BackStory: Five Questions with P Akasaka Author of Haori What inspired you to write ‘Haori’? My grandmother was a seamstress and I always wanted to write something about that life. Wearing a haori was a great status symbol among young…
BackStory: Five Questions with Salena Casha
BackStory: Five Questions with Salena Casha Author of This is not a story about my grandfather What inspired you to write ‘This is not a story about my grandfather’? I grew up hearing a piece of family lore related to…
BackStory: Five Questions with J.B. Stone
BackStory: Five Questions with J.B. Stone Author of Amber Rose What inspired you to write ‘Amber Rose’? I originally wrote Amber Rose as a submission to an Anne Sexton-themed submissions call from the folks over at Fairy Tale Review. I…
BackStory: Five Questions with Lixin Foo
BackStory: Five Questions with Lixin Foo Author of The Consort of Closed Fists What inspired you to write ‘The Consort of Closed Fists’? I bought a book on famous women from Imperial Chinese harems in high school. As I was…
BackStory: Five Questions with Marie Hoy-Kenny
BackStory: Five Questions with Marie Hoy-Kenny Author of In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster What inspired you to write ‘In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster’? My father’s brothers worked at the Auchengeich…
BackStory: Three Questions with Isabelle B.L
BackStory: Three Questions with Isabelle B.L Author of Cords What inspired you to write ‘Cords’? I was born in the 1970s and when I was a child, my mother wanted me to wear a girdle. I was on the chubby…
BackStory: Four Questions with Claire Loader
BackStory: Four Questions with Claire Loader Author of Hunger What inspired you to write ‘Hunger’? I think like many people, I found myself during lockdown delving deeper into late night online rabbit holes than usual. One night I stumbled on…
BackStory: Five Questions with Robert Barrett
BackStory: Five Questions with Robert Barrett Author of Footprints in Water What inspired you to write ‘Footprints in Water’? I went to a boarding school in the 1980s. It was a sort of Irish Hogwarts where television was non-existent, the internet…
BackStory: Five Questions with Morgan Quinn
BackStory: Five Questions with Morgan Quinn Author of I Have Suffered the Atrocity of Sunsets What inspired you to write ‘I Have Suffered the Atrocity of Sunsets’ ? Back in 2018, my husband and I had the opportunity to go…
BackStory: Five Questions with Barbara Diggs
BackStory: Five Questions with Barbara Diggs Author of Granddaddy at War What inspired you to write “Granddaddy at War”? I’ve always found it poignant and confounding that the African-American men who served in World War I were determined to fight…