Interviews

Kate Daniels has described Gerald Stern as a “post-nuclear, multicultural Whitman for the millennium—the United States’ one and only truly global poet.” He may have had little choice in the matter. Born in 1925 to Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine and Poland, he grew up in an ethnically diverse Pittsburgh, where he became friends with the … Read more

Lan Samantha Chang was born to Chinese immigrants, who left China when the communist government came to power in 1949. Her parents moved to the small Midwestern city of Appleton, Wisconsin. Chang said that since her Midwestern youth, she’s “constantly been moving, perhaps unconsciously to replicate my parents’ experiences.” Her books—a collection of stories, Hunger (1998), … Read more

Melanie Rae Thon is the author of two collections of short stories and three novels, including her most recent work, Sweet Hearts, which is set in the forest and plains of Montana. She has had other work published in Best American Short Stories, The Paris Review and Story. She won the Whiting Award in 1997 and an NEA grant in 1992. … Read more

RICK BASS IS THE AUTHOR OF EIGHTEEN BOOKS of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel Where The Sea Used To Be, and editor of the anthology The Roadless Yaak. Bass lives with his family in northwest Montana’s million-acre Yaak Valley, where there is still not a single acre of designated wilderness. In October 2003, Rick Bass … Read more

Widely regarded as one of America’s foremost living essayists, Phillip Lopate’s publications include three books of personal essays (Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body), two poetry collections, and other works on teaching and on film criticism. He is a frequent contributor to such periodicals as Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, and The New York Times Book … Read more

COMING SOON to Willow Springs

Spokane-based artist and graphic designer Chris Bovey is the mastermind behind the cover art for Willow Springs issues 81 through 86. Each of these covers is iconic Spokane, and his work has forever shaped the look and feel of Willow Springs magazine for the better. Bovey’s goal is to cherish and capture the heart of Spokane. To glorify the … Read more

IN SOME WAYS, Kevin McIlvoy is a musician first and a writer second. Although his career as a novelist is certainly longer and more widely celebrated than his tenure as a harmonicist, every word he’s ever put to the page has its own rhythm and melody. McIlvoy’s prose is as political as it is emotional, as … Read more

TO READ RAMONA AUSUBEL’S WORK is to experience a rebuilding of reality. She does this carefully. Empathetically. Like the stranger and the young girl from her debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, who guide a small Jewish community into reimagining reality in order to survive the horrors of WWII, Ausbel uses metaphor and … Read more

THE POETRY OF D. NURKSE is hauntingly honest. It’s resonant with generosity, vulnerability, and love for the world while being rooted in unflinching observations of reality and justice. He makes magic of myths, nature, family, and the gritty stoops of Brooklyn. In a review of A Night in Brooklyn, Philip Levine writes, “He should be the laureate … Read more