Contest Call for Submissions
Summer Issue Interview with Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez on Poetry
Malahat Review volunteer Ella MacQueen-Denz talks with Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez about gender, writing in English vs. Spanish, and their poem "The Lion."
EMD: Your poem is set in Ohio but focuses on the image of a lion carcass. Is there a particular reason you chose a lion to feature in your poem?
MGG: The poem is part of a series responding to the Zanesville Zoo wild animal massacre. On the night of October 18, 2011, in Zanesville Ohio, Terry Thompson let loose scores of wild animals which he had been keeping in cages on his farm, then shot himself. Thompson had recently returned from a year in prison on federal weapons charges. When the police were alerted that the animals were running wild, County Sheriff Matt Lutz ordered his officers to shoot the animals. 49 animals were slaughtered. The 6 animals that survived were taken to the Columbus Zoo. That’s a brief sketch, but the full story is worth reading: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12653/zanesville-0312/
I was horrified. I wrote this poem from that place of horror, though the tone of the poem is relatively calm; I didn’t want to sensationalize those events and it’s a mistake to tell readers how to feel.
Read the rest of Mandy's interview on our website.
Summer Issue Interview with Liz Harmer on Fiction
Malahat Review volunteer Samantha Fitzpatrick talks with Liz Harmer about her upbringing as a committed Christian, patriarchal communities, and her story "Right to Grapple."
SF: Belief is central to “Right to Grapple.” What fascinates you about the topic of belief and what drove you to write about it now?
LH: The story was inspired by my own community of belief. I was raised in a Dutch Calvinist subculture, but when I was a young teen I started to go to the youth groups, summer camps, and big conferences of a variety of denominations with very different values than we had. Each had their own ideas about sex, cigarette smoking, which words were wrong to say, baptism, etc. I’m fascinated by belief because I once was a very strong believer. I have been thinking a lot about desire and patriarchy as those things intersected with my own upbringing as a committed Christian among committed Christians, about my own desires and how emotionally and spiritually confusing they were.
Read the rest of Liz's interview on our website.
