Send a text

This week Niké and Dana join James to discuss the most popular books of 2025, our favorites, and what we are looking forward to in 2026.

Send a text

This week we are joined by poet, editor and translator Gerald Maa. Gerald talks about his origins and rise in the literary world and about his current role as editor of The Georgia Review. Enjoyed this conversation? Follow, subscribe, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Gerald Maa began as editor and director of the Georgia Review in 2019. Since then, the Review has won, among other things, the National Magazine Awards (fiction and profile writing), the Pulitzer Prize, the Caine Prize, and the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, reserved for debut publications. In 2010, he founded the arts anti-profit the Asian American Literary Review with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, where he served as editor-in-chief until he joined the Georgia Review.

His poetry and translation have appeared in places like Poetry, Raritan, and Push Open the Window: Contemporary Poetry from China. His essays have appeared in places like Criticism, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race, and The Routledge Companion for Ecopoetics. His work has been supported by places like the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Library of Congress Asian Reading Room, and the Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.

Send us a text

This week we have a conversation with poet Karla Kelsey who was recently the featured poet for the UGA Diann Blakely Visiting Poet Series. Karla was a delight to talk with and we hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

Karla Kelsey’s books of poetry books include On Certainty (Omnidawn, 2023), Blood Feather (Tupelo Press, 2020), A Conjoined Book (Omnidawn, 2014), Iteration Nets (Ahsahta, 2010), and Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Ahsahta, 2006) selected by Carolyn Forché for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Her book of experimental essays, Of Sphere, was selected by Carla Harryman for the 2016 Essay Press Prize. She is the editor of Lost Writings: Two Novels by Mina Loy, (Yale University Press in 2024). Her poet’s novel, Transcendental Factory: For Mina Loy was recently released from Winter Editions. She is the Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University.