Issue 9 Interviews

Check out our interviews with these exciting authors:

Even for Janet Burroway—the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Florida State University and the author of eight novels, plays, poetry, essays, texts for dance, and children’s books—2014 has been a standout. First, she received a 2014 Florida Humanities Council Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing. Her craft book Writing Fiction : A Guide to Narrative Craft, the most widely used creative writing text in America, published its 9th edition, and her multi-genre Imaginative Writing is out in a fourth edition. Her novel, Raw Silk, originally published in 1977, was reissued this year by Open Road. She is also the editor of a recently published collection of essays and poems by women, all now over the age of sixty—A Story Larger Than My Own: Women Writers Look Back at Their Lives and Careers, published by University of Chicago Press. In her memoir, Losing Tim: The Life and Death of an American Contractor in Iraq (Think Piece Publishing), Burroway recounts the unimaginable: her son’s suicide. Burroway allows her readers to accompany her on her examination of the way soldiers and military contractors are changed by their combat experiences. Her story is also a revelatory examination of grief, of loss, of love. In her praise of Losing Tim, Pulitzer Prize winning author Madeleine Blais writes, “This book is both an elegy and a call to action by one of our finest writers, who addresses us from the deepest place imaginable in a voice that is loving, memorable and overflowing with generosity.”

Janet was interviewed by Nicholas Garnett, nonfiction editor.

Janet Burroway

Joe Clifford is acquisitions editor for Gutter Books, managing editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive, and producer of Lip Service West, a “gritty, real, raw” reading series in Oakland, CA. Joe is the author of four books (Choice Cuts, Junkie Love, Wake the Undertaker, and Lamentation), as well as editor of the forthcoming Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Stories Based on the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. Joe’s writing can be found at www.joeclifford.com.

Joe was interviewed by Justin Bendell, fiction editor.

Joe Clifford

Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican novelist, journalist, and TV producer. She writes about heartbreak and lives in Miami with her husband, Daniel, and her Mini Daschund, Chloe.

The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho is Anjanette’s latest novel. Set in vibrant Little Havana, it tells the story of Mariela Esteves, a woman whose choice to renounce her true calling results in two failed marriages, a brush with murder, and a lot of heartbreak. It will be released in the Fall of 2014 by Kensington Books Publishing, and in Spanish in the U.S. and Mexico by Penguin Random House. Both novels have also been optioned recently for film and television.

Anjanette was interviewed by Fabienne Sylvia Josaphat, fiction editor.

Anjanette Delgado

Barbara Hamby has published five books of poetry, most recently Babel (2004), All-Night Lingo Tango (2009), and On the Street of Divine Love (2014), all from the University of Pittsburgh Press. In 2010 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and her book of short stories, Lester Higata’s 20th Century, won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and was published by the University of Iowa Press. She also edited (with her husband David Kirby) an anthology of poetry, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009). She is Distinguished University Scholar at Florida State University.

Barbara will be reading at the Miami Book Fair. Visit her website here.

The interview was conducted by Laura Richardson, poetry editor.

José Ignacio Valenzuela is a prominent and prolific Chilean writer who has been featured in film, literature, television and theater. His work includes almost twenty books published in Latin America, among which are best sellers Trilogía del malamor and El filo de tu piel. He was selected by About.com, then part of the New York Times Company, as one of the 10 best Latin American writers under 40. The script for his film La sangre iluminada, co-written with Mexican director Iván Ávila, won the support of the Sundance Institute in 2001. Miente, written by Valenzuela, was selected by Puerto Rico as its representative film for the 80th Academy Awards (2008). Amores, a TV series he created and wrote in 2004, was nominated for an EMMY Award (Suncoast chapter). His telenovelas La casa de al lado and Santa Diabla, both produced by Telemundo US, have been seen around the world beating audience records. For more information visit http://www.chascas.com.

José Ignacio was interviewed by Hector Duarte Jr, fiction editor.

José Ignacio Valenzuela