The Writer’s Block: An Interview with Ismet Prcic

The Writer’s Block is an ongoing video series of interviews with visiting writers at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. In these Q&A’s, conducted on Sampsonia Way, writers sit down with us to discuss literature, their craft, and career. View all previous interviews here.

Ismet Prcic was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.

On March 22, Ismet talked with Robert Isenberg on Sampsonia Way’s block. This street on Pittsburgh’s North Side is where City of Asylum/Pittsburgh has a row of houses for writers in exile, all of which are adorned with original artwork.

Later in the day City of Asylum/Pittsburgh hosted a reading by Ismet who read from his novel Shards which was listed as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times.

Read Sampsonia Way’s full interview with Ismet Prcic here.