Interviews

Monroe, who retired at the end of this academic year, has taught creative writing at Texas State University since 1992. In 1990, she received the Flannery O’Connor Award for her debut story collection, The Source of Trouble, and has since published numerous well-regarded novels, memoirs, and books of stories and essays.

“Everything is about the poem. You’re in service to the poem, and not the poet’s ego or the poet’s personality.”– Malika Booker

“Bookstores have a certain responsibility towards the reading public, that they should do more than just sell books, or at least do it in more curious ways.”– Moctezuma Seth Gonzalez

“As a poet, I often feel a primal connection to something unknowable that came before me, and whether it’s obvious or not, it seems to me it’s what makes me or anyone else as much a creature as an animal.”

Poetry becomes my source of hope when all else seems hopeless.

Research is always a factor, even in my fiction. I want the reader to think, ‘oh, this could really happen,’ or it really did happen, or ‘it feels very real.’

As a vegan, I feel like animals have their own independent life force. I don’t feel like I have any right to take lives. I knew I wanted to write about an animal that was so thoroughly abused that we don’t understand.

I think part of our supreme duty as poets is to offer language for what was formerly unutterable to people.