Blog Posts by Kamra Heldman

In this conversation, we talk with Gary Paul Nabhan, author of Water in the Desert, about how dreams and science have influenced his creative practice, the Lebanese poet Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān, and how the process of grieving opens us up to relationality.

Kamra Heldman: How does relationality drive your creative process?

Gary Paul Nabhan: Noticing unanticipated relations between plants and animals, animals and people, people and people are the sparks that ignite my writing fervor. Suddenly, being made aware of these interactions opens the doors of perception, and wild words flow out onto paper.

Kamra Heldman: …

In this conversation, we talk with Julie Schumacher, author of Patient, Female: Stories, about how her reading list influences what writing she produces, the complexity of humor in storytelling, and the writer’s proclivity for studying what is alluring about the people and places around them for inspiration.

Milkweed Staff: While writing Patient, Female, were you influenced or inspired by the works of other writers? In what way?

Julie Schumacher: I feel that my personality and my mood—as well as my writing—are deeply influenced by what I read. And because the stories in Patient, Female were written over…

In celebration of The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming, we sat down with Angela Pelster to discuss meaning in suffering, whether the world is a safe place, and to honor community building as the most sacred part of creating a rich life.

Kamra Heldman: The dream that our perception of our story’s narrative arch will perfectly align with how the people who are a part of it would depict the same events is a true impossibility. How do we reckon with the truth that our understanding of any relationship or experience is singular?

Angela Pelster…

In celebration of his newest poetry collection, Nocturama, we spoke with Will Brewer about his experience with critical mentorship from Louise Glück, listening for the lightning strike, and the hope for a poem to exist as a flash that echoes beyond its reading.

Milkweed Staff: Henri Cole likened your voice to Robert Frost’s, whose America was lonely, bewildered, and grieving. What are the characteristics of your America? How does your relationship with the United States influence your poetics?

Will Brewer: I never think about “poetics,” period! As for America, I never sit down and think to discuss it…