Category Archives: Interview

Interview with an Accents-published author, or someone else we want you to hear from.

Tom C. Hunley and SCOTCH TAPE WORLD

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, Scotch Tape World.

When the book came out, my sons were ten, eight, and six years old, respectively. The title poem is about a theme park I invented, kind of a counter to Disney, where kids go to learn hard truths about the world. Arguably the best poem in the book, “Confessions of a Failed Beatnik,” is about how my domestic life forced me to confront and revise my ideas about poetry. The question was whether I could still be a poet while raising kids in the suburbs and holding down a job, when I grew up reading and idolizing bearded, barefoot, urban poets.

What do you like most about it?

The book helped me work through the personal crisis that I described in answer to your first question. Could I still be a poet, even after pursuing a different life than the kind lived by many of my poetic role models? If so, what would that look like? The answer came in the form of these poems. Yes, I could still write poetry, and yes, poetry has the power to keep shapeshifting and surprising me enough to sustain my continued interest in it.

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?

I had small kids, so I had to overcome legos on the floor, IEP meetings at school, nightmares (my kids’ and my own), sleeplessness, and constant interruptions and distractions.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

An escape from the great Godzilla, and a return to Eden.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

I’ve been interviewed by creative writing students at various universities. They always ask me questions that make me think about things from new angles. Also, one time I got to meet with a book club in Atlanta that had read and discussed my book. What an honor that was! I would love to see more book clubs exploring contemporary poetry.

What are you working on now? Catch us up one significant event in your life since the publication of Scotch Tape World.

The year Scotch Tape World was published, my eldest son was diagnosed with autism. Then three years later, my wife and I adopted our daughter, aged 16 ½ at the time, from state foster care. Those experiences became the basis for my chapbook, Adjusting to the Lights, which won the Rattle Chapbook Prize in 2020. That year I started branching out into screenplays, two of which got produced. Now I’m working on a novel (or novella) and a memoir.  

Optional bonus question: Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?

I’m not a fan of sensitivity readers, who are really paid censors. I can’t work with publishers who push authors to make market-driven decisions. The only writing that I care about is literary and artistic. The important thing, for me, is to maintain what Stephen Crane called “integrity of personal vision.”

Jennifer Litt and STRICTLY FROM HUNGER

Jennifer Litt

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book, Strictly From Hunger

My book, Strictly from Hunger, took shape from listening to the expressions and idioms my parents used in conversations with my sister and me. For example, “for the birds” and  “from hunger” inspired me to capture both humor and poignance in my poems, to understand that poetry is a life and death matter. Both of those phrases refer to people and/or situations that are less than desirable. See “Mother Superior Gets Porked Again” and “River Bend, Year’s End.”

What do you like most about it?

One of the things I like the most about my book is the lushness and music of my poems, that I believe captures the essence of me in words and certainly reveals my love for the Irish poets, especially William Butler Yeats. An example of this would be “Plenty of Fish.” I also love the layout of Strictly from Hunger. Accents Publishing produces distinct, beautiful books. Who doesn’t want to be part of “an independent press for brilliant voices.”

What did you have to overcome in order to finish and publish a book?

I tried to approach the isolation and potential loneliness of the pandemic with an intact spirit and a creative flourish to be able to complete the manuscript. I channeled my language muse and that’s all she/I/we wrote. I’m not sure I could summon that fortitude again. Reentry to the world of people was as difficult as it was vital to my emotional well-being. I also consider myself lucky that Katerina Stoykova appreciated the evolution of my writing over the years and was interested in publishing my first full-length collection.

What do you hope people learn/receive/experience from reading your book?

Although I’ve been writing creatively and publishing my work in journals for 30 odd years, I only published my first chapbook at age 59, followed by Strictly from Hunger at age 65, in time for a literary Medicare tour. While our time here is limited, we each realize our dreams and potential at different ages for many reasons. Katerina understands that. Her brilliance and empathy are her magic powers that lift others up.

What was your favorite interaction with a reader and/or a fan?

My favorite interaction with a fan/reader was with my now deceased Uncle Dick. “The Great Fire of February 1928” chronicles the fire that destroyed Fall River, Massachusetts, while my father and his mother (pregnant with Uncle Dick) look on with foreboding. Uncle Dick’s mother died giving birth to him, and my father was a devoted big brother to him. The poem always made him cry. That’s the power of emotional truth.

What are you working on now?

I recently completed my second full-length poetry manuscript, Shellbound, and I’m hoping it finds a good home. In September 2023 I reconnected with a recently widowed college boyfriend, and we’ve been developing a lovely friendship, a bicoastal relationship because he lives north of San Francisco and I live in Fort Lauderdale. We met at the University of Rhode Island.

Optional bonus question: Is there anything you want to get off your chest about writing or publishing?

A poem that I’ve labeled my ars poetica can be found in my new manuscript. It’s called “The Gulf of the Poets” and pokes good fun at the world of po biz. I let my writing do the talking.

Kevin Nance on the Accents Podcast

Kevin Nance on April 9, 2025. Photo by Mark Cornelison

Hey Friends,
If you have 37 free minutes, please listen to Katerina Stoykova’s conversation with Kevin Nance on the Accents podcast on WUKY! We discuss his book SMOKE and he reads several poems from it.
https://www.wuky.org/podcast/accents/2026-01-03/kevin-nance

Painted Daydreams (Accents Publishing, 2019)

Poet B. Elizabeth Beck answers questions about Painted Daydreams (Accents Publishing, 2019)

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book. 

This book took ten years to research and write. I have studied and taught Art History for years, so this was a natural book for me to write. Art is my passion. To combine everything I love was a joy.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not? 

I do still like it and am especially proud of the research notes included at the back of the book. Of course, I cannot take credit for the perfect formatting of those notes. Jay McCoy is such a good friend. He organized that work for me because he’s kind and generous and knows how to do these things correctly”.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it? 

Matt Hart, a professor at the Art Academy in Cincinnati called my poems, “formally diverse and kaleidoscopically (allusionistically!) rich ekphrastic poems.” I consider that high praise!

 

What didn’t make it in the book? 

Interestingly, every poem that isn’t in this book didn’t make it. What I mean is that I wrote this collection while I was writing my first two books which were NOT art history books. Painted Daydreams was my escape while I was writing about very difficult poems. This was my book of joy.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

 

In ancient Greece, Sophists

 

measure the existence of truth

as individual not universal; not absolute

Aristotle’s father and my grandfather

both physicians, yet Plato’s student blessed

with orphanage, blasphemous words

unless spoken by an insignificant girl.

I do not have the Oedipus privilege of gouging

my eyes I need to read Aristotle’s writings

on nature making him the world’s first scientist

 

when I am the last to understand and only learned

through Whitman’s leaves of grass transcendental

truth. I revere martyrs like Socrates executed

for corrupting youth and Holden Caulfield whose

merry-go-round Odyssean journey searching

an oracle in Phoebe futile; although the sentiment

 

appreciated as I practice Plato’s philosophy

of aesthetics, a branch he invented I teach

as an excuse to day dream in paintings

drenched in exuberance Van Gogh graces

the pages of the art history text I leaf ahead

(abandon Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) to look

at starry nights and potato eaters, again.

 

 

How did you arrive at the title? 

The title evolved from what I call Van Gogh’s paintings. I have been daydreaming in his art since I was seven years old.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one? 

My favorite Accent Publishing book is “The Occupation” by Jay McCoy. His poems are stunningly brilliant.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward? 

Please continue to publish these beautiful books. Most importantly, please continue fostering writers. Without Poezia, I would never have published. I have learned so much about writing from being part of the Accents Publishing family.

 

What are you working on now?

I have just finished writing a novel about a young man named Sam who meets a group of kids and goes on tour with Phish. The working title is “Summer Tour”.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing. 

“We were a new generation of seekers, intent in preserving the beauty of freedom from the Grateful Dead culture into a new evolution. Where it would lead was yet to be found, a fact that incited pure adrenaline; anticipation to join in what would be a remarkable slice of reality shaped between a guitar, bass, keys and drums performed by four ordinary dudes with extraordinary ideas. The fact that this tribe had found me and dragged me into this journey seemed destined. I couldn’t wait to swim among the sea of thousands of other like-minded people. I was ready for all things.”

Andrew Merton’s Poetry Collections

Poet Andrew Merton answers questions about his Accents Publishing collections. 

 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing books.

Early in 2011 Katerina published four of my poems in Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. Emboldened, I sent her the manuscript of what would become my first book, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs.  We corresponded for several months, she saying she liked the manuscript but was not sure she was in a position to publish it.  Then, on May 12, my 67th birthday, she called and said it was a go.  That remains the best birthday present I have ever received.  Accents has since published my second and third books of poems: Lost and Found (2016) and Final Exam (2019).

 

Do you still like them? Why or why not?

Yes, I like them all.  The first one retains a special place in my heart because 1) My colleague and mentor Charles Simic generously wrote the foreword and 2) although previously I had published poems in journals, I did not fully identify as a poet until Chairs was out there in the world.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for your published books?

The New Hampshire Writers’ Project named it their outstanding book of poetry for the years 2012-2013.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Lots of really bad poems.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

 

Why I Left The Poetry Reading Early

 

I wanted to applaud

after the very first poem,

in which the famous poet

 

revealed the secrets of the universe

and the human soul

with no more effort than a shrug.

 

The second poem put the first to shame.

I was forced to restrain myself

by gripping the edges of my chair

 

and sitting on my thumbs.

Soon it took all my resolve

to keep from shouting “Bravo”

 

after nearly every line.

Five more minutes of this

and nothing would have stopped me

 

from rising, unbidden,

and burbling superlatives.

So I left.

 

As I tiptoed down the hall

I thought I heard the famous poet say:

“Now we can really begin.”

 

How did you arrive at the title?

Many years ago—just as I was getting serious about writing poetry—Mark Strand, then at the peak of his fame as a poet, gave reading at UNH, where I taught, that blew me away.  The idea for the poem occurred to me as I listened to him read.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

A Brief Natural History of an American Girl by Sarah Freligh.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

If Accents continues to evolve as it has over its first decade I’ll be very happy.

 

What are you working on now?

More poems. (Okay, my most recent book has a kind of elegiac title, Final Exam, but who knows, maybe I’ve got another one left in me.  Possible title: Post Doc.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This one appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, September, 2019.

 

Transcendence

 

It comes every month or so

while I am shaving

 

or peeling a potato

or watching a woodpecker

 

hammer away at an old dead pine:

shimmering blues, greens, yellows,

 

a rainbow effect

suffusing whatever is before me

 

with an otherworldly aura.

Doctors say these episodes

 

are manifestations of migraine.

The bird and I know better.

Your Live as It Is (Accents Publishing, 2014)

Poet A. Molotkov answers a few questions about Your Live as It Is (Accents Publishing, 2014) 

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book.

“Your Life As It Is” arose from the perception that most of our lives consist of similar repeating building blocks: we go to sleep, we wake up, we form relationships, we suffer loss. I was interested in creating a series that would play with these recurring themes. I started it before a trip to Russia my partner Laurie and I took in 2011. (Russia, the former USSR, is a country where I was born and which I hate intensely.) As we travelled, I tried to write a page or two each day, incorporating small details from the lives of the strangers we ran into. To further enhance the interplay of possibilities, I added a layer in which chess figures appear as characters.

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

Yes, I’m still fond of it. I think it captured what I wanted it to capture, and readers seemed to appreciate it.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

I received an Oregon Literary Fellowship based on the submission of this poem. It ended up becoming the final work in my first full-length collection, “The Catalog of Broken Things” (Airlie Press, 2016).

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

Everything made it. I wanted the book to represent a generic life most generically.

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

The book is a single poem, so I’ll share a page:

 

You wake up in the morning. The clouds outside your window are strangely immobile, as if they were painted on the glass. Perhaps the wind is still asleep. You realize it would be nice to do something meaningful today, but no specific ideas come to mind.

 

Your husband’s car is still in the driveway. You are surprised he has not left for work. It’s not like him. You walk out into the living room and find him resting on your beautiful hardwood floor. You don’t feel anything at the thought of his absence.

 

Your skin is a reflection of your attempts to get closer to the true meaning of your life, but you suspect that it might be inside out. The bishop has given up faith and no longer finds satisfaction in diagonal existence. You remember your own memories better than your past.

 

You walk outside and find yourself on another street, next to another house. You might have been a different person all along, or perhaps there is a better explanation for all of this.

 

 

How did you arrive at the title?

I suppose there is some irony in it. “You” are the character in the book, and to state that “you” represents the reader is both correct and preposterous.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

I need to read more of Accents Publishing books, but currently, “Grief & Other Animals” by Patty Paine is my favorite. It’s been a few years since I read it, but I was moved by its handling of grief. It’s a powerful collection.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

I feel that the press’s focus is very keen and necessary. Maybe Accents would be interested in publishing full-length poetry collections?

 

What are you working on now?

I’m always jotting down poems and editing new ones. Recently, I completed a memoir, “A Broken Russia Inside Me”, about my years in the USSR and my immigration. My agent is trying to sell it as I work on my next novel, about hate crime in America. (My previous two novels are unpublished so far, but my agent is working on that as well; I keep my fingers crossed.)

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

This poem was just published by Salamander. It was written in memory of the Portland poet Sam Seskin and titled with a quote from his poem. Many in the Oregon poetry community knew Sam; he was an inspiration. Sam’s first encounter with cancer six years earlier nearly ended his life and allowed him to view the extra time and his impending death with serenity and wisdom. The Inflectionist Review, a small press I co-edit with my friend John Sibley Williams, published his final collection of poems, “To Have Been Snowed On”.

 

 

Breath’s Opinion

 

                                                in memory of Sam Seskin

 

 

All I know is: at this

moment, a young scholar solves

 

a century-old problem. A group of six

climbs Everest, a group of twelve

 

is rescued from a hurricane. The same

smile faces us in the mirror after

 

all these years, but we are

so much smarter, so

 

lovingly open. And just now,

the doctor is born who will

 

cure everything that ails us, in

other patients. Easy now, don’t

 

be sad, small engine. There is too much

breathing left to do.

 

Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2010)

Poet Barbara Sabol answers questions about Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2010).

Tell us the story of your Accents Publishing book(s).

I submitted the chap manuscript for Original Ruse during a “Winged Series” chapbook competition in 2011. The book was chosen as a semi-finalist, I believe, with your offer to publish it. I was just finishing up my MFA at Spalding University, and taking myself seriously as a poet; or should I say taking the presence and power of poetry in my life seriously. The prospect of having my first collection in print was  an absolute thrill. It really is a legitimizing experience when an admired publisher offers to make a book of your poetry!  

 

Do you still like it? Why or why not?

 Yes, very much! It’s especially special because it was “my first.” I’m still fond of many of those poems; a few have made an appearance in my first full-length book, and two others landed in this forthcoming book, Imagine a Town. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to read poems that you wrote years ago and not want to revise most of them! Also, the book is lovely―perfect bound with Simeon’s original art on the cover. In fact, I still read from it at readings, and continue to sell copies.

 

What is the highest praise you’ve received for it?

In his jacket comment, Greg Pape  noted that the poems “explore connections between art and survival, the ordinary and the mythic. . .” Those tensions were exactly what I was aiming for, and what I continue to explore. To me, the highest praise is that of a reader who really grasps your themes and meanings.

 

What didn’t make it in the book?

I don’t think any poems were cut. I have a faint recollection of you questioning the inclusion of one or two of the poems, but at that point in my writing, I was too attached to each of my “darlings,” and resisted. I’m now much more willing to let a poem go if it doesn’t cohere with the whole. 

 

Is there a poem from the book you’d like to share with the readers of the Accents blog?

Yes. The closing poem, “Happiness.” I sometimes close a reading with this one, as happiness is a note I like end on in any context.

the mouth

of the vase

is not calling out

 

for asters

for water

its cobalt glass

 

curves

around the notion

of flowers

 

a quenched stem

and window light

scattering

 

the blueness

 

How did you arrive at the title?

It’s taken from the title poem, which I thought had an enticing ring to it. It’s what I want in a title and in poetry: to be enticed.

 

Do you have a favorite Accents Publishing book (other than yours) and if so, which one?

It’s difficult to name a favorite from among the terrific Accents books through the years. I actually have two favorites, equally favored but for different reasons. The first is Biblia Pauperum, by T. Crunk, because these spare poems  both challenge on an intellectual level and charm on a visual and emotional level―a wonderful combination.  And I’m completely enamored with Kingdom of Speculation by Barbara Goldberg. The element of magical lyric rendered in very sophisticated story book fashion completely engaged me. Plus, both books are physically beautiful.

 

What would you like to see Accents do going forward?

Accents has grown so much since its inception – going from chapbooks to full-length books. I love that the press has now extended to include a literary magazine, and a wonderful one, at that. Two areas that appeal to me as a reader, that broaden the scope and service of a journal: book reviews and essays. There is no shortage of new books to be reviewed, and book reviewers are always looking for journals to place their reviews. Literary Accents  could be such a place.

 Anthologies also make for another really engaging read. It’s always so interesting to read the variety of voices and forms on a given theme in an anthology. The Accents anthologies have been terrific, and I’d love to see more in the future.

 

What are you working on now?

I’m wrapping up the edits for my second full-length book, which will be out later this month from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, titled Imagine a Town. As you well know, putting the finishing touches on a book is both a painstaking and exciting enterprise. So that’s consumed my time and attention these past months.

I am also well underway with my next book, a collection of persona poems in the voices of victims, both identified and “Unknown,”  of the  Johnstown  flood of 1889. An archival treasure trove has been made available to me by the Flood Museum and the National Park Service; I drew my characters from the original morgue book . This may sound like a depressing project, but not so! From the snippets of description in the morgue tome, whole characters can be concocted and reanimated.  I’m especially drawn to the “unknown” victims, of whom there were an estimated 2,200―people never claimed or properly mourned. The end of the 19th century was a true crossroads, culturally and economically, with the beginnings of the industrial revolution, railroad travel, etc., so that sketching out the books’  figures in this historical context  makes for fascinating research and material.

 

Share a poem, or at least a sentence from your new writing.

Sure, gladly. From Imagine a Town, this poem, “Ode to the Big Dipper,” is, on one level, an elegy for the decrepit roller coaster in an abandoned amusement park near my home.

 

Ode to the Big Dipper

 

Slip with me, child, through the ragged

cyclone fence; the air here sparks.

Let’s walk by the feeble coaster

where the wind turns shrill.

Even the Silver Rocket in orbit

over Chippewa Lake was eclipsed

by the Dipper’s serpentine reach.

 

See how bindweed twines the latticed frame,

and dried thistle, iron weed scale the

corkscrew tracks that carried cars slow,

slow to the rise then

plunged―

unhinged our grip to level earth.

Now un-done by oaks that split

the crossties’ nails and bolts; that

collapse the rickety shell of a thrill

into the abandoned park’s understory.

 

O Dipper! Splintered bone heap

of reckless joy, wooden relic of amusement,

heart-in-the-throat conveyance, you are restored

in memory’s gyres. I am transported

to ten, trespassed here at your crumble foot;

behemoth, splayed to the sky, to your

namesake constellation, given over

to a sad gravity, you bow to the ground

of our daring, our once shudder.