Interview: Sarah Mkhonza

Sarah Mkhonza was forced to leave her native Swaziland in 2003 following a campaign of harassment against herself and her family. An outspoken voice for women’s rights under the monarchical Swazi regime, Dr. Mkhonza wrote newspaper columns for The Observer and The Swazi Sun that told of the daily struggles of Swazi women and children ejected from their land. In her columns, she employed a “journalistic fiction” style intended to foster a writing culture among Swazi women. As her popularity as a critic of the government’s repressive policies grew, she was told to stop writing. Her refusal resulted in threats, assaults, and hospitalization. At the University of Swaziland, where she was professor of inguistics and English, her office was robbed and vandalized on two occasions -- her computer and diskettes destroyed and tossed in the mud.

Dr. Mkhonza has published two novels, What the Future Holds and Pains of a Maid, and is currently working on a third. She has also published several chapbooks of fiction and poetry with Ithaca's Vista Periodista press. She co-founded the Association of African Women, and the African Book Fund Group at Michigan State University, which has sent over 1000 books to the University of Swaziland and other African institutions, and she is presently living in Ithaca through the Ithaca City of Asylum program.

Sarah Mkhonza read from her work on February 28, 2008, in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place the following May.

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Interview: Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, and is the author of many books of poetry, including The Lost Land, Code, Against Love Poetry, Domestic Violence, and the new New Collected Poems. Her other work includes a collection of prose writings, Object Lessons; and she has edited two poetry anthologies. Her awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry, and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. A member of the Irish Academy of Letters, she is currently Professor in Humanities at Stanford University, and divides her time between California and Dublin.

Eavan Boland read from her work on April 25, 2008, in Cornell's Rockefeller Hall. This interview took place the following day.

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Interview: Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel is the author of the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. A countercultural institution, the strip is syndicated in dozens of newspapers, translated into several languages and collected in a series of award-winning books. Utne magazine has listed DTWOF as “one of the greatest hits of the twentieth century.” And Comics Journal says, “Bechdel’s art distills the pleasures of Friends and The Nation; we recognize our world in it, with its sorrows and ironies.” In 2006, Houghton Mifflin published Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. The bestselling coming-of-age tale has been called a “mesmerizing feat of familial resurrection” and a “rare, prime example of why graphic novels have taken over the conversation about American literature.” Bechdel lives near Burlington, Vermont.

Alison Bechdel read from her work on April 10, 2008, in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place the following day.

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Interview: Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Ernesto Quiñonez, J. Robert Lennon

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon received her B.A. from Washington and Lee University and her M.F.A. from Penn State. Her work has appeared in such journals as African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Rattapallax, and Shenandoah, and in several anthologies, including Bum Rush the Page and Role Call. A semi-finalist in the "Discovery"/The Nation Contest in 1999 and 2001, she was one of 20 writers featured in the 2005 PSA Festival of New American Poets. Her first book, Black Swan, was awarded the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Ernesto Quiñonez is the author of the novels Bodega Dreams, which was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title as well as a Borders Bookstore Original New Voice selection, and Chango's Fire.

J. Robert Lennon is the author of six novels, including Happyland, serialized in Harper's in 2006, and the forthcoming Castle. He is also the author of Pieces For The Left Hand, a collection of 100 anecdotes.

All three writers are members of the Cornell University Creative Writing faculty. They delivered the Richard Cleveland Memorial Reading on March 28, 2008, at the Hollis Auditorium in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place the following day. Leading the conversation were three Cornell Lecturers in English: Stephanie Gehring, Jon Hickey, and George McCormick.

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Interview: Paul Lisicky

Paul Lisicky is the author of a novel, Lawnboy, and Famous Builder, a collection of essays. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Short Takes, Open House, Boulevard, Flash Fiction, and many other anthologies and magazines. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he's the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a fellow. He lives in New York City, and has taught at Cornell University, NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, Antioch University-Los Angeles, The University of Houston, and The Bread Loaf Writers Conference. A new novel, Lumina Harbor, is forthcoming.

Paul Lisicky read from his work on February 15th, 2008, at the Schwartz Auditorium of Cornell's Rockefeller Hall. This interview took place two weeks later.

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Interview: Mark Doty

Our first interview this semester is with poet and essayist Mark Doty. Doty has written more than ten books of poetry and prose, and for his efforts has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lila Wallace–Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His new and selected poems, Fire To Fire, will be published next month. He lives in New York City, but this spring is one of three visiting writers spending the semester at Cornell.

Mark Doty read from his work on February 15th, 2008, at the Schwartz Auditorium of Cornell's Rockefeller Hall. This interview took place the following week.

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Interview: Lee Smith and Hal Crowther

Today's podcast features two writers: novelist and short story writer Lee Smith, and journalist and essayist Hal Crowther. Smith is author of more than a dozen works of fiction, including the recent nove On Agate Hill; she has won numerous awards for her work, including the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, a Lila Wallace / Reader's Digest Award, and the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction. Hal Crowther has written three books of nonfiction, and his work has appeared in a great number of newspapers, magazines, and journals, including the Oxford American, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time, and Newsweek. His most recent book is Gather At The River: Notes From The Post-Millennial South. The two live in North Carolina.

Crowther and Smith read in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall on November 15, 2007. This interview took place earlier the same day.

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