Interviews January 25, 2022

John Keene. Photo: Nina Subin John Keene, the novelist, translator, poet, is one of these bold, singular artists who continuously redefines and recontextualizes American literature. From his debut with Annotations (1995), a prose-poem about coming-of-age in St. Louis and still ahead of our time, to the masterpiece Counternarratives (2015), Keene’s output remains undefinable for how easily he blends genres, forms, and styles to celebrate the lives and experiences of people in the Americas who remained in history’s margins for far too long. Now, with the publication of his latest poetry collection Punks, Keene brings together poetry from across three