
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Albert Abonado
Your two poems, “Romance” and “Beatitude for an Inventory of Roadkill,” are beautiful works of reclamation and loss. Where did the creation of “Romance” start? I spend my summers helping out at my family’s blueberry farm. Each morning, a hummingbird would visit me at...
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In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors–Kathleen Coskran
1. Tell us about your fiction piece in Volume 20. How did it come to be? When I was teaching at Hamline in 1994, Jimmy––an inmate at Oak Park Heights Maximum security prison––took two classes from me, one in the MALS (Master of Arts of Liberal Studies) program and the...
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors–Paige Riehl
1. Tell us about your poems in Volume 20. How did they come to be? Both of my poems in this issue stem from contemplating the complexities of international adoption and examining my position of privilege within that system. While we were in the middle of a years-long...
A Conversation With Sun Yung Shin: WSR Contributing Poetry Editor
For twenty one years, Water~Stone Review has been a collaborative passion project of students, faculty, and staff. For our next issue, we are bringing a new team member to the process with hope of expanding our chorus of voices in our pages as well as our reach and...
How To Stay Human with Naomi Shihab Nye, by Jay Wittenberg
In perusing my treasured archives of Water~Stone, I found in the Fall 2003, Volume 6 issue a CNF piece worth revisiting, written by Naomi Shihab Nye. This notable writer was mentioned in a recent talk given by Hamline's distinguished visiting...
Five Ways to Get Involved With the Twin Cities Literary Community, by Emma Johnson-Rivard
Writing can feel like a solitary and often lonely thing. I'm of the belief that engaging with the larger artistic community can invigorate both your own work and the work of people around you. Go out there and see what other writers are doing....
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors–Lisa Higgs
Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be? In November 2014, my beloved grandmother was diagnosed with terminal uterine cancer and given 3-4 months to live. This was a tremendous blow––not only because she was almost 100 and still fit enough to be...
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors–John Sibley Williams
1. Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be? Believe it or not, the inspiration for “All Saints” came from those sensationalized stories from my youth warning about the dangers of Halloween candy. Though such crimes only happened a few times that...
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors–Sean McCarthy
1. Tell us about your short story in Volume 20. How did it come to be? I thought about this story for a long time before I began writing it. I’ve worked for years—in various roles—in the mental health field, and I’ve always been interested in the family dynamic...