The Blog

Interview with Amanda Nadelberg

Ellen Boyette

Amanda Nadelberg is the author of three books of poetry: Isa the Truck Named Isadore, selected by Lisa Jarnot as winner of the 2005 Slope Editions Book Prize; Bright Brave Phenomena (Coffee House Press, 2012); and Songs from a Mountain (Coffee House Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Nation, and Chicago Review, among other places, and in 2016 she was a columnist in residence for SFMOMA’s Open Space. She is a graduate of Carleton College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held Truman Capote and Teaching-Writing Fellowships, and where she returned in the summer of 2017 to teach a graduate poetry workshop. A recipient of a grant from The Fund for Poetry and an advisor to The Song Cave, she is originally from Boston and lives in Oakland.

Myriam Gurba's MEAN

Elizabeth Hoover

As an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley, Myriam Gurba developed an eating and exercise disorder in the wake of a sexual assault. One day, she passes out in the school gym. As she comes to, an employee asks if she’s epileptic. She replies, “I’m Mexican.”

Two Poems from THE DREAM OF REASON

Jenny George

The Sleeping Pig

It is easy to love a pig in a nightgown.
See how he sleeps, white flannel
straining his neck at the neckhole.
His body swells and then deflates.
The gown is nothing to be ashamed of, only
the white clay of moonlight smeared
over his hulk, original clothing, the milk
of his loneliness. The flickering candle
of a dream moves his warty eyelids.
All sleeping things are children.

The Traveling Line

Ramona Ausubel's SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF EASE AND PLENTY

Elizabeth Hoover

Whiteness is a dangerous concept. It is not about skin color. It is not even about race. It is about the willful blindness used to justify white supremacy. —Chris Hedges

On the surface Ramona Ausubel’s second novel Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty is a summer romance about the affairs of wealthy people. However, beneath that surface runs a chilling commentary on the blindness at the core of whiteness.

Beautiful Rot: Emma Cline and the Myth of the Manson Girls

Katlyn Williams

In mid-November, 2017, one of America’s favorite cultural demons passed away from natural causes, a good death for someone accused of so much bad. Headlines that week referred to Charles Manson as a “wild-eyed leader of a murderous crew” (New York Times), a “cult leader and murder-rampage mastermind” (Washington Post), and “one of [the] nation’s most infamous mass killers” (USA Today). The New York Post went with the simple: “Charles Manson is rotting in hell.” These headlines speak to the once-hysterical cultural passion surrounding the Manson Family crimes, a fascination that our films, novels, documentaries, and essays are still unpacking. Prior to his death, interviews show a man who remained strangely compelling, but also pathetic.