Inkwell – Fall 2004

I hadn’t read this journal or the work of interview subject, fiction writer Kathleen Hill until now, but I’ll read both again. The interview (conducted by Barbara Brooks) is one of the most engaging I’ve encountered.

I hadn’t read this journal or the work of interview subject, fiction writer Kathleen Hill until now, but I’ll read both again. The interview (conducted by Barbara Brooks) is one of the most engaging I’ve encountered. Hill seems, happily, not at all interested in impressing anyone, she simply says what she thinks, honestly and passionately, and what she thinks is worth paying attention to. The interview manages to sound like a genuine, unscripted and thoughtful conversation about one writer’s understanding of how fiction gets made and it inspires me to read Hill and to rethink my own relationship to writing. Unassuming, sincere, and solid could be said of the issue as a whole. I was introduced for the first time to other writers whose work I’d be happy to encounter again, as well: poets Samuel Solomon and Ann Cefola and fiction writers Stephanie Dickinson and Joan Connor, to single out just a few of the 20 writers whose work appears here. Claire Aronson’s poem, “Disappearing,” is particularly arresting, a sad, elegant, and splendidly crafted tribute to a woman most likely suffering from Alzheimers: “Her repetitions remind me / of a dragonfly’s wings / at the end of a season, / their frantic beating, / beating to stave off / the prison of an unremitting present.” [Inkwell, Manhattanville College, 2900 Purchase Street, Purchase, NY 10577. E-mail: [email protected]. Single Issue $8. www.inkwelljournal.org ] – SR