interviews, interviews

I've been working hard on two projects for CRAFT: an interview with our contest judge Donald Quist, coming out in December, and an interview with Naomi Cohn, coming out in March.

Donald Quist is the founder of PAST TEN; the current editor (his writer-wife Bailey Gaylin Moore) solicited an essay from me for PAST TEN and I became interested in the project and his writing. An assistant professor at University of Missouri, he's published fiction and a collection on popular culture, and two books of essays, HARBORS and TO THOSE BOUNDED. I've been assembling questions together with our other CNF editor, which is more difficult than I thought it would be. I'm used to working on my own.

Our EIC forwarded an invitation from Rose Metal Press to interview Naomi Cohn. I fell in love with her forthcoming book THE BRAILLE ENCYCLOPEDIA, a hybrid (braided?) text composed of alphabetized fragments (vignettes?). I love the indeterminate genre, what she calls "organized chaos" and a "poetic mess." Love the lyricism of her prose. I probably shouldn't be committing myself to a project that's bound to be time-consuming, but it may be inspiring for my own work as well.