"At this year’s Split This Rock Poetry Festival, Patricia Smith talked about ‘the pressure of stories.’ Stories help to change the conversation. My parents’ stories and my stories aren’t part of the dominant American narrative, and why I write, I suppose—to write us in.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split (Alice James, 2014), the winner of the 2012 Kundiman Poetry Prize. She received her MFA from New York University and is the recipient of fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, and Poets House. She currently teaches at NYU Poly and is Program Assistant for Readings/Workshops (East) at Poets & Writers."