Dr. Cheryl Hopson: A Lifetime on the Pages

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Yes. So I, for example, I'm not an accountant, and I'm not a chemist. I am very good at what I am good at and I love it and I value it so much. And so I recognize it as my gift, and my mother has always said to me, when you've been given a gift, it is your responsibility to share it. Now, she has her religious background. But I have that belief also. Probably because I'm her daughter, but also because my grandmother said the same. And whatever that gift is, if you are really good at making people laugh--I love comedians. I do. Probably because of all the trauma, but for me, laughter is healing. So if you can also read one of my poems and smile or laugh, that's awesome. I like that.

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Q&A with Jeffrey Greene

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“They’re memoir, but they’re subject driven, and the whole thing is just that when I start these books, I’m as ignorant as most of the audience, or maybe a lot of them more knowledgeable than I am. But the whole thing is a journey into a subject and the transformation that takes place is the knowledge that’s acquired as you go, and all literature is based on transformation.”

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Emily Iris Degn Interview: Nature Writing

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Emily Iris Degn Interview: Nature Writing

“Storytelling has always been a huge part of my life, and I have been lucky enough to live in nature-dominated locations and explore the wilderness from a young age. The two things, nature and stories, have been the most defining and important things to me, so they naturally went hand in hand. As I've grown up, I have paired that with my concern for the growing climate crisis and my environmental education.”

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Maurice Ferguson: Being a Nature Poet

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Maurice Ferguson: Being a Nature Poet

“Tell them to read, read, read—not to imitate but to assimilate. They should write about everything from aardvarks to zebras and all that’s left in between. Their terrain should be from Angola to Zimbabwe. They should keep notebooks because memory cannot be trusted. Like Bill Stafford, they should know the difference between a nibble and a bite. Like Whitman, they must contain multitudes and shout their barbaric yawp across the rooftops.”

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NaBeela Washington: The Will to Move Forward

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“In this collection I wanted to accept that those things just are and that those things do not have to define me and that those things, while unfortunate, helped me become who I am today. And that's why this concept of “accepting things you cannot change” it so important. It gives you peace at night, it gives you grace, and most importantly the will to move forward.”

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Q&A with Henry Taylor

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Q&A with Henry Taylor

“The earliest influences on me were probably in many ways the strongest for a long time. There was a brief period as when I was an undergraduate when I thought that James Dickey’s way of writing poems was the only way that was worthwhile. And he was very kind about that and tried to explain to me that I probably had my own voice somewhere, and that I ought to be bearing down on finding it.”

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Q&A with Sofia Samatar

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“[W]hen it comes to writing, I think amusing yourself is incredibly important. I'm very much for self-indulgence. Often when you do the thing that you really want to do the most, it’s the thing that you think no one will like, right? Because it's so weird that only you like it. But in my experience, that will often have the most reach and touch the most people.”

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Daniel A. Olivas: Our Stories Are Important

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“When I am a guest author at colleges, most of the students I meet with are Latinx and often represent the first generation in their families to go to college. I often say to them that our stories are important. I then ask them: What would happen if we did not write our stories? And they always get it right: If we don’t write our stories, someone else will, and they will get them wrong.”

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