MFA Fiction Candidates Peter Williams and Zeke Perkins interview Chanelle Benz during her visit to UKY. Chanelle Benz has published work in Guernica, Granta.com, The New York Times, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Fence and others, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead was published in 2017 by Ecco/HarperCollins. It was named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also shortlisted for the 2018 Saroyan Prize and longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Story Prize. Her novel The Gone Dead was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June 2019 and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Tonight Show Summer Reads Finalist. It was named a best new book of the summer by O, The Oprah Magazine, Time, Southern Living, and Nylon. She currently lives in Memphis where she teaches at Rhodes College.

New Limestone Review Podcast

Chanelle Benz

MFA Candidate Gabrielle Oliver interviews Shayla Lawson during her visit to the University of Kentucky. Shayla Lawson is the author of THIS IS MAJOR: NOTES ON DIANA ROSS, DARK GIRLS & BEING DOPE (Harper Perennial, 2020) and three poetry collections: I THINK I'M READY TO SEE FRANK OCEAN, A SPEED EDUCATION IN HUMAN BEING and PANTONE. She has written for Tin House, PAPER, ESPN, Salon, Guernica, & others, but she mostly writes for you. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla Lawson curates The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay and writes poems with Chet’la Sebree (pronounced Shayla, no relation). She was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, is a professor at Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Shayla Lawson

MFA candidate Emily Goldsmith interviews Keith Wilson during their visit to the University of Kentucky. Affrilachian poet Keith S. Wilson is the author of Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). His poetry and prose have appeared in Elle, Poetry magazine, the Kenyon Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. Wilson's nonfiction has won an Indiana Review Nonfiction Prize and the Redivider Blurred Line Prize, and has been anthologized in the award-winning collection Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. Wilson has received fellowships or grants from the NEA, Cave Canem, Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. He was a Gregory Djanikian Scholar, and his poetry has won the Rumi Prize and been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net.

Keith Wilson

MFA Candidates Ash Baker and Emily Goldsmith interview Kayleb Rae Candrilli during their visit to the University of Kentucky for the Visiting Writers Series. Kayleb Rae Candrilli is a recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award and is author of Water I Won't Touch (Copper Canyon, 2021), All the Gay Saints (Saturnalia 2020), and What Runs Over (YesYes Books, 2017). What Runs Over won the 2016 Pamet River Prize and was a 2017 Lambda Literary finalist for Transgender Poetry and a finalist for the 2018 American Book Fest's best book award in LGBTQ nonfiction. All the Gay Saints was the winner of the 2018 Saturnalia Book Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. They are published or forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, TriQuarterly, Puerto del Sol, Bettering American Poetry, The Boston Review, and many others. Kayleb has earned a Bachelors in English and a Masters in Creative Writing from Penn State University. They hold both an MFA and an MLIS degree from the University of Alabama. They live in Philadelphia with their partner. Pre-Order All the Gay Saints on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/All-Gay-Saints-Kayleb-Candrilli/dp/1947817124 Available May 5, 2020

Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Welcome to the New Limestone Review podcast! This podcast was formerly called "I Wanted To Also Ask About Ghosts." New Limestone Review is a literary journal run by graduate students in the University of Kentucky's MFA program in Creative Writing. We accept submissions of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art almost year-round. You can find more about submission guidelines on our website. On this podcast, we interview writers about identity, process, form, inspiration, and more.