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In anticipation of the release of Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed this fall, we sat down with author Sangamithra Iyer to learn more about the structure, themes, and interconnected layers in the book, including her work with animal rights.

Milkweed: Governing Bodies is uniquely structured. Can you talk about how you came to that form and why you chose it?

Sangamithra Iyer: Governing Bodies was an ungovernable book to write. The structure was not something I could engineer or impose. The blueprint didn’t come first; it was shaped with iteration over time.

I…

In anticipation of the release of The Possibility of Tenderness this fall, we sat down with author Jason Allen-Paisant. It was an illuminating and profound conversation with wonderful insight of what is in store in the book.

Milkweed: The title of the book, The Possibility of Tenderness, is such a wonderful and welcoming lead into what the reader will find between its pages. Can you say a bit more about what you mean about tenderness and how the book explores it?

Jason: Racism doesn’t just affect how people are treated—it affects how people experience time. One of…

We recently sat down with author (and Milkweed editor-at-large) Helen Whybrow to talk about her forthcoming book, The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life. Touching on everything from cycles of life in nature to the art of belonging to parenting on a farm, read on for a taste of what’s to come in this profoundly moving book.

Photograph by Helen Whybrow

Milkweed Staff: A favorite section from the book is your description of belonging actually being a practice of participation. Can you say a bit more about how that looks as a Shepherd, mother, and activist?

Helen Whybrow: Belonging is something so…

Weijia Pan’s debut collection of poems, Motherlands, was selected by the late Louise Glück as the winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize in 2024. Among other things, the book is a transnational exploration of personal, familial, and cultural trauma, as well as the more universal trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pan’s poetry draws on countless juxtapositions (of two countries, two languages, past and present, and national loyalty versus personal transparency), questioning “home,” nostalgia, and self-exile in order to express himself through the lens of a dual citizen. In the following interview conducted by Milkweed Editions, Pan opens up about the…

How do artists work within constrictions of time? How can our existence be traced through art? How does writing ekphrastic poetry compare with linguistic translation? How is historical time considered with care in stretching both towards the past and into the future? These are some of the questions poet Jessica Fisher unpacks with her work in Daywork and in our Q&A below!

Milkweed Staff: Daywork takes its title from the giornata—the term in fresco painting for the section of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day. When did you first discover this concept? And what…

At Milkweed, we often discover great books in curious ways, and the Métis poet and storyteller Chris La Tray’s debut memoir, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, is no exception. Nearly a decade ago, Publisher & CEO Daniel Slager attended a writers conference in Missoula, Montana. There he crossed paths with La Tray, who was hand-selling books at local indie bookstore Fact & Fiction. Their exchange morphed from pleasantries to serendipitous dialogue revealing that La Tray was writing a book of his own.

Later that evening, Slager learned that La Tray had recently begun interrogating…

We’re thrilled to introduce you to the newest member of our team: Jane Townsend! In her new role as Milkweed’s Vice President of Advancement, Jane will develop and implement strategies designed to increase philanthropic support for Milkweed Editions. She brings over twenty years of nonprofit fundraising experience to the role. Prior to joining Milkweed, Jane spent thirteen of those years with the University of Minnesota Foundation as a senior development officer, associate director of planned giving, and director of trusts and estates. She also served as managing director of development for Project Success, as inaugural development director for the Native…

Shilpi Suneja’s mother in Goa on her honeymoon.

Shilpi Suneja’s debut novel House of Caravans is filled with life and intrigue as one family navigates post-Partition India and the many complicated dynamics that are left in the wake of political turmoil. Suneja shared with Milkweed Staff the personal stories that inspired the novel as well as the importance of Partition novels to the American literary dialectic.

Milkweed Staff (MS): The family in House of Caravans in so many ways is a microcosmic embodiment of many of the larger political and cultural tensions that have divided many post-Partition. Why write about a family when exploring these tensions?

Shilpi Suneja (SS)…

Milkweed Staff (MS): In your first book, Thin Places, you write about being born during the height of the Troubles in Ireland. In that book, you asked readers to reclaim our landscape through language and to remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. In Cacophony of Bone, you write about another time of great upheaval and trauma: the global pandemic of 2020. How do you connect these two books in your mind?

Kerri ní Dochartaigh (KnD): When I first spoke to my British editor after acquisition, he told me…