The Writer’s Block: A Video Q&A with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Open Interval, a 2009 National Book Award finalist, and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, a chapbook she cowrote with Elizabeth Alexander. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and in journals including African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, and Shenandoah. She is currently at work on a third collection, The Coal Tar Colors, and teaches at Cornell University.

In June 2016, Van Clief-Stefanon visited City of Asylum for Cave Canem’s annual retreat and poetry reading. In this interview with Sampsonia Way, she describes her intensive creative and research process.