#heymarfa

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions With Jeffrey Yang, Author of Hey, Marfa

Jeffrey Yang is the author of Hey, Marfa; Vanishing-Line; and An Aquarium, winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is the translator of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies. Yang lives in Beacon, New York. He is celebrating the release of Hey, Marfa with an event at City Lights Books on Tuesday, November 27th, 2018.

City Lights: If you’ve been to City Lights before, what’s your memory of the visit? If you haven’t been here before, what are you expecting?

Jeffrey Yang: I first visited City Lights maybe fourteen years ago? I remember the beautiful second floor full of poetry books! I also have a treasured Paul Yamazaki story that I'll save for the reading.

CL: What’s the first book you read & what are you reading right now?

JY: The first book I read might have been Genesis. Right now I'm eating pizza and reading Chihuahuan Desert Gardens.

CL: What are 3 books you would never part with?

JY: The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Variorum Edition), Turkish Tales, Complete works of Shakespeare (dot dot dot)

CL: What writers/artists/people do you find the most influential to the writing of this book and/or your writing in general?

JY: For this book in particular, Rackstraw Downes, Lorine Niedecker, and Cervantes come to mind.

CL: If you opened a bookstore tomorrow, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

JY: Probably my hometown Escondido as it still desperately needs a bookstore. It'd be called Suburban Lights, and the bestseller would be Martha Beckwith's Hawaiian Mythology.