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Surrender to the current; on writing to survive grief, finding comfort in one’s hybridity, and resisting the urge to write like Rimbaud

Milkweed Staff — 03/15/2023

Chris Dombrowski is the author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water. He is also the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Elusive Fish, and of three acclaimed collections of poems. Currently the Assistant Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana, he lives with his family in Missoula.

In the following interview, the famously personable hybrid-author made a stop in to the Milkweed Editions offices in Minneapolis, MN in the midst of touring for his new book, which has just been named a finalist

Authors / News / Interviews

Kazim Ali wins the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Award for Environmental Literature

Kazim Ali wins the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Award for Environmental Literature — 10/29/2022

Milkweed Editions is thrilled to announce that Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water by Kazim Ali has won the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Award for Environmental Literature. The prestigious competition awards $20,000 in cash each year, to be distributed amongst eight individual book category winners that are selected by “an international jury of writers, adventurers and editors.”

Northern Light is the story of a queer Muslim poet, son of political refugees from India, who travels back to his childhood home in northern Manitoba to revisit the Pimicikamak people whose way of life was ravaged by…

Authors / Interviews

Architecture, Texture, and Grace: A Cover Image Story

Milkweed Staff — 02/18/2022

Hello Milkweed readers! I’m Mary Austin Speaker, Milkweed’s Creative Director, and I was honored to talk with Ama Codjoe this week about her extraordinary first book, Bluest Nude, which is due out in September 2022.

Mary Austin Speaker: Bluest Nude is a powerful, vulnerable collection of poems that explores the practice of seeing and being seen as well as the ways we move through intimacy, memory, and art. Can you describe some of the central experiences that inspired Bluest Nude?

Ama Codjoe: In 2019, I attended the art exhibit, Posing Modernity: the Black Model from Manet

Authors / Interviews / Watch & Listen / Roundup / Poetry & Migration

Listen Here: National Poetry Month Special (Part Two)

Bailey Hutchinson — 04/02/2021

Hello again, friends! It’s time for round two of our National Poetry Month feature (check out part one here).

For our second installment, I touched base with a few well-loved poets whose books are entering the world again as paberbacks. I’m thrilled that Grady Chambers, John James, and Ada Limón shared their thoughts (and voices) with us to discuss the process of putting together a poetry collection, as well as the power of poetry-out-loud. Listen to audio of them reading from their collections below!

Note: for best listening experience, please use Google Chrome.

Audio file

“A Story About the Moon” from North

Authors / Interviews / Watch & Listen / Roundup / Poetry & Migration

Listen Here: National Poetry Month Special (Part One)

Bailey Hutchinson — 04/02/2021

Hello, friends! Welcome to a very special edition of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book. This month, we’re taking a break from our standard five-question, solo-author interview format; instead, we’re taking a stroll with a few different poets through new books and returning favorites in Milkweed’s 2021 poetry lineup. And oh, hey, look at that—it’s National Poetry Month! Why not celebrate by listening to each of these striking poets read from their collections?

We’re starting off this two-part feature with Wayne Miller, Kathryn Smith, and Robert VanderMolen, each of whom have new books out now (or soon!) with Milkweed. Each collection has…

Authors / Interviews

Deep Cuts: Northern Light

Bailey Hutchinson — 03/01/2021

Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of Deep Cuts! In this series, we dive in with some of our authors and discuss the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the composition and production of their books. This month, I’m so pleased to be featuring Kazim Ali’s Northern Light, a ruminative study of the word home.

Northern Light opens with a photo of a young, smiling Ali. He’s standing at the end of one of three rows of children—Jenpeg School’s ‘77-‘78 class of first graders. I’ve found myself lingering on this page, studying the various expressions marking the children’s faces…

Authors / Interviews

Deep Cuts—Deirdre McNamer's Aviary

Bailey Hutchinson — 01/04/2021

Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of Deep Cuts! In this series, we dive in with some of our authors and discuss the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the composition and production of their books. This month, we’re excited to chat with Deirdre McNamer about Aviary, a brightly-plumed spin on a who-done-it due out later this year in April.

With senior residence Pheasant Run at its nexus, Aviary explores an extensive cast of overlapping lives—many of whom feel themselves forgotten. But McNamer invites us to slow down and appreciate the depth of these lives, to consider the mysteries that connect them. What we learn by residing…

Authors / Interviews

5 Reasons to Teach This Book: Wound from the Mouth of a Wound

Bailey Hutchinson — 12/08/2020

Welcome, friends, to the latest installment of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book! In this interview series, we examine what we can learn from Milkweed’s titles by discussing our books with educators, authors, and booksellers. This month, we’re featuring the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry winner, torrin a. greathouse and her debut full-length collection of poetry, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound.

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a deftly transformative text—one that resonates with prosodic brilliance. torrin’s formal variety is electric enough on its own, but combined with her stinging imagery and unreserved depictions of disability, physical…