Interview: Sharon Bryan

Sharon Bryan is a nationally recognized award-winning poet and editor. Her newest collection, Sharp Stars (BOA, 2009), was awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for 2009. She is also the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Discovery Prize awarded by The Nation, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as other literary prizes. She has published three previous poetry collections, Salt Air and Objects of Affection, both with Wesleyan University Press, and Flying Blind with Sarabande Books. She is the co-editor of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande), and the editor of Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition (Norton). Additionally, she has held positions as poet-in-residence and visiting professor at more than 20 colleges and universities, and is currently the Visiting Professor of Poetry at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, in Storrs, Connecticut.

Bryan read from her work on September 24, 2009, in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (16MB MP3)

Interview: Gina Franco

Gina Franco received a B.A. from Smith College, an M.F.A. in poetry writing, and an M.A. in English from Cornell University. Her collection of poems, The Keepsake Storm, was published by the University of Arizona Press Camino del Sol Latina/o Literary Series in 2004. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Fence, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, and The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry. She received an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Robert Chasen Poetry Prize, the Corson-Bishop Poetry Prize, and the 2006 Bread Loaf Meralmikjen Fellowship in Poetry. She divides her time between Galesburg, Illinois, where she teaches English and creative writing at Knox College; the Arizona desert where she grew up; and the Texas border, her mother's home.

Franco read from their work on September 24, 2009, in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (19MB MP3)

Interview: Susan Choi, David Friedman, Charity Ketz

Susan Choi is the author of the celebrated novel A Person of Interest. Her previous novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She is also the author of The Foreign Student, winner of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and is co-editor with David Remnick of the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she was born in 1969 and lives in Brooklyn.

David Friedman was born and raised in Washington, D.C, and educated at Cornell (B.A., English) and Columbia (M.A., English Literature) Universities. Friedman won the 2004 National Poetry Series open competition, selected by Pulitzer Prizewinner Stephen Dunn; his book of prose poems, The Welcome, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2006 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He presently lives and teaches in New York.

Charity Ketz was born in Roanoke, Virginia and grew up in State College, Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. from Penn State University, an M.F.A. from Cornell University, and has held lectureships at both universities. Her first book of poems, The Narcoleptic Yard, was published this year by Black Lawrence press; she has also published a chapbook, Locust in Bloom. A former fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ketz is currently a PhD student in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

The three read from their work on September 10, 2009, in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall. This interview took place earlier the same day.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (22MB MP3)
Note: our apologies, the sound quality of this week's podcast isn't very good. The usual fidelity should be restored next time around.