Buzz

Author Q&A with Ayoung Kim

Although this essay came from a memory, the danger is transcribing it instead of allowing space for other images and narratives to come through. I first wrote this three years ago, and have periodically returned to it with fresh eyes. Each time, a bit more would reveal itself. Also, there is the part of me that retains visceral emotions as the child, but as the adult, benefits from distance, and I worked to include both perspectives. I’ve learned to not rush the revision process…

Interview with Kelsey Smoot

I certainly wanted the concept of soulmate to function in this collection as a tool, a lens through which we can see ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and also our political orientations more clearly, and determine how to embody a practice of love that is less about predestination and romantic alignment and much more about commitment, agency, and devotion to others…

Author Q&A with Shayna Brown

I wrote my first pieces of fiction when I was about ten. I was homeschooled and obsessed with becoming a novelist. That continued until college, when life got too busy for written exploration. In my early adulthood I focused more on creative non-fiction, but not in a serious way. When Covid hit, I started writing short stories again. I made a schedule and took classes and started working on pieces I wanted to release out into the world for the first time. And that led me here…

Author Q&A with Annie Rachele Lanzillotto

I examine at these public interactions where strangers argue, fight, cast microaggressions on one another.  Every day walking the streets of Manhattan I experience many of these moments. My superpower is to immediately peel back all the layers between the you/I ness of these encounters and laser in to connect, cross the vast oceans of space between us…

Author Q&A with Wasima Khan

Writing is a powerful way to cultivate empathy and understanding. It allows me to step into other people’s lives and worlds, and I hope to bring readers along on that journey. 

At the same time, it is a way for me to reclaim agency over my own life and experiences. Too often, I have been confronted with Western biases – simplistic narratives about me, Muslim women, or Muslims more broadly – stories in which I barely recognize myself. In my own work, I aim to foreground nuance and emotional complexity as a way of challenging those…