Finding Joy in the Struggle: Kathleen Rooney’s “Where Are the Snows”

Kathleen Rooney, photo by Beth Rooney

Brevity editor Dinty W. Moore sat down to discuss the line between essay and prose poem with Kathleen Rooney, author of Where Are the Snows, chosen for the 2021 X.J. Kennedy Prize by Kazim Ali, who calls the work “a smart, fierce, and intelligent take on contemporary life that everyone should read.”

Rooney’s book is also heartbreaking and wickedly funny

And hard to classify.

 *

DINTY: It strikes me that so many of these poems could easily ...