The Inner Loop | Author's Corner Writers

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2022 Fiction Winner Suzanne Feldman.jpeg

Suzanne Feldman

Book: The Witch Bottle & Other Stories

Publisher: Washington Writers Publishing House

"I still try to put lesbians in all my books, because I'm fighting the patriarchy with every word I write."

Anthony Moll

Anthony Moll

Book: You Cannot Save Here

Publisher: Washington Writers Publishing House

"The poems about having a body and being observed are, for me, the queerest poems in the book."

Dan Brady.jpg

DB on WIRoB

Dan Brady

Publisher: Publishing Genius

"Erasing my own work freed me from those considerations. But it also challenged me to explore what lay within my own thoughts."

Cameron MacKenzie

Cameron MacKenzie

Book: River Weather

Publisher: Alternating Current Press

"...hate is the result of fear, which is a result of unfamiliarity. And language binds people together. If you agree to the language being used, you're now on the inside. And so many people are desperate to be on the inside."

Shaquetta Nelson.jpeg

Shaquetta Nelson

Book: Ashes to Justice

Publisher: Day Eight Books

"Poetry gave me a way out of a world that I felt trapped in: my mind. I think that giving that same outlet back to the youth is a powerful thing, showing them that they have a voice, a reason and a purpose."

Andrew Bertaina

Andrew Bertaina

Book: One Person Away from You

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

"Writing is a return home for me, all the distractions of life suddenly laser-focused on the problem of story."

Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes

Book: Ashley Sugarnotch & the Wolf

Publisher: Mason Jar Press

"The Wolf is trying everything he can to not be violent. So his form is incredibly structured. Because it’s a constraint - he’s putting a constraint on himself to try to not fall apart."

Megan Alpert

Megan Alpert

Book: The Animal at Your Side

Publisher: Airlie Press

"This is a book of fairytales. They’re ways of explaining things that I have not been ready to explain in a plain, direct way."

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Zak Salih

Book: Let's Get Back to the Party

Publisher: Algonquin Books

"For me, the beating heart of this novel, as unapologetically gay as it is, is about how people cope and fail to cope with the passing of time."

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Courtney LeBlanc

Book: Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart

Publisher: Riot in Your Throat

"Don’t always assume a poem is 100% true. For me, almost every poem has some kernel of truth -- but you take that kernel and blow it up, and what comes of it is some version of the truth, but maybe not the whole truth."

Danielle Badra

Book: Like We Still Speak

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

"I had an idea for this book as being a gallery of voices; of my friends, my family, but also poets and artists I admired."

Jenn Koiter

Jenn Koiter

Book: So Much of Everything

Publisher: Day Eight Books

"I feel like poets work well with constraints. Folks who are drawn to found poetry are gluttons for punishment."

Meg Eden

Book: Drowning in the Floating World

Publisher: Press 53

"Haunting is something that happens to all writers— we write, in part, because we’re haunted."

Sean Felix

Sean Felix

Book: Did You Even Know I Was Here?

Publisher: Self-published

"The idea of traveling to Paris is special because it's a place where my literary idol, James Baldwin, went when this country was too much."

Leila Rafei

Book: Spring: A Novel

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

"The path to publication is much longer and more complicated than you would expect. I thought that writing was the hard part..."

Adam Schwartz

Adam Schwartz

Book: The Rest of the World

Publisher: Washington Writers' Publishing House

"What I’ve seen over the years is that people in struggling communities hang together and support one another in ways the local news never gives them credit for."

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