Interview with Carmen Giménez Smith. Sunday, April 22nd, 2012. 11:30 a.m.


30: Carmen Giménez Smith is a writer, poet, and professor of Creative Writing at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces NM. She talks about how her writing style is conducive to her busy life as a professional and a mother of two. She also talks about how she blends her careers as a writer and teacher, and why she sometimes has to teach what she personally doesn’t like because it presents a teachable moment. 

Gimenez Smith also reads one of her poems for the Poem of the Week – “Photo of a Girl on a Beach” from the collection “Odalisque in Pieces.” 

Amit Ghosh, publisher of the literary journal BorderSenses, contributes to this week’s Poetic License, with a reflection on his struggle to break away from his culture’s expectation to be a doctor, engineer, scientist, or lawyer, and follow his passion as a writer. 


Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of a memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds (University of Arizona, 2010), three poetry collections—Goodbye, Flicker (University of Massachusetts, 2012), The City She Was (Center for Literary Publishing, 2011) and Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona, 2009)—and three poetry chapbooks—Reason's Monster (Dusie Kollectiv, 2011), Can We Talk Here (Belladonna Books, 2011) and Glitch (Dusie Kollectiv, 2009). She has also co-edited a fiction anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin, 2010). She is the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. Formerly a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she now teaches in the creative writing programs at New Mexico State University and Ashland University, while serving as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press. She lives with her husband, the writer Evan Lavender-Smith, and their two children in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Amit K. Ghosh is the co-founder and publisher of BorderSenses. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from UTEP in 2002. Amit enjoys reading and writing about immigrant experiences. Living in the frontera for over a decade has made him aware of the conflict between human and national boundaries. Originally from India, Amit has grown to love the US for its limitless possibilities and Mexico for its passionate existence. 

(Taken from http://www.bordersenses.com/staff.php )

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