Karen Brennan is the author of six books, most recently, poems, little dark (Four Way Books, 2014).  A collection of fiction,Monsters, is forthcoming in 2016.

Word Riot is a real writers’ lit mag. It’s nothing fancy when you first see the home page, but the content is beautiful. It is what’s inside that counts, after all.

Make every word pull its weight. (Sometimes the right noun can deliver both meaning and tone; the perfect verb may eliminate the need for an adverb.). Don’t skimp on clarity. Every sentence must make sense and work together with the other sentences to make logical paragraphs.

A great “final” reading at Sac State by departing professor Peter Grandbois was a retrospective of sorts, as he generously read from the works of his colleagues who, as he put it, he ended up writing “in conversation” with.

Last year I had the opportunity for a few uninterrupted conversations with my friend and colleague Dr. Peter Grandbois, and turned it into an interview for Word Riot.