interviews — audio & video

Lee Austen, Access Utah Public Radio
Tish Pearlman (fiction), WEOS, Geneva, New York
Joe Donohue, WAMC, Albany, New York
Tish Pearlman (poetry), WEOS, Geneva, New York
Ashley David, WCBN, Ann Arbor, Michigan
David Inge, WILL, Urbana, Illinois
Glen Altschuler, Cornell Cybertower, Ithaca, New York

interviews — print & web

Les Kay, Memorious
Alice Baumgartner, The New Yorker
Alan Fox, Rattle
C.J. Lais, Albany Times Union
Thea Brown, The L Magazine
Daniel Aloi, Cornell Chronicle
Karen Rigby, BookBrowse.com
Anna Mundow, Irish Times, Dublin
Anna Mundow, Boston Globe
Lauren Fanelli, Folio
Linden Ontjes, Seattle Review
Sarah Cohen, Atlantic Online
Nate Brown, Cornell Sun
Eric Lorberer, Rain Taxi
Alec Marsh, TriQuarterly
Cristanne Miller, Contemporary Literature
Barbara Petoskey, Associated Writing Programs Chronicle

"An Interview with Alice Fulton" Memorious, Issue 15, October 2010.
( Memorious, October 2010, online)

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Happy Dust," "Dorothy Loves Maleman," "A Shadow Table."
Poetry discussed: "My Last TV Campaign," "= =," Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Felt, "Silencer," "Active Night," "A Tongue Tie of Vet Wrap," "Close," "Maidenhead," "Point of Purchase," "About Music For Bone And Membrane Instrument."
Nonfiction discussed: "Screens: An Alchemical Scrapbook."

Topics discussed: narrative, childbirth 1909, historically accurate medical details, midwifery, opiates in childbirth, Bayer Heroin, psychiatric medicine of the 1940s, insulin therapy, schizophrenia, structure of linked stories, period-specific language, language in the foreground, character, tension, scene, dialogue, pace, setting, dramatic monologues in poetry, locution, registers of diction, aesthetics of science, complexity theory, John H. Holland, the bride sign, matrilineage, patrilineage, glyphs, ideograms, syntactical deletion, A.R. Ammons' use of colon, the page as space, visual meaning, first use of flush-right lines, Robert Kelley's The Cruise of the Pnyx, chaos theory, Emily Dickinson's #1200 "Because my brook is fluent," Abu Ghraib, torture, censorship, political repression of speech, violations of human rights, depth in poetry, fractal poetics, the "poem plane," invented languages, influences, James Joyce, Ulysses Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, "In the Days of Prismatic Color," "The Steeple-Jack," Elizabeth Bishop, Walt Whitman, "Enfans d'Adam," Margaret Cavendish, "A Dialogue of Birds," John Clare, feminism, Hank De Leo, Kiki Smith, fetishism, Marjorie Garber's Vested Interests, bee orchids, Adela Pinch's Strange Fits of Passion, Rei Terada's Feeling in Theory, Cristanne Miller's A Poet's Grammar and Questions of Authority, Lynn Keller's Forms of Expansion, progressive rock, all night jazz DJ, NPR, composers Joseph Klein, Enid Sutherland, Anthony Cornicello, William Bolcom, music, Bach's fugues.

"Our Poets on Their Poetry: Alice Fulton" The New Yorker, July 28, 2010.
( The New Yorker, July 28, 2010, online)

Poetry discussed: "Claustrophilia."

Topics discussed: musicality of language, using specialist's terms in poetry, moxibustion, analgesia, romance, proximity, registers of diction, what distinguishes poetry from prose, vertical depth vs. horizontal structure, walking vs. dancing, Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, "inconvenient knowledge", "culturally correct" political, subversive, jazz, opera, hybrid, Enid Sutherland, "Give" "Big Mama Thornton"

"Conversation between Alice Fulton and Alan Fox in Ithaca, NY, May 23rd, 2009" Rattle, Winter 2009, No. 32, pp. 147–163.
( Rattle number 32)

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy.
Poetry discussed: "About Face."

Topics discussed: writing short fiction vs. writing poetry, time, ideas, language, narrative, surface, internal censor, aspects of writing, teaching creative writing (at Michigan, UCLA, Berkeley, Cornell), criticism, honesty, revelation, issues of class, MacArthur fellowship, invented languages, Emily Dickinson, communication vs. noise in poetry, "one reader is an intimacy," watching films vs. reading books, embarrassment, friendship, altruism, love, loneliness, Billie Holiday, uses of language, facade, veil.

Lee Austen, "Alice Fulton Discusses Her Fiction and Poetry" Utah Access Public Radio, November 3, 2009.
( streaming audio – second half of the show)

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy.
Poetry discussed: "Between The Apple And The Stars," "My Last TV Campaign," "Give: A Sequence Reimagining Daphne and Apollo," Fractal Poetics.

Topics discussed: short fiction, linked stories, Troy, altruism, mother, Beatles, Herman Melville house, John H. Holland, complexity, meter, Fulton's essays on fractal poetics, science and literature.

C.J. Lais Jr., "Alice Fulton Discusses Tales of Troy" Albany Times Union, November 9, 2008.
( html full text)

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy.

Topics discussed: Troy, altruism, aunts, sisters, Beatles, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, George Harrison, historical research, Troy Record, Troy Public Library, Shrine of the North American Martyrs, Auriesville, OTB, Lansingburgh, 1930s floating dance gardens, The Ship of Joy, The Paradise, Oakwood Cemetery, Herman Melville house, Russell Sage, Washington Park, Market Block Books, South Troy, Sycaway, Beman Park, Prospect Park.

Thea Brown, "Author Interview: Alice Fulton" The L Magazine, September 24, 2008.
( html full text)

Fiction and poetry discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Queen Wintergreen," Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, "The Glorious Mysteries," "Happy Dust," Felt, Sensual Math, "L'Air du Temps."

Topics discussed: genesis of the connected stories, historical research, contrast and similarities between poetry and short stories, process, language and syntax in poetry vs. prose, narrative, character, tropes of goodness, self-sacrifice, and time, nature/nurture, economic class, religion, mores of the decade, cultural expectations, college radio, being a professional DJ, The Beatles, meeting George Harrison and John Lennon, "Walls and Bridges," working from primary sources.

Daniel Aloi, "Alice Fulton explores family-based fiction in ‘Nightingales of Troy’." Cornell Chronicle, September 5, 2008.
( PDF full text) ( html text).

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Queen Wintergreen," "The Glorious Mysteries," and "The Real Eleanor Rigby."

Topics discussed: novel in stories, Fulton's great grandmother, Peg Flynn, Troy's collar factories, Emily Dickinson, The Beatles, college radio, Ruth Livingston, Janet Burroway.

Photos: Vintage photos of Fulton's aunt Madeline and aunt Alice, Fulton's mother, The Phoenix Hotel, Lansingburgh, NY.

"Karen Rigby chats with poet Alice Fulton about her first collection of short stories, The Nightingales of Troy." BookBrowse.com, August 12, 2008.
( html text).

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Happy Dust," "A Shadow Table," "If It's Not Too Much to Ask," "L'Air du Temps," "The Nightingales of Troy," "The Real Eleanor Rigby."

Topics discussed: women attending to others, selflessness, nursing, caregiving, self-sacrifice, Mamie Garrahan, Charlotte Garrahan, Edna Garrahan, Annie Garrahan Livingston, Ruth Livingston, women's experience, writing both fiction and poetry, short story craft, historical research, period language and texture, idioms, the Depression, medicine, Catholic Church, classification of relics, perfume, Herman Melville, lonliness, darkness, happiness, time, memory, love, altruism.

Tish Pearlman, "Out of Bounds" WEOS Geneva, New York, July 31, 2008.
(Real Audio)

Fiction read and discussed: excerpts from "Happy Dust" and "The Nightingales of Troy."

Topics discussed: Troy, New York, memoir vs. fiction, family secrets, Mamie Flynn Garrahan, Annie Garrahan Livingston, childbirth, Bayer Heroin, goodness, difficulties and dangers of goodness, limits of altruism, arsenic eaters, research for historical detail, nursing in 1930s, private lives of women, waitresses, nurses, working people, suicide, madness, Catholicism, County Cork, story technique, nightingale birds, exotic beauty, memory, past, Florence Nightingale, women who take care of others, Lansingburgh, New York, Ruth Livingston, dementia, caregiving, time, memory, Flannery O'Connor, James Joyce, Ulysses, experience, the ordinary life.

Anna Mundow, "Legends of Troy: Interview " Irish Times Magazine (Dublin), July 12, 2008.
( html text — without photos).

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Queen Wintergreen," "Happy Dust," "The Glorious Mysteries," "Dorothy Loves Maleman," "The Real Eleanor Rigby," "If It's Not Too Much to Ask," "L'Air du Temps."

Topics discussed: Troy, NY, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, Annie Proulx, Frank O'Connor, nuns, the Beatles, Phoenix Hotel, Rainbow Gardens, The Ship of Joy, Troy Record, Dublin, Peg Flynn, Hudson River, Mamie Garrahan, Annie Garrahan, Min Garrahan, Bess Garrahan, Louise Garrahan, Dorothy Garrahan, Ruth Livingston, Troy Public Library, Tiffany windows, Proctor's Theater, Frear Building, Trojan Electronics, Off Track Betting, Oakwood Cemetery, memory, time.

Anna Mundow, "Distilling Decades into Fiction: An Interview with Alice Fulton" Boston Globe, June 29, 2008.
( html text)

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Queen Wintergreen," "Happy Dust," "The Real Eleanor Rigby."

Topics discussed: Language, compression, fiction vs poetry, character, psychology, research, historical accuracy, nursing, psychiatry, schizophrenia, short story form, narrative, novel, epochs, period texture, Troy, NY, Lansingburgh, NY, Phoenix Hotel, Herman Melville, Typee.

Joe Donohue, "The Roundtable" WAMC Albany, New York, Thursday, June 26, 2008.
(mp3)

Fiction discussed: The Nightingales of Troy, "Dorothy Loves Maleman," "The Nightingales of Troy."

Topics discussed: Troy, NY, Hudson River, Frear Building, River Street, Troy Public Library, Troy Record, great-grandmother's 1919 obituary, one story in each decade of the 20th century, Lansingburgh, NY, Phoenix Hotel, Herman Melville, Typee, The Ship of Joy, dance gardens on the Hudson River, visiting nurses, The Rainbow Garden, fiction vs memoire, short story vs poetry, history of the language, textures of the decades.

Tish Pearlman, "Out of Bounds" WEOS Geneva, New York, Thursday, March 15, 2006.
(RealAudio)

Poems read and discussed: "Powers Of Congress," "Sequel."

Topics discussed: Formative years, love poetry, poetry of ideas, politics, philosophy, idiosyncratic poetry, autobiographical poetry, introspection, infinite nature of language, change and recombination, social conformity, importance of form and content, music, deletions, reticence, silence, poetry as a foreign language, making it fresh, Emily Dickinson's language, gratitude, obscurity, meditative nature of poetry, poetry set to music, Enid Sutherland's setting of "Give: Reimagining Daphne & Apollo," variety of musical idioms, thinking musically when writing poetry, writing short stories vs. writing poems, the effect of awards."

Ashley David, "The Living Writers Show" WCBN Ann Arbor, Michigan, Thursday, January 25, 2006.
(iTunes) (streaming audio)

Poems or excerpts read or discussed: "A Little Heart To Heart With The Horizon," "Point Of Purchase," "Scumbling," "Cascade Experiment."

Topics discussed: Language, complexity, style, handwritten marginalia in "Point Of Purchase," taking risks, experimenting, where is pleasure located in poetry, reading widely, helping her students write what they love, the work of A. R. Ammons, Ammons as a teacher and friend, Elvis, polyphony, character, diction, poetics, control, weirdness, good strangeness, innovation, love poems, rhythm and music in poetry, scansion, metrics, improvisation, form, sound, silence, the line, caesura, Emily Dickinson's syntax and dash, high to low registers of diction, eccentricity, war, protest, witness, science, "inconvenient knowledge," privilege, women, inequity, animals, cruelty, suffering, schools of poetry and critical convenience, being between categories, branding, Keats, negative capability, mystery in poetry and music.

David Inge, "Focus 580" WILL Urbana, Illinois Tuesday, October 11, 2005.
(mp3 download)

Poems or excerpts read or discussed: "Dance Script With Electric Ballerina," "What I Like," "My Diamond Stud," "The Priming Is A Negliglee," "Maidenhead," "How To Swing Those Obligattos Around," "My Last TV Campaign."

Topics discussed: Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, Sensual Math, Felt, Cascade Experiment, Beginning as a poet, working with young poets, teaching creative writing, keeping a notebook, enjambment, poetic forms, syntactic doubling, gemology, technical diction, ways to approach poems, transparency vs density, popular music, composers who have set her poems, music in poetry, what distinguishes poetry from other genres, virginity, gesso, leading, visual art, A.R. Ammons, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, James Wright, Cristanne Miller, Jack Bruce, Bob Dylan, William Bolcom, Anthony Cornicello, Joseph Klein, Enid Sutherland.

Lauren Fanelli, "Stranger Inclusions: An Interview with Alice Fulton" Folio 20:2:49-63, spring 2005.
(html text)

Works discussed: Sensual Math, Felt, "Close," "The Permeable Past Tense Of Feel," Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, "In The Beginning," "Slate," Palladium, Powers Of Congress, "Silencer," "Failure," "==," "Immersion," "Warmth Sculpture," "Duty Free Spirits," Feeling As a Foreign Language, "Of Formal, Free, and Fractal Verse: Singing the Body Eclectic," "Fractal Amplifications: Writing in Three Dimensions," Cascade Experiment, "Shy One."

Topics discussed: Motivation for writing, Emily Dickinson, creative influences, feminism, formative education, early workshops, teachers, politics and ethics in poetry, content, process of writing, personal prosody, A.R. Ammons, enjambment, the shape of the poem, keeping and using notebooks, Fine Arts Work Center, philosophy, inclusions, right-justified lines, Robert Kelly's The Cruise of the Pnyx, suicide, Joan Mitchell's White Territory, the line and line breaks, italics, the poem plane, impulsion, syntactic doubling, revision, obsessiveness, closure, embodiment, eating, carnivorism, compassion, the bride sign (==, double equal), torquing repitition, non-recoverable deletion, metaphors and concepts of science, fractal poetry, form wars, John H. Holland, book titles, title poems, reading other writers, Cornell.

Linden Ontjes, "The Wick That Is The White Between The Ink: Interview of Alice Fulton by Linden Ontjes at the Josephine Miles House, Berkeley, CA 11/20/04" The Seattle Review XXVII:2:24-44, 2005.
(html text)

Works discussed: Sensual Math, "==," "Immersion," "The Lines Are Wound On Wooden Bobbins Formerly Bones," "Fuzzy Feelings," Felt, "Close," "Maidenhead," "Fair Use," "Of Formal, Free, and Fractal Verse: Singing the Body Eclectic," Feeling As a Foreign Language, Powers Of Congress, rough draft of "==," rough draft of "Immersion," rough draft of "Recessive," "Barely Composed."

Topics discussed: The bride sign (== , double equal), Emily Dickinson's dash, A.R. Ammons' colon, betweenness as a feminist space, power of negative space, lace and lacemaking, yin space, brides, the genuine and the imitation, empathy, artificiality of poetry, fractal poetry, chance processes, randomness, reciprocity, cluster and supercluster words, John. H. Holland, the poem plane, fracturing the surface, transparency vs. resistance, ethics of the self.

Sarah Cohen, "Justice + Beauty = Sublime," The Atlantic online, July 13, 2004.
(html text)

Works discussed: Cascade Experiment, "Shy One," Sensual Math, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, Felt, "Between the Apple and the Stars," Powers Of Congress, "A Poetry of Inconvenient Knowledge."

Topics discussed: Poems about things, aesthetic principles, poetic process, control in poetry writing, cascade experiments, the bride sign (double equals sign), lace-making, Emily Dickinson, A.R. Ammons, surface of language, typographic features of poetry, public poetry readings, technical language, Daphne myth, conscience, cruelty, suffering, history, ethics, religion, feminism, subversive language, writing against the predominant culture, animal suffering, layers of meaning, homage, justice, beauty, the sublime.

Glenn Altschuler, "A Conversation with Alice Fulton" Cornell Cybertower, recorded April 12, 2004
(QuickTime movie) requires free registration

Works discussed: "What I Like," "The Gone Years," "Maidenhead," "Give," "About Face," "Cascade Experiment," "Sequel," Cascade Experiment.

Topics discussed: Formative years, friendship, what is a poem, music in poetry, poetry read aloud, popular culture, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, "Daphne and Apollo Remade" by Enid Sutherland, being a graduate student at Cornell, A.R. Ammons (Fulton reads "Triphammer Bridge"), Emily Dickinson, physics and poetry, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the metaphors of science, feminism, religion, butterfly effect.

Nate Brown, "A Conversation with Poet and Professor Alice Fulton" Cornell Daily Sun, Jan. 31, 2002.
(html text)

Works discussed: "Split The Lark," "Maidenhead," "Sequel," Felt.

Topics discussed: A.R. Ammons, Cornell MFA creative writing program, teaching, emotion in contemporary poetry, felt and feltmaking, complexity theory, Emily Dickinson, privacy and solitude, eccentricity.

Eric Lorberer, "Language As Felt: An Interview with Alice Fulton" Rain Taxi 6:2:16-19, summer 2001.
(html text)

Works discussed: "Fractal Amplifications," "About Music For Bone And Membrane Instrument ==," "Point Of Purchase," "Close," "Silencer," Felt, Powers Of Congress, Feeling as a Foreign Language.

Topics discussed: Fractal poetics, plainstyle poetics, "cultural correctness," feminism, maximalism, cruelty, fetishism (sexual, religious, commodity), Emily Dickinson, A.R. Ammons, painting and poetry, abstraction, the == (bride) sign, the poem plane, handwriting in conjunction with type.

Alec Marsh, "A Conversation with Alice Fulton," TriQuarterly 98 98:22-39, winter 1996-97.
(html text)

Poems discussed: "==," "Give," "My Last TV Campaign," "OVERLORD," "Passport," "Some Cool," "Turn: A Version," "Vanishing Cream," "World Wrap."

Cristanne Miller, "An Interview with Alice Fulton," Contemporary Literature 38:4:585-615, winter 1997.
(html text)

Poems discussed: "A Little Heart To Heart With The Horizon," "A New Release," "About Face," "Anchors Of Light," "Art Thou The Thing I Wanted," "Between The Apple And The Stars," "==," "By Her Own Hand." "Cascade Experiment," "Cusp," "Drills," "Echo Location," "Fables From The Random," "Fuzzy Feelings," "Give," "Immersion," "My Last TV Campaign," "My Second Marriage To My First Husband," "OVERLORD," "Point Of Purchase," "Some Cool," "Southbound In A Northbound Lane," "Supernal,""The Expense Of Spirit," "Undoing."

Topics discussed: The == (bride) sign, polyphonic writing, "blue notes" and non-binary "betweenness," the music of language, gender, feminist punctuation, lyric "voice," God, race, Daphne and Apollo, mythology, enjambment, line and stanza, transparency, grace, love poems, sentimentality, emotions, embarrassment, suicide, sadism, skepticism, science, bee orchids, originality, political subversion, the handmade, handwriting in printed poems, marginalia, MacArthur award, A.R. Ammons, and Emily Dickinson.

Barbara J. Petoskey, "An Interview with Alice Fulton," Associated Writing Programs Chronicle 30:6:24-29, May/summer 1998.
(html text)

Poems discussed: "About Face,""Dance Script With Electric Ballerina," "Echo Location," "Elvis From The Waist Up," "Fuzzy Feelings," "Give," "My Last TV Campaign," "Some Cool," "The Priming Is A Negligee," "Vanishing Cream."

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interviews — audio & video

interviews — print & web