Sometimes she’ll circle whatever town we’re in with a wine bottle between her honey-brown knees, passing the bottle to me now and then, tussle my curls and kiss my hand.

A conversation with Terese Svoboda about her latest book, Hitler and My Mother in Law, and how writing through uncertainty and using humor to face the unbearable truths history leaves behind.

“I’ve seen too much writing lately that makes metaphors of hunger.”

“Putin has attacked Ukraine /
I’m tired because I stayed up late watching sitcoms”

“What’s missing, what isn’t there, creates the poetry.”

For Piper, race was always a conscious affiliation, not an essentialist identity. […] Throughout all of this, Piper seems to have organically arrived at an understanding of race that aligns with its actual definition—a social construct rather than a biological fact.