If I love Nicaragua, I must criticize Nicaragua — Nicaragua, as a society, as a government — because I care about it. … No healthy patriotism comes from the notion that the things you love are above critique. Where there is injustice, oppression, flawed systems within your society, country, government, religion, family, we must speak out.
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“We are trying our best to bring forth every strand of Latinidad and also be able to put the idea of “Latinidad” under a microscope and criticize it and dig up its dirt and try to shut down anti-blackness. We’re starting to come to terms with the fact that Latinx isn’t a race, even if it is a marginalized group heavily targeted by the president. Everything is constantly redefining itself and it’s nice to be a part of the cycle.”
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Keith S. Wilson is a poet, Cave Canem fellow, and video game designer. Keith is originally from California, and spent his teen years and early twenties in Kentucky before settling in Chicago. His debut book Fieldnotes […]
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by Timmy Miller & Sarah Gross The following conversation is part of an ongoing series called Memories in Exile, in which we interview current and former resident writers […]
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The following conversation is part of an ongoing series called Memories in Exile, in which we interview current and former resident writers who have come to Pittsburgh and lived in exile on Sampsonia Way. The […]
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Building hope in a hopeless place. The musician sits down to talk about her fight for democratic reform in Vietnam — and how it’s led her to flee her home.
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“I hope to encourage others to find ways to weave their own blankets, to tell their own stories. We all have so much to contribute. So many stories are still buried due to systemic inequities. I write to crack the earth and say: we are here and our stories are bountiful and necessary — just look at us, we’re beautiful.”
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To conclude a year of poetry, we’ve explored the broad philosophical questions of how someone becomes a poet and what it means to sojourn through the creative process. We posed these questions to Allegheny county’s four poet laureates; Vincent Folkes, Paloma Sierra, Mj Shahen, and Celeste Gainey.
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“I was sentenced to 99 lashes just for shaking hands with the opposite sex. … In another instance, when I sent my book to get permission to be published, they censored some of my words. As a woman, if I imagine or write about a romantic connection between two people, it’s censored.”
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“So by the end of the day, you are just their mirrors, and what you do is just a reflection of who they are. And in fact, it is also a reflection of who you are.”
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Last summer, Damon Young — the writer, critic, and humorist — partnered with City of Asylum to host a six-episode series called “How to Survive in America” in which he interviewed some of his favorite writers about writing, race, living through COVID-19, and everything in between.
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Alane Salierno Mason revisits the early days of Words Without Borders and shares a brief glimpse of her time as an at W.W. Norton.
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