The poetry editor for November and December, Rochelle Hurt, is the author of The Rusted City, published in the Marie Alexander Poetry Series at White Pine Press (2014). Her work has been included in Best New Poets 2013, and she has been awarded literary prizes from Crab Orchard Review, Arts & Letters, Hunger Mountain, and Poetry International. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have been published in journals like Mid-American Review, The Southeast Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Versal and Image. She holds an MFA from UNCW, and is currently a PhD student in the Creative Writing program at the University of Cincinnati.

Why be an editor for the James Franco Review?

I think visibility is the life force of the literary community. Without exposure to new voices, our collective aesthetic grows stale rather quickly. I want to read the strange, the crude, the unsanctioned work out there.

What have you read recently that has really affected you as a reader?

Danielle Pafunda’s Pretty Young Thing, Cathy Park Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution, Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye, and Jamaal May’s Hum.