The following selection of Sampsonia Way author interviews published in 2011 feature diverse voices from around the world sharing their views on a range of topics, including the creative process, politics and culture, and their own struggle to defend freedom of expression.
Beverly Perez Rego (Venezuela)
"Poetry is a testimony of your passage through life. The only thing you can aspire to is to be as faithful as you can to what you witnessed."
Hervé Le Tellier (France)
"To translate is to betray. Traduttore, tradittore say the Italians."
Cornelius Eady (USA)
"[Cave Canem] emboldens some of us to challenge the assumptions some hold of the African American poetic. Challenge involves resistance, and no one gives up privilege without a fight."
Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt)
"I cannot discuss Egypt in isolation from America and Israel and Britain because we live in one world, not three worlds, and we are affected by each other."
Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador)
“When something is burning inside you, you can write in any conditions anywhere.”
Chenjerai Hove and Brian Chikwava (Zimbabwe)
"We have freedom of expression; what we don’t have is freedom after expression" - Hove
Gary Shteyngart (USA/Russia)
"Russia doesn’t really censor writers now because they don’t matter as much as they used to... But TV, as they say, where real opinions are made, is heavily censored and controlled."
Edwidge Danticat (Haiti/USA)
"There are people in this world this very minute who are creating dangerously; they are risking their lives for their art."
Yu Kwang-chung (Taiwan)
"Poetry can be used for many purposes, one of which is as a weapon."
Philo Ikonya (Kenya)
"I will go back to my country, and it will not be easy. But I have to protect my writing."
