What is your most recent book?
All Heathens (Sarabande Books)
When was it released?
March 24, 2020
What has been the response/what has surprised you most about the response?
Honestly, I am constantly amazed by the responses I receive about All Heathens. I went into this with low expectations, not only because I didn’t want to be disappointed, but also because I just think of myself as a little poet in my small world, making art for myself and my community. It’s such a gift to be able to share this book with others, with people I don’t know personally, and if it moves people, I’m always surprised and thrilled.
Tell me something not obvious or known about the book.
I’ve been writing poems about my family for at least a decade, but a lot of those poems do not appear in All Heathens. I think of those poems as practice—a part of the process—for the final poems that appear in this collection. About 1/3 of the book was written in the spring of 2018. During that period, something unlocked in my writing process and I was able to finish the book quickly.
What are you working on right now?
Right now, I’m simply writing new poems and seeing where they take me. It’s fun to be at the beginning of a project again!
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Marianne Chan grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. She is the author of All Heathens from Sarabande Books (2020). Her poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, West Branch, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati.
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