Our Blog

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…

Jake Skeets—Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, Whiting Award winner, and author of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award–winning Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers—returns with Horses, a powerful and long-awaited second collection. Opening with the haunting image of two hundred horses lost on Navajo land, the book moves through questions of climate change, belonging, and survival, while holding space for beauty, imagination, and joy.

Known for his groundbreaking queer, Indigenous poetics, Skeets continues to explore the deep connections between land, language, and identity, crafting poems that are at once intimate and expansive. Horses is a fierce and…

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…

In this conversation, we talk with celebrated translator Bruce Humes about his favorite reads and bookstores, as well as the importance of reading literature in translation. Bruce lives in Taiwan and specializes in translating writing by/about China-based Altaic peoples and Silk Road culture.

If monolingual Americans read more fiction in translation–and US publishers published more!–readers might be better placed to recognize how bizarre Trumpian Norms actually are.—Bruce Humes

Milkweed Staff: What was the first translated book you read?

Bruce Humes: Perhaps Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, translated from Jules Verne’s original in French. I hadn’t a clue…

In anticipation of his newest poetry collection Horses, we sat down with author Jake Skeets—the third poet laureate of the Navajo Nation and previous National Poetry Series winner—to discuss the ways in which his two collections converse with one another, his path forward as Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, and what he would say to every rez kid that speaks in stanzas, and dreams in poetry.

In Horses, queerness becomes relational and mirrors the poetics I’m working toward where the land becomes witness, and the body becomes a carrier of meaning. — Jake Skeets

Milkweed Staff: I’m interested in…

In anticipation of her forthcoming memoir Company of Owls, we sat down with author Polly Atkin—recently longlisted for the 2025 Wainwright prize—to discuss the kinds of company we keep, the habits that hold us steady, and the birds that transform our journey along the way.

 I try to be a good neighbor to humans and nonhumans alike, mindful of community both present and future.

Milkweed staff: We were delighted to discover that you own the independent bookstore, Sam Read Bookseller! Living alongside the owls, how have they informed your place within the community—both as a bookseller…

In celebration of our newest National Poetry Series Winner, Milkweed hosted a reading featuring Keith S. Wilson and his debut poetry collection, Games for Children on September 24th. While here, Keith was joined in conversation with graphic designer and Milkweed Fellow Alex Guerra to discuss the creation of his book cover. Later, Keith took the stage alongside poets Chaun Webster and Douglas Kearney to discuss graphic design, poetry, and how they’ve blurred the boundaries between the two disciplines.

Within minutes of his arrival at Milkweed, Keith S. Wilson and Milkweed Fellow Alex Guerra sparked into conversation over their many…

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…