As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts. What inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

“The Last Silent Film Dovzhenko Never Made” was inspired by my watching Earth for the first time in 2014 (thank you Amazon Prime), which prompted me to go back to a journal, circa 1989, in which I had copied an excerpt of an interview in Kino with Dovzhenko about his WWII experiences.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

I’m not sure I have a fav but I really enjoyed approaching a poem as a condensed script and getting to use all the great verbs associated with camera work.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

Find a way that allows you to send out your work, get rejected and not get discouraged or demoralized.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

I restore vintage fountain pens and sell them on EBay to fund my poetry submissions.

What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

Just recently completed a chapbook, titled Visiting Hours.

James Wyshynski received his M.F.A. from the University of Alabama. He is a former editor of the Black Warrior Review. His poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Terminus Magazine, River Styx, Interim, The Chattahoochee Review, The Cortland Review, Northeast Corridor, Permafrost and are forthcoming in Barrow Street, and others. He currently lives and works in Marietta, Georgia.