Helena and Nicholson Baker on drawing your loved ones, the horrors of the world, and finding your way back to beauty.

Perry Janes on Hollywood, ego, and trying not to break his NDA.

April Gibson on chronic illness, religion, and being a teenage mother.

Declan Ryan on his father's construction job, tenderness between boxers, and the inevitable tragic end.

Monica Rico on cooking, grunt work, and the heat at General Motors.

Nam Le on commerce, irony vs. sincerity, and being in the Arctic. 

Gregory Pardlo on improv, therapy, and driving around with his father’s ashes.

Caitlin Cowan on rejection, tradwives, and poems from our better self.

Blake Butler on complex mourning, the suicide of his wife Molly Brodak, and finding his way back.

Remembering the lesbian poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt, as well as the Palestinian poet and symbol of the resistance, Refaat Alareer.

Steve Zeitlin and Bob Holman on the healing act of writing, small frogs, and politics at the fiddle festival.

Laura Mullen on academia, death threats, and doing the next brave thing.

Dorothea Lasky on The Shining, writing what you fear, and the ferocity of color.

Daniel Brock Johnson on risk, a T-shirt mantra, and life after the death of his friend James Foley.

Sebastian Merrill on the voice of his former self, the underworld, and laughing during yoga.

 Sahar Muradi on cyclical time, leather butterflies, and saying goodbye to her father.

Sean Cole on loneliness, fear of aging, and what poems can do.

Eric Sneathen on queer utopia, bad writing, and San Francisco in the ’70s.

Irène Mathieu on pediatrics, suburbs without a TV, and our body's unknown terrain.

Natalie Shapero on Wheel of Fortune, babysitting for her landlord, and pretending not to grieve.

Rosanna Young Oh on her parents’ grocery store, leaving poetry, and the duties of the firstborn. 

Airea D. Matthews on self-interest, starry skies, and her parents’ fateful wedding day.

Sophus Helle on empire, Calvin and Hobbes, and the world's first author. 

Merlin Sheldrake on fungi, creativity, and the queerness of nature.

Leslie Sainz on Bill O’Reilly, glassblowing, and the lure of praise.

Diane Seuss on New York in the ’70s, virtue, and her father’s early death.

Katie Farris on cancer, desire, and her early-menopause care package. 

Paisley Rekdal on maps, Sisyphus, and the dangers of beauty.

Aaron Smith on shame, telling the truth, and his mother's last lipstick.

Rebecca Gayle Howell and Ashley M. Jones on working-class poems, good food, and their fathers’ bodies.

Jennifer Jean on foster care, finding her voice, and loving her father as he was.

Mahogany L. Browne on her first kiss, family secrets, and having your book banned.

Janine Joseph on memory loss, car sounds, and a mirror that loves you.

Peter Cole on his brother's death, finding his vocation, and the erotic pull of letters.

Elisa Gonzalez on bisexuality, humor, and working in finance.

Raymond Antrobus on late-night BBC poetry dubs, real people, and becoming a father.

Gabrielle Bates on betrayal, home church, and living in her mother's slaughterhouse.

Marisa Tirado on Selena, cow skulls, and the memory of adobe brick.

Remembering Richard Howard as a poet, mentor, and friend, plus a few words on money by Bernadette Mayer.

Celes Tisdale on similarities, teaching after the uprising, and his mother's favorite poet.

Belarussian poets Valzhyna Mort and Julia Cimafiejeva on magic, transformation, and what's hidden underneath the forest floor.

JoAnna Novak on islands, a plush placenta, and a gift from the suicide hotline.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado on fate, snake mirrors, and the daily work of letting go.

Ama Codjoe on normal naked bodies, solving problems, and her childfree life.

Noʻu Revilla on ancestral history in newspapers, ocean consciousness, and how to be a guest.

E.J. Koh on distance, broken English, and writing poems that forgive.

Chelsea Harlan on knowledge, creaturehood, and the quest for her mother’s secret sadness.

André Naffis-Sahely on desert sand, rootlessness, and the long shadow of fascism.

Elisa Gabbert on commitment, boredom, and the poem as theater. 

Saeed Jones on accuracy, being funny, and creating what we need.