THE TABAGO PAGE

Leza Cantoral is a Mexican-American fiction writer, performer and blogger. Her first short-story collection, Cartoons In The Suicide Forest , was published in 2016. What is your earliest reading memory? My father reading me Alice in Wonderland  when I was 7 is what stands out the most to me. He read to me when I was younger and I remember sitting in his lap, engrossed. Also, my mother reading to me in French when I was a baby. There was this picture book I loved called Ma Poupette  about a little girl and her doll. They go to the beach and have ice cream. It was pretty great. The first time I was really moved by a book I read on my own was when I read Little Women  by Louisa May Alcott. I remember being really sad when it was over. I think I was about 10 years old. That was also the book that put the idea in my head that writing could be a legitimate career and that women writers were badasses. It planted that little seed. Has writing been a conscious cho

T ikuli Dogra is an Indian poet, fiction writer and blogger. Her first collection, Collection of Chaos , was published in 2014. What is your earliest reading memory? I found solace in books as a child. The characters were the imaginary friends around whom I would spin tales. My first memories are of my mother telling bed time stories and then later  a wonderful world of thin paperbacks and children's magazines opened, magazines like Chandamama, Nandan, Parag, Children's World, books from Children's Book Trust, Amar Chitra katha, Panchtantra, Jatak Kathayen etc. and soon I was drawn to Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, a magazine called 'Liliput', The Children’s Encyclopedia and One Thousand Beautiful Things- chosen from The Life and Literature of the World, both by British Author Arthur Mee . There was also an excellent collection of Soviet literature for children translated in both English and Hindi. I absolutely adored a beautiful hard

Niall McDevitt is a London-based Irish poet and psychogeography explorer. His collections include Porterloo , Firing Slits  and b&w. What is your earliest reading memory? Children’s literature. I was an Irish child in Ireland reading children’s literature from England, unaware of postcolonial conditioning. The most profound literary experiences were oral, hearing tales of Irish mythology, The Children of Lir, the Salmon of Knowledge. Billy Bunter was fun, but one’s own mythology is an initiation. Needless to say, the Old and New Testaments loomed large also. Has writing been a conscious choice or a natural thing for you?   It was there early. When I was seven, I wrote a novel called The City in Space. Though I don’t write novels as an adult, my writing is still aspirant to that theme. At eleven I got into trouble with the Jesuit headmaster for writing a parody of the Hail Mary, hailing the attractiveness of my female history teacher. Coming of age

Kurt Baumeister is an American novelist and columnist. Pax Americana is his latest published novel. What is your earliest reading memory? Reading Go, Dog. Go! with my mom. Has writing been a conscious choice or a natural thing for you? Natural. Do you have any special habits or rituals when you write? My habits seem to change over time. I’ve gone through periods where I’ve needed quiet to write; others in which I’ve written at noisy coffee shops. Do you choose your stories   or do the stories/poems choose you? I believe the creative process begins with the subconscious. What national books/authors do you enjoy re-reading and why? I’ve reread Hemingway’s short stories multiple times and I’ve read The Sun Also Rises three times. I’ve also reread a few of DeLillo’s books: White Noise (three times, I think) and Mao II . I tried to reread some Vonnegut but it didn’t hold up so well. What foreign books/authors do you enjoy