce Emley is a freelance...

MAR Asks, Kristin George Bagdanov Answers

Today on the blog we have a contributor interview with Kristin George Bagdanov, whose poem “Purge Body” appears in MAR 35.1. Kristin is an MFA candidate in poetry at Colorado State University, where she is a Lilly Graduate Fellow. Her poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming from Cincinnati Review, Juked, The Laurel Review,...

MAR Asks, Cynthia Marie Hoffman Answers

Our latest contributor interview focuses on obsessions, compulsions, and fabrications of the mind — not to mention deep secrets, hulking angels, and the small choices poetry is built upon. Who could ask for more? Cynthia Marie Hoffman‘s poem “Open Window,” appears in MAR 35.1. Shes the author of Sightseer and Paper Doll Fetus, as well...

MAR Asks, Rachel Morgan Answers

If you’re afraid of outer space, then today’s contributor interview with Rachel Morgan is for you. Rachel Morgan lives, teaches, and writes in Iowa. She is co-editor of Fire Under the Moon: An Anthology of Contemporary Slovene Poetry (Black Dirt Press). Her work recently appears or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Bellevue Literary...

MAR Asks, Alyse Bensel Answers

Alyse Bensel serves as the Book Review Editor at The Los Angeles Review and Co-Editor at Beecher’s. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Not of Their Own Making (Dancing Girl Press, 2014) and Shift (Plan B Press, 2012). Her poems have most recently appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Sugar Mule, and Ruminate, among others. She is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing specializing in...