Catherine Valdez – Michigan Quarterly Review

Catherine Valdez

Catherine Valdez is a Dominican-American writer, poet, and comics-artist from Miami, Florida. In 2019, she received her B.A. from Columbia University with degrees in psychology and creative writing. She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program in spring 2021 and is currently completing a post-graduate fellowship year. She is the author of the chapbook Imperial Debris in Quisqueya and Beyond which won the 2018 NFSPS Florence Kahn Memorial Award. She is also the recipient of the 2021 Meader Family prize and the 2020 The History Makers Creative Fellowship. Currently, she is at work completing her debut poetry collection Apocalypse and Other Gardens.

On James Leaf’s “Why I Fight”: An Interview With Malcolm Tulip

James Leaf’s “Team Wristband,” published posthumously in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Summer 2019 issue, explores mental illness and psychiatric institutionalization, as well as how mental illness is defined within social and historical power structures (MQR Online also published one of James’s letters and a note from Elizabeth Goodenough that appeared in the print journal.) The short […]

On James Leaf’s “Why I Fight”: An Interview With Malcolm Tulip Read More »

James Leaf’s “Team Wristband,” published posthumously in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Summer 2019 issue, explores mental illness and psychiatric institutionalization, as well as how mental illness is defined within social and historical power structures (MQR Online also published one of James’s letters and a note from Elizabeth Goodenough that appeared in the print journal.) The short

Patricia Smith Headshot

“Can Poetry Hurt Us?”: An Interview with Patricia Smith

I wanted some people that I didn’t personally know either and just thought, well, each one of these people has a mother who may or may not still be with us, who may be forced to still live in the area where they lost their child, someplace that they walk past every day. And they’re out of our hands.

“Can Poetry Hurt Us?”: An Interview with Patricia Smith Read More »

I wanted some people that I didn’t personally know either and just thought, well, each one of these people has a mother who may or may not still be with us, who may be forced to still live in the area where they lost their child, someplace that they walk past every day. And they’re out of our hands.

Devil's Lake by Sarah Sala Cover against a pink background

Devil’s Lake: Finding Self at the World’s End

Through the exploration of strained body-self relationships, scientific facts, history, love, loneliness, queerness, and hate, Sala weaves together narratives that ask their readers to consider where they came from, how they are engaging with time— however wrought and distressing— and where they will return to after death.

Devil’s Lake: Finding Self at the World’s End Read More »

Through the exploration of strained body-self relationships, scientific facts, history, love, loneliness, queerness, and hate, Sala weaves together narratives that ask their readers to consider where they came from, how they are engaging with time— however wrought and distressing— and where they will return to after death.

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