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ZYZZYVA Events
March 28, 2019ZYZZYVA at AWP
Location: 10:30 a.m., Portland Ballroom 253-254, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2
Description: "Behind the Curtain: The Editors Speak!" with Alison Wright, executive editor of VQR; Emily Nemens, editor of The Paris Review; Karissa Chen, editor-in-chief at Hyphen, and Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. Moderated by Christian Kiefer. More info here: https://bit.ly/2HWVUIk
March 30, 2019ZYZZYVA at AWP
Location: 1:30 p.m., E143-144, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Description: "The Future of Criticism: A Conversation with Established and Emerging Critics" with Kate Tuttle, Ismail Muhammad, Jane Ciabattari, Hope Wabuke, and Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. More info here: https://bit.ly/2DYEyXz
April 14, 2019ZYZZYVA at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Location: 4 p.m., Hoffman Hall, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Description: "Writing & Publishing: Inside Stories of the Book Business," featuring panelists Nicole Dewey, Colleen Dunn Bates, and Betsy Amster. Moderated by Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. For more information: https://bit.ly/2HoPxMA
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Author Archives: Second Shoppe Manager
ZYZZYVA Recommends March 2019: What to Read, Watch, & Listen to
Before we head off to Portland for AWP ’19, we thought we would share what ZYZZYVA recommends this month—a roundup of the works we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to: Katie O’Neill, Intern: The abundance of streaming services available online have largely killed any urge I have to watch live TV. Outdated advertisement breaks combined with the difficulty of committing to a set time make it more effort than it’s generally worth to catch a program as it airs. But, every Wednesday night at 9pm I can be found in front of my TV tuned in to SYFY to catch …Continue reading
‘Fire Season’ by Patrick Coleman: Intergenerational Interpretations
We poets often pride ourselves on exploiting the many interpretations that figurative language affords us, and so we may shy away from visuals for fear they will detract from this ability to embody multiple meanings without sacrificing substance that we think separates “real” poetry from most prose. And though we may write poems inspired by visual art, we rarely include images of these works in books. Not so with Patrick Coleman’s Fire Season (102 pages; Tupelo Press). Initially, I expected the images paired with poems in the book to be too on the nose and/or to give away too much. …Continue reading
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Carolyn Burke
Carolyn Burke was born in Sydney, spent many years in Paris, and now lives in California. Her 2011 No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, published by Knopf and Bloomsbury, has been translated into several languages, including French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Burke’s Lee Miller: A Life, published by Knopf and Bloomsbury in 2006, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award. Burke spent time with Lee Miller while working on her first book, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. The definitive biography of the expatriate artist/poet, it sparked a …Continue reading
‘The Collected Schizophrenias’ by Esmé Weijun Wang: A Map into Rarely Charted Waters
Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias (202 pages; Graywolf Press) consists of twelve essays addressing the technical definitions, medical prognosis, and personal challenges of schizophrenia. In the first essay, Wang discloses her own diagnosis to the reader: during her time as an undergraduate at Yale, she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type), which she describes as an illness that combines certain behavioral markers of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She makes it clear the schizophrenias (of which there are a few types) are both complex and vast in how they are perceived and experienced. Wang manages to discuss such a …Continue reading
Interview with Erik Tarloff: Hollywood Endings
Berkeley novelist Erik Tarloff is a polymath. Growing up in Los Angeles, he was steeped in the motion picture industry (his father, Frank Tarloff, was a screenwriter), but he has also been deeply involved in politics, including stints as a speechwriter for Bill and Hillary Clinton and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, among others. He has satirized the Washington political scene in his acclaimed 1998 novel, Face-Time, about a speech-writer whose girlfriend is sleeping with the President, and taken a fictional look at the complicated political and personal dynamics of ‘60s Berkeley in All Our Yesterdays. He is also the …Continue reading
‘Gingerbread’ by Helen Oyeyemi: Ever-Shifting Nature
Helen Oyeyemi’s latest novel Gingerbread (258 pages; Riverhead), revolves around the fictional country of Druhástrana, an “alleged nation state of indeterminable geographic location” that may or may not exist, depending on who you ask. Druhá Strana roughly translates from Slovak to “the other side” or “the flipside,” a fitting name for a nation that bears more resemblance to a half-remembered fever dream than any currently existing country. Gingerbread mirrors the ever-shifting nature of Druhástrana in many ways, with its circular and occasionally conflicting narratives leaving the reader frantically performing mental gymnastics in order to keep up. The novel focuses on …Continue reading
‘Territory of Light’ by Yuko Tsushima: A New Life in Tokyo
Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light (183 pages, FSG; translated by Geraldine Harcourt) begins when the husband of the narrator, Mrs. Fujino, leaves her. After months of apartment hunting, she moves with her two year-old daughter into a new building. The apartment is abundant with light most hours of the day, but it fails to illuminate their lives the way she hoped it would. The novel consists of twelve brief chapters, each one a vignette of life in Tokyo with an inquisitive and sometimes unruly daughter. (The narrative was originally published in Japan in twelve installments, between 1978 and 1979.) At …Continue reading
Interview with Rae Gouirand: Words Loosen and Diffuse
In Glass Is Glass Water Is Water, one of the first full-length books to be published by Spork Press, Rae Gouirand (whose poetry book Open Winter won the Bellday Prize) explores relationships, intimacy, the body, and the tension inherent in wanting to be understood without having to be explicit. Gouirands’ poems push against linear, heteronormative ways of reading and often challenge prescribed forms. Gouirand, whose poems were published in ZYZZYVA No. 102, recently spoke to us about how her work speaks to present-day concerns, such as the MeToo movement, and delved more deeply into her craft. ZYZZYVA: One of the reasons I was drawn …Continue reading
‘Rag’ by Maryse Meijer: Refusing to Flinch
In Maryse Meijer’s new collection, Rag (144 pages; FSG), the final and eponymous story is written from the point of view of a rag stuffed down a woman’s throat, slowly killing her. Reading Rag feels a bit like this, as the fourteen unsettling stories leave you gasping for air. With terse, dark prose, Meijer has created a cohesive set of stories which seem to delight in exploring taboos and destroying expectations. These stories are unsettlingly honest, with the most twisted inner thoughts of each principal character laid bare for the reader. Rag is at its strongest when delving into the …Continue reading
“Summer at the Baltic Sea, 1958” by Kelly Cressio-Moeller, ZYZZYVA No. 110, Fall Issue
Kelly Cressio-Moeller is an associate editor at Glass Lyre Press. Her work has previously appeared in ZYZZYVA No. 101. Her poem “Summer at the Baltic Sea, 1958” from ZYZZYVA No. 110 is presented in its entirety below: The sepia-toned man & woman sit together in a Strandkorb an arched canopy pushed back their heads turned toward each other eyes smiling she wears a strapless swimsuit her body leaning forward arms mid-motion as if brushing away sand he wears a striped beach robe one hand wrapped around his raised knee on the footrest the other holding the side of his neck considering her …Continue reading
Interview with Kristen Tracy: Interspecies Conflict
One of two epigraphs for Kristen Tracy’s debut collection of poetry, Half-Hazard (94 pages; Graywolf Press), advises that, “when a bear attacks, the victim who fights back is likely to fare better than the one who plays dead.” Although this is useful information to have in case of a rogue bear attack, it’s not as helpful when considering how to read the stunning assortment of poems included in the book. Readers might be better served if, rather than attempting to fight the sweeping flow of Tracy’s fantastic lines and vivid imagery, they “play dead” and allow it to wash over …Continue reading
