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NER Out Loud - LIVE!

March 30, 7:30 pm ET

March 23, 2023

NER Out Loud readers, 2019

Our annual NER Out Loud and S’More Readings reception returns to the Mahaney Center for the first time since 2019!

In the tradition of Public Radio International’s “Selected Shorts,” students from Oratory Now will read selections from the New England Review in the Dance Theatre at the Mahaney Center for the Arts at 7:30 PM ET. The event will be followed by a “S’more Readings” reception with student writers who will read from their own poetry and prose.

This year’s NER Out Loud readers are Jared Ahern ’25, Alpana Bakshi ’26, Shea Brams ’26, Letu Chibssa ’26, Josey Chun ’26, Liv Davidson ’26, Max Gibson ’25, Izzo Lizardi ’25, and Grace Mtunguja ’26. They’ll read a selection of work published in NER in the past couple years.

Following the event, the audience is invited to the lobby for a “S’More Readings” reception, featuring tasty chocolate and marshmallow treats, where student writers will read their own poetry and prose. Readers are Yardena Carmi ’23, David Factor ’23, Haeun Park ’23, Rose Robinson ’24.5, Leo Swainbank ’25, Kai Velazquez ’23, and Keziah Wilde ’24. The reception is coordinated by New England Review student interns Niamh Carty ’23 and Emma Johnson ’23.5.

Both events are free and open to the public. Sign language interpretation will be offered.

This event will also be live streamed.

Vaccinations and boosters (or valid medical or religious exemptions) required. Masks optional (but welcome!) except under certain conditions. Additional health and safety information here.

Filed Under: Events, Featured, NER Out Loud, News & Notes Tagged With: NER Out Loud

Behind the Byline

Diana Khoi Nguyen

March 22, 2023

Photo by Apple Chua

Staff reader Sabrina Islam talks with poet and multimedia artist Diana Khoi Nguyen about grief time, sound, and her poems “Misinformation” and “Cape Disappointment” from NER 43.4.


Sabrina Islam: In “Misinformation” you write, “These myths shift imperceptibly each time we recall them. / Stored along the fault lines of memory / we pick up where we left off, unaware of what has changed.” Elsewhere, in your poem “Unless,” you ask, “Do you know that memory is all arrangement, representation of the world we already occupy?” In your poetics, how do you think about memory and mourning? 

Diana Khoi Nguyen: Thank you for identifying this thread! Since discovering and digitizing my family’s home videos from the 80s and 90s, I’ve been trying to reconcile the video record (subjective perspective of my father behind the camera) with my memory (or mis-memory) and what actually occurred (impossible to “know”). I feel like I’m the three Fates working with one spool trying to make sense of time. Mourning, or grief time, further complicates it since my heart and brain are aching after specific person(s) lost—in my case, my brother, but also my grandfathers, grandmother, father-in-law, uncle, ex-boyfriend, former classmates from grade school, and so on. Grief is like a sensitive nerve spot on the skin’s surface—we don’t know to proceed with caution until we accidentally brush that spot—and even when that area isn’t actively in pain, we’ve mapped the region as a site of potential pain, which influences how we move through memories and historical / familial archives and documents. Poetry is that estuary space in which things will emerge, depart, pass through—some memories pop up unexpectedly, linger for indefinite periods of time. And it’s my job to somehow allow for the truest emotional experience to be captured in this space—I’m somehow trying to observe without interfering but know this is an impossible task so I try to acknowledge my presence in seeing, remembering, misremembering, recalling, forgetting. I’m interested in where I stumble. 

SI: You’ve written about sound previously, where you consider how sound itself can be a form of violence, “a victim bears no marks on his body, the body moved by sound, moved to leave it leaves no trace.” Again, in “Misinformation” we hear the humming of bees inside the walls. Is sound a subject in your poetry? 

DKN: Absolutely! It’s likely an outright obsession, honestly. Ours is such a visual dominant culture, but it’s really the sonic landscape where so many cues are left unanswered, unobserved. I can’t stop thinking about how we can shut our eyes to sleep, but it’s nearly impossible to turn our ears off (if we are fully able, that is). As a new mother, I’m surprised by how primal my ears are functioning when I sleep at night: I can hear even the slightest sigh or whimper from the baby while I’m dead asleep! Because somehow I’ve calibrated my brain to be open to that sonic channel in the world. In my work, I’m also thinking about how I missed so much by not pausing to listen more to my environment, especially to my familial spaces. So much goes unsaid in what is missing, in what is quiet, or when someone or something is silenced. I’m still trying to figure out how to ethically and tenderly listen, and what to do about that sensitive material I encounter—often it’s difficult subject matter: traumatic memories from the past bobbing in the sonic surf.

SI: In her review of your debut collection Ghost Of, Jess Smith notes how readers are reminded that “a country’s history and a family’s history and an individual’s history are intricately and inextricably bound.” In your new poem “Cape Disappointment” you write, “what is breached may heal if we can survive the violence // estranged from a mother tongue I mistake hard to say for nostalgia.” How has your understanding of multigenerational trauma evolved in your thinking? 

DKN: Those studies which suggest how multigenerational trauma gets passed between generations as changes in our bodily health feel intuitively right and also downright terrifying. That combined with the notion from The Body Keeps the Score (which suggests that trauma also is embedded in our physical bodies) reminds me that nothing disappears once we “survive” it. Time moves indifferently, but our physical and emotional being are altered by having survived. Like how sounds don’t simply dissipate, but seemingly disappear from aural detection simply because our bodies and other structures (walls, objects) have absorbed the sound waves. With all these events and histories captured in our bodies, I both marvel at how strong humans can be, but also how damaged, weathered, in need of gentle care. We can be strong and also deserving of tenderness from all sources. As a person who engages in the literary arts, I’m keen on tuning to what words emerge on the page, in my mouth, in how I do or don’t describe what it is I’m doing and seeing in my process. That what gets unuttered or fumbled is also noteworthy residue of trauma, memory, and history. 

SI: In Ghost Of you invent a form, “Gyotaku,” inspired by the Japanese tradition of printmaking from fish. In my reading, I found your gyotaku poems emphatic, vulnerable, and deeply aware. Is the gyotaku form meant to create connections with memory and remembrance? 

DKN: Oh thank you for spending time with the gyotaku poems—it’s funny: as I was typing “gyotaku,” autocorrect changed the word to “ghostly”! Honestly the gyotaku were meant to capture and play with the image-text poem as a body—that the poem as a deceased body could leave behind fainter and fainter marks on the canvas, page—gyotaku is many things, but I’m fixated on how it’s essentially the dead body as a stamp, one used for the living to remember the impression of the thing which once also used to be living. In this way, it is a memorial for the dead. 

SI: In your essay “The Imperative,” you remind us how Ezra Pound said one must make it [poetry] new. How do you approach form in poetry? 

DKN: In my work, I want form to somehow be essential to the things being uttered—there is a rooted relationship to content, and not merely for form’s sake. My undergraduate mentor, Cal Bedient, once said to me over deep-fried soft-shelled crab sandwiches that the universe is constantly making new matter, and that he was interested in poems and poets who tried, in what is likely a vain pursuit, to emulate the universe’s ability to produce new things. I’m constantly trying to listen to the visual artifacts in my life, my family, and materials I encounter—how might they lend their forms to my thinking and noodling? Maybe similar to a hermit crab’s process of determining a new home, or as I like to call it, collaborating with my objects and materials. 

SI: You’ve said you consider poetry your religion and that each poem you write becomes a mission in witnessing, feeling, and remembering. Could you speak more about the space poetry occupies in your life?  

DKN: Wow, I vaguely remember saying this statement which I think was nearly a decade ago now! How serious I must’ve been back then. I’m not a religious person, and poetry is certainly not my religion, or a religion. But, I do consider poetics to be a way of moving and being in the world—of generosity and listening to the convergences, tensions, harmonies, and discordances.

SI: Which poets and writers have shaped your understanding of language and poetry? 

DKN: Too many to comprehensively list here, but will share a smattering in no particular order: Susan Howe, Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Clarice Lispector, Brian Dillon, Layli Long Soldier, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Arthur Sze, Carl Phillips, Lucie Brock-Broido, Myung Mi Kim, Sun Yung Shin, Douglas Kearney, Tyehimba Jess, Victoria Chang, Don Mee Choi, Alex Ross. A mixed bag of genres and fields.

SI: Your second collection of poems will be published next year. What ideas are you exploring now? 

DKN: The second collection picks up threads from Ghost Of and is working through the topics and themes you’ve brought into this dialogue here: memory, history, sound, multigenerational trauma—and continues to ruminate on the possibility of forms in poetry. 

As for right now, I’m exploring these things but chiefly in a prose project that I won’t call fiction or nonfiction! Which is to say: I keep returning to the same ideas, but exploring them with different instruments and tools.

SI: Thank you so much for your time, Diana. 


Sabrina Islam, who reads fiction manuscripts for NER, holds an MFA in creative writing from University of Maryland, where she teaches college writing and creative writing. She has received scholarships from the Kentucky Women Writers Conference and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her stories can be found in Flock, Acta Victoriana, Prairie Schooner, and the minnesota review. She currently lives in Washington, DC. 

Filed Under: Featured, News & Notes Tagged With: Diana Khoi Nguyen, Sabrina Islam

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Anja Kuipers

March 6, 2023

Image: Anja Kuipers

Anja Kuipers ’18 talks to NER intern Sylvie Shure ‘24.5 about pursuing curiosity, kindness through email, and reading with an open mind.


Sylvie Shure: Where are you now, geographically and professionally?

Anja Kuipers: I currently live in Brooklyn, New York and work at the National Book Foundation as their administration and operations coordinator. This is my second winter in New York, and I’m doing my best to keep my spirits up during this long stretch of gray!

SS: What are some of the steps that got you to the National Book Foundation?

AK: Prior to joining the Foundation, I was working at an indie bookstore in Washington, DC doing marketing and events and processing a gazillion online orders. I also previously organized a reading series with 826DC, had a publishing internship in children’s publicity, did office admin part-time for a trapeze school, worked with dance organizations in a few different capacities . . . I’m sure there are a few other steps along the way I’m forgetting! So many of my experiences have been in response to my own questions about what creative community means to me and what kind of life I want to build for myself, as well as curiosity and a restless personality. My career path hasn’t been the most direct, but I feel lucky that I’ve been able to make a life where I get to prioritize supporting writers and artists.

SS: You were both an intern at NER and a reader. What was a highlight of your experience with NER? Can you recall any specific memories or responsibilities?

AK: One of the memories I hold onto from my internship is a casual email exchange I had with a contributing author. I couldn’t even tell you what the email exchange was about (confirming content for a web interview, perhaps?), but I remember how pleasantly surprised I was by how kind and friendly the author was. It sounds so small, but being acknowledged and having that human interaction made the work I was doing feel so much more real and grounded. Even now, I find that the surprising intimacy of an email can sometimes be the highlight of my day. I still dread catching up with my inbox as much as anyone else, but every once in a while someone’s kindness or humor startles me in its generosity.

SS: What’s one skill you developed, either in school or through internships, that most benefits you today in your professional work?

Anja Kuipers during her time as a Middlebury student.

AK: It’s not very glamorous, but developing customer service skills has done more for me throughout my career than anything I learned in the classroom. I worked at Ilsley Public Library throughout all four years of college, and it was there that I first learned how to interact with patrons, answer the phone, and deal with someone frustrated over a missing book. That job meant so much to me during my time at Middlebury (helping out with the annual gingerbread house event was one of the highlights of my college experience), but looking back, I also realize how significantly it shaped my attitude toward work.

SS: As you’ve built your career, is there anything that’s surprised you about publishing or the literary world?

AK: This wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but working in different corners of the literary world has helped me better understand just how drastically underfunded the literary arts nonprofit sector is. Nonprofit literary arts organizations, magazines, and small presses do so much on a daily basis with incredibly tight budgets, but I hope that culturally there are larger funding shifts so that this work can continue to exist.

SS: What do you read for pleasure? Have you read anything good lately?

AK: I’m currently in the middle of Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches, an essay collection that weaves together memoir and Imbler’s exploration of ten different sea creatures. I read pretty broadly for fun—lots of middle-grade and young-adult fiction, romance, poetry, and essays. One of the most valuable parts of my previous work at the bookstore was being exposed to books across genres and age levels, and I try to continue that open-mindedness with regard to my personal reading.

Filed Under: Featured, Interns, News & Notes, Where Are They Now Tagged With: Anja Kuipers, Sylvie Shure

Behind the Byline

Charlotte Turnbull

March 1, 2023

Staff reader Anna Jastrzembski talks with British playwright Charlotte Turnbull about structure, prescribed gender roles, and her performance piece, no home for a kraken, from NER 43.4.


Anna Jastrzembski: no home for a kraken was initially a short story which you then adapted into an audio piece. This surprised me, as I feel like the piece lends itself so well to the dramatic form. You’re able to conjure up three distinct spaces that manage to exist simultaneously onstage—the mothers’ writing group, the domestic world Lucy inhabits, and the watery world of the kraken. Now that you’ve explored the story in both prose and audio-format, do you foresee mounting a stage production?

Charlotte Turnbull: This story was produced in one of those fevered, sweaty manias and ‘fell out’ dramatically, as confession, in monologue. I do hope to extend the piece for stage. Adapting the piece for audio theatre heightened the backdrop. The soundscape allowed the banal domestic to become more oppressive and more sinister, which could go further again on stage. Plus, Lucy’s two conflicting voices would be beautiful in performance.

AJ: Do you prefer writing prose to drama, or vice-versa? Do you find one more challenging than the other? How do you decide which form you want a new piece to take? 

CT: I find all writing challenging, but I’ve come to think prose is a better place to start. For me, prose provides more space to explore and experiment with ideas. Without having to prioritise the experience of an audience, excavating emotion can be more efficient and intimate. 

AJ: I loved your use of language throughout—it was both playful and lush, yet managed to convey a character who was clearly struggling. When we are first introduced to the “kraken” it’s a children’s toy covered in “plush tangerine fur,” yet by the end it starts to devour the narrator. Do you see the kraken as a kind of hostile embodiment of the domestic space? What led you to the image of a kraken in the first place? 

CT: Absolutely, the kraken is a hostile embodiment. I’m interested in the taboos of women’s roles—the unpalatable, hidden oppressions of mundane and ordinary lives. I use a lot of folklore in my writing, and often (usually?) it rises straight out of the landscape I’m evoking, then sometimes, like unpalatable hidden oppression, it is as jarring as a kraken on a moor, and at odds with landscape as we see it. 

I have young children and my home is filled with charming, horrifying toys, including one plush, tangerine colossal squid. I’m actually incredibly fond of it—and indeed the children themselves . . .

AJ: I can imagine that Lucy’s refrain of “I can use this” will feel familiar to most writers—that feeling of looking at our surroundings from a slight remove, filing away bits of information and images and ideas we can use in a story later on. Is this something that you relate to? How do you organize your own thoughts and story ideas? What are your greatest challenges when approaching a new piece of work?

CT: I really relate to it. I can find myself muttering ‘this is a story’ while simply loading the washing machine, and frequently have to remember there are other important things in life, as well as art, so as not to be rinsing every situation for pathos, or similar. I keep books of notes and ideas, although usually anything I commit to has stuck out in my head over time. The greatest challenge is always finding the appropriate structure and then, depending on length, maintaining stamina. 

AJ: Who are your favorite playwrights? Are you inspired by any in particular? 

CT: There is a short play by Lucy Kirkwood called Psychogeography, which really stayed with me—a lot was achieved, briefly. I also love The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. 

AJ: What are you reading right now?

CT: Precious Bane by Mary Webb and Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens.


Anna Jastrzembski is a New York City and Santa Fe-based playwright, television writer, and lyricist. She graduated with an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University in 2019. Anna’s work often combines a relentless interrogation of the status quo with an embrace of the fantastic. Recent credits include A Modest Proposal (The Studio at The Cherry Lane Theatre), DOG (Signature Theatre Studio), The Happy Garden of Life (The New Ohio), TRAFFIC (The Exponential Festival), and FEAST (The Tank NYC). 

Filed Under: Featured, News & Notes Tagged With: Anna Jastrzembski, Charlotte Turnbull

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