ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CLAIRE BATEMAN is the author of eight other poetry collections, most recently, SCAPE with New Issues Poetry and Prose in Kalamazoo. Her fiction collection, THE PILLOW MUSEUM, is forthcoming with FC2 Press in 2025. She has been awarded individual artist fellowships from the NEA, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Surdna Foundation as well as the New Millennium Writing Prize (twice) and two Pushcart Prizes. One of her stories was recently nominated by The Ekphrastic Review for Best Small Fictions 2023.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

GILBERT ALLEN’s most recent books are The Beasts of Belladonna (a collection of linked stories) and Believing in Two Bodies (a collection of poems). His work has received numerous awards, including the Robert Penn Warren Prize from The Southern Review. In 2014 he was elected to the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the state’s literary hall of fame. He is the Bennette E. Geer Professor of Literature Emeritus at Furman University, where he taught from 1977 until 2015. And, while serving as the editor of the Ninety-Six Press, he proudly published Claire Bateman’s At the Funeral of the Ether in 1998.