DaMaris B. Hill interview: 11-18-2009

I interviewed DaMaris B. Hill on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009, in Lawrence, KS. DaMaris is a doctoral student in the English Creative Writing program at the University of Kansas. She is a member of the National Writing Project and a graduate of Morgan State University with an M.A. degree in English. Her story "On the Other Side of Heaven-1957" won the 2003 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award for Short Fiction. She is currently writing a novel about female juvenile delinquents during the Great Depression. She is also working on a chap book of her poetry. Some of her past writing has been published in the Bermuda Anthology of Poetry, the African American National Biography Project, Warpland, Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy, Women in Judaism, and The Sable Quill. DaMaris was recently featured on The Black Bottom, a blog dedicated to the critical discussion of African American politics and culture in Michigan, the Great Lakes region, and the United States as a whole. She served as the co-coordinator of the 2008 NWP Professional Writing Retreat anthology. Currently, she serves as the Collections Specialist for the Project on the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas.

You can listen to DaMaris' interview as a podcast, or download the MP3 of the interview at this link.

Also, if you would like, you can now subscribe to the Kansas Blotter Interviews podcasts with Itunes.

David McLoghlin interview: 11/10/2009

I interviewed David McLoghlin on November 10th, 2009, in Lawrence, KS. David was born in Dublin, Ireland, and has lived in Belgium, the U.S., France, Spain, and in West Kerry, Ireland. He is currently living in Lawrence, KS. David has received a number of awards for his writing, including second prize in the 2009 Patrick Kavanagh Awards, first prize in the English section of the inaugural Frances Brown Multilingual Poetry Competition, and selection by Poetry Ireland to participate in their annual Introductions reading series for emerging poets. In 2006 he was awarded a major Arts Council of Ireland Bursary for his memoir, The Traveled Child, which describes his family's emigration to Brussels and Connecticut, during the early 1980's. In April 2007 he received a grant from Kerry County Council that allowed him to spend several weeks at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Ireland's best-known artists' retreat. His writing has appeared in journals such as Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Southword, Cyphers, The Stony Thursday Book, Studies, Blue Canary Press, Milwaukee (edited by James Liddy), and The Irish Catholic newspaper. Most recently, six of David's poems were published by The Stinging Fly, after he was chosen as the Featured Poet for their Winter 2009-10 issue. I interviewed David in the bowels of the Watson Library on the University of Kansas campus, surrounded by tomes and outcroppings of piping and machinery.

(The MP3 of the interview is available to download to your computer, or Ipod/MP3 player HERE.)

Iris Moulton interview: 11-04-2009

I interviewed Iris Moulton on November 4th, 2009 in Lawrence, KS. Iris is a poetry and fiction writer who was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry and fiction at the University of Kansas. Her first book of poetry, where the echoes go, was published by PUSH! publications in 2005. Iris' poetry will also appear in the Spring 2010 issue of Cider Press Review. She is very tolerant of essay questions.