Senior Editor, Public Seminar

Multi-Verse

Dancing in Purgatory With Devon Walker-Figueroa

Episode 16: “Silences are as carefully plotted as each syllable”

October 11, 2024 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Episode 16 of Multi-Verse, Devon Walker-Figueroa reads her poem “Private Lessons,” in which a dying man determines that his young pupil must become a prima ballerina, and chats with host Evangeline Riddiford Graham about the uses of silence, breaking Dante’s rhyme scheme, and what it means to be haunted ...

Dancing in Purgatory With Devon Walker-Figueroa

Multi-Verse

Philip Metres’s Nostalgia

Episode 15: “Here I am, in midlife, thinking about what is home—and knowing that all homes are sandcastles, in a way”

July 2, 2024 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

An oasis, as poet Philip Metres points out in Episode 15, is evanescent by nature. There, and then not there. What does it mean to seek refuge when the oasis is impermanent?...

East Asia & Pacific

How Vanessa Chan Came to Write a Global Bestseller, The Storm We Made

A graduate of The New School’s MFA in Creative Writing shines a light on a rarely discussed period of Malaysian history

June 5, 2024 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In the lonely period of the pandemic, Vanessa Chan could not get home to her family. In those years, she lost her mother. She sheltered in place. And she wrote her first book, The Storm We Made....

How Vanessa Chan Came to Write a Global Bestseller, <em>The Storm We Made</em>

Multi-Verse

Barbara Tran raises the temperature

Episode 14: “Fever protects the way madness does”

May 14, 2024 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Episode 14 of Multi-Verse, poet Barbara Tran chats with host Evangeline Riddiford Graham about how water encircles her poem “Loon Song.”...

Literature

Eugene Ostashevsky on the Holding Pattern of Revenge

Episode 13: On the holding pattern of revenge

April 2, 2024 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Episode 13 of Multi-Verse podcast, poet Eugene Ostashevsky reads five sonnets and talks with host Evangeline Riddiford Graham about mixing humor with horror and the stupidity of war....

Eugene Ostashevsky on the Holding Pattern of Revenge

Interviews

Artists Against Colonels

In Shades of Resistance, unexceptional people take exceptional risks

December 5, 2023 • by Joseph Matthews and Evangeline Riddiford Graham

Joseph Matthews and Evangeline Riddiford Graham chat about using fiction to unravel fascism, and why the “regime of the colonels” found the Greek underground counteroffensive of poetry and music so difficult to control....

Multi-Verse

Timothy Liu’s Love Triangles

Episode 12: “People are not in agreement about what the word ‘lover’ means”

November 13, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Multi-Verse Episode 12, Timothy Liu reads “Last Christmas” and chats with Evangeline Riddiford Graham about the poem's themes of love and loneliness....

Multi-Verse

Monica Youn on When “Euripides Meets Margaret Cho”

In Multi-Verse Episode 11, a son’s rejection meets a mother’s frenzy

October 2, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Multi-Verse Episode 11, poet Monica Youn explores what it means to be depicted as an Asian "foreigner" in a Greek play....

Monica Youn on When “Euripides Meets Margaret Cho”

Multi-Verse

Niina Pollari on Truth’s Heart of Stone

In Multi-Verse Episode 10, the past is “always invisibly moving”

September 14, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Episode 10 of Multi-Verse, poet Niina Pollari reads and discusses “How to Read This Poem.” In a conversation with host Evangeline Riddiford Graham, Pollari talks about what it means to be honest in a poem about grief....

Multi-Verse

Multi-Verse Episode 9: J. Mae Barizo on the Rhythm of Tenderness

“Sunday Women on Malcolm X Boulevard” explores care across space and time

June 21, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Multi-Verse Episode 9, J. Mae Barizo reads “Sunday Women on Malcolm X Boulevard” and discusses the poem with Evangeline Riddiford Graham....

Multi-Verse Episode 9: J. Mae Barizo on the Rhythm of Tenderness

Multi-Verse Episode 8: India Lena González and the Frenzy of Performance

“ACT ! pose with fingers as though cigarette (puff puff)” challenges the confines of the stage

May 31, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

In Episode 8 of Multi-Verse, poet India Lena González reads and discusses her poem “ACT ! pose with fingers as though cigarette (puff puff)” with host Evangeline Riddiford Graham....

Multi-Verse Episode 8: India Lena González and the Frenzy of Performance

Rats: A Cautionary Tail

Sex Life of a Vector

Why do rats matter?

April 5, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

Rats continue to bear witness, and the close quarters of our shared history, as well as our many assassination attempts (on their bodies and on their characters), have surely sharpened rats’ noses to the whiff of human hypocrisy....