Alissa Quart talks with us about the “dark poetry” of American politics

Through her work as both a writer and the executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Quart is all about clueing people into what she calls the “dark poetry around them.” Thoughts and Prayers is no exception, dexterously speaking to the calamity and melodrama of our current political climate using the hybrid form of reported poetry. “I see this as a meta-text, a text around the journalism,” says Quart, a prolific journalist who has also written several nonfiction books on topics such as consumer culture and middle class precarity. “Sometimes journalism gets locked into the literal truth,” she says. “Potentially, a form like poetry or other kinds of more explosive, disruptive forms of culture could be telling the emotional truth of our period, especially the Trump era.”

Read the full interview here.