THE POETRY QUESTION: TPQ20

Courtney and Chris Margolin sit down with Chen Chen for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry. They might also talk about Russian literature, Buffy, and the horrors of getting sucked down a mall escalator. This is quite the conversation!

陳琛 / Chen Chen’s second book of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in Sept. 2022. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. In 2019 Bloodaxe Books published the UK edition. Chen is also the author of four chapbooks and the forthcoming book of essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God (Noemi Press, 2023). His work appears/is forthcoming in many publications, including Poem-a-Day and three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, & 2021). He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence and serves on the poetry faculty for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. With a brilliant team, he edits the journal, Underblong. With Gudetama the lazy egg, he edits the lickety~split. He lives in Waltham, MA with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles.

**Correction... it was not Courtney's Aunt, but a friend of the family. :)

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Courtney and Chris sit down with Dare Williams for a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Dare Williams: A 2019 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, Dare Williams is a Queer HIV-positive poet, artist, rooted in Southern California. He has received fellowships from John Ashbury Home School and The Frost Place. He is a co-producer of the reading series Word of Mouth which raises money for communities facing food and nutrition inequities and was the co-curator of the WeHo Reads Literature Festival 2021. Dare’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best American Poets 2021. His work has been anthologized in Redshift 5 by Arroyo Secco Press and is featured in THRUSH, The Shore, Exposition Review, Cultural Weekly, Bending Genres, and is forthcoming in Altadena Review and elsewhere. He is at work on his debut poetry collection.

Chris and Courtney sit down with Deesha Philyaw to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

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Chris sits down for a one-on-one conversation with Sarah Kersey about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry!

Sarah Kersey is a poet and x-ray tech from New Jersey. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Hellebore, Mortar Magazine, Ghost City Review, The Harpoon Review, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Editor of South Florida Poetry Journal. She tweets @sk__poet.

Chris and Courtney sit down with Denzel Scott to discuss passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

Denzel Xavier Scott earned his BA in English from the University of Chicago and received his Writing MFA at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in his hometown of Savannah, GA.

His works appear in Spillway, Decomp, Euphony Journal, and Blacklight Magazine of the University of Chicago, Bombay Gin literary magazine of Naropa University, the Missing Slate literary magazine, Apeiron Review, based out of Philadelphia, the Gambler Mag, based out of New Orleans, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, SLAB magazine of Slippery Rock University and, Linden Avenue. He has a forthcoming publication in Rattle and the Louisville Review.

Denzel Scott is a past recipient of the University of Chicago’s prestigious Summer Arts Council Fellowship Grant. In September 2018, he became one of the winners of Writer Relief’s Peter K Hixson Memorial Prize.

Semi-Finalist for Cave Canem

Find him on Twitter @denzelscott.

Chris L. Butler's BLERD was mentioned as a favorite of Scott's. 

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Chris sits solo with Todd Dillard to discuss passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Todd Dillard grew up in Houston, Texas, completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Houston with a concentration in creative writing and poetry. From there, he moved to New York to study in the creative writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, where he received his MFA in poetry in 2008.

After living for a few years in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Todd moved to Philadelphia with his wife to start a family. He’s now the father of a wonderful daughter, and works as a writer and editor for a teaching hospital.

Todd’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including Best New Poets, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Electric Literature, Nimrod, Superstition Review, and Split Lip Magazine. His work was selected as a finalist for the 2018 “Best Small Fictions” anthology, and has been nominated numerous times for the “Best of the Net” and the Pushcart anthologies. He is a recipient of the Birdwhistle Poetry Prize. His debut collection “Ways We Vanish” was released in 2020 from Okay Donkey Press.

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Courtney and Chris sit down with George Abraham, author of Birthright (Button Poetry), to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet and writer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and the Big Other Book Award in Poetry, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry, and was named  on Best of 2020 lists with The Asian American Writers' Workshop and The New Arab. He is also the author of the chapbooks al youm (The Atlas Review, 2017), and the specimen's apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, The Arab American National Museum, The Boston Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation, a winner of the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize selected by Tommy Pico, and a recipient of the "Best Poet" title from the 2017 College Union Poetry Slam International. Their writing has appeared in The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Guernica, The Baffler, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, West Branch, Mizna, and anthologies such as Nepantla, Bettering American Poetry, and Beyond Memory: an Anthology of Arab American Creative Nonfiction. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, and affiliated faculty member at Emerson College, Abraham is currently based in Chicago, IL, where he is a Litowitz MFA+MA  Candidate in Poetry at Northwestern University.

Chris sits down for a one-on-one with Elizabeth Horan.

Elisabeth Horan is a poet, mother, and small press publisher living in the wilds of Vermont. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks and collections, and the Editor-In-Chief of Animal Heart Press. Elisabeth is passionate about discovering new voices and mentoring emerging poets. She is also a fierce advocate for those impacted by mental illness.

Chris and Courtney sit down with Danez Smith to talk about Passion, Process, Pitfalls, and Poetry! 

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of “Homie” (Graywolf Press, 2020), "Don’t Call Us Dead" (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and "[insert] boy" (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez's work has been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez has been featured as part of Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 list and is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. They are a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

Courtney sits down with the legendary Ebony Stewart for a special one-on-one edition of TPQ20

Ebony Stewart is an international touring poet and performance artist. Her work speaks to the black experience, with emphasis on gender, sexuality, womanhood, and race, with the hopes to be relatable, remove shame, heal minds, encourage dialogue, and inspire folks in marginalized communities.

As one of the most decorated poets in Texas, Ebony is a respected coach & mentor, one of the top touring poets in the country, and a Woman of the World Poetry Slam Champion.

The Sexual Health activist and former Sexual Health Educator is also pursuing a license as a Clinician Therapist.

As a playwright, Ebony’s one-woman shows, Hunger and Ocean, have received B. Iden Payne Awards & the David Mark Cohen New Play Award.

She is the author of Love Letters to Balled Fists and Home.Girl.Hood. Her work has been featured in For Harriet, AfroPunk, Teen Vogue, and The Texas Observer. The only poet to perform at the 2018 Seattle Pride Festival before 200,000 people, was Ebony Stewart.

She is, #thestoryoftheblackgirlwinning

Poets/Writers mentioned: Ariana Brown, Janae Johnson, Ayokunle Falomo & Suzi Q Smith