Interview: David St. John

Poet David St. John was born in Fresno, California. He received his bachelor’s degree at California State in Fresno and went to the University of Iowa for an M.F.A. His works of poetry include Hush (1976), Terraces of Rain (1991) The Red Leaves of Night (1999), The Face: A Novella in Verse (2004), and The Auroras (2012). He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, the James D. Phelan Award, the Academy Award in Literature, and various grants and fellowships. St. John has taught at Oberlin College and John Hopkins University, and currently teaches at the University of Southern California.

The interview was conducted by Cornell professor and poet Joanie Mackowski, author of the collections The Zoo (2002) and View From A Temporary Window (2010).

St. John read from his work on April 5, 2012, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

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Interview: Edwidge Danticat

Fiction writer and essayist Edwidge Danticat is best known for her work chronicling the Haitian immigrant experience. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.F.A. from Brown University, and has published or edited more than a dozen books for adult and young readers, including the novel The Farming of Bones, the story collections Krik? Krak! And The Dew Breaker, and the nonfiction books Brother, I’m Dying and Create Dangerously. She has earned many awards, among them a National Book Critics’ Circle Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and, most recently, the Langston Hughes Award from City College of New York. Danticat has been a visiting professor of creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami, and divides her time bewteen the United States and her native Haiti.

Danticat read from her work on February 23, 2012, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

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Interview: Catherine Chung

Catherine Chung was born in Evanston, IL, attended college in Chicago, and studied fiction writing at Cornell University, where she earned an MFA; for some years after she lived the life of an itinerant writer, attending conferences and retreats and working on what would become her debut novel, Forgotten Country. That book is to be published in March 2012 by Riverhead. She is also one of Granta’s “New Voices,” a Pushcart nominee, and winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. She is a member of the birdsong collective, an indepdent ‘zine publisher in New York, and is on the advisory board of Paris Press. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

Chung read from her work on February 16, 2012, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

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Interview: Alexi Zentner

Alexi Zentner is the author of the novel Touch, which was shortlisted for The 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award and The Center for Fiction’s 2011 Flahery-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize. A new book, The Lobster Kings, is coming out next year. He has also published short fiction in The Atlantic Monthly, Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Glimmer Train, The Walrus, and many other publications. He studied writing at Cornell and presently lives in Ithaca, New York.

Zentner read from his work on February 16, 2012, in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

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Interview: Robert Hass

Robert Hass is the author of many books of poetry, including The Apple Trees at Olema; Time and Materials, which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize; Sun Under Wood; Human Wishes; Praise; and Field Guide, which was selected by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series. He has co-translated several volumes of poetry with Czeslaw Milosz, most recently Facing the River, and is author or editor of several other collections of essays and translation. Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. He lives in California with his wife, poet Brenda Hillman, whom you may find in our podcast archive, and he teaches at UC Berkeley.

Hass read from his work on October 20, 2011, in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (29MB MP3)