12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hugo dos Santos

Hugo dos Santos is a Luso-American writer and translator. He is the author of Reduction in Force (Bauhan Publishing, forthcoming 2026), winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Award, and Then, there (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), a collection of Newark stories. He is the translator of Homecoming (Arquipélago Press, 2024) and A Child in Ruins (Writ Large Press, 2016), a staff pick by The Paris Review Daily.

Born in Lisboa, Portugal, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Hugo writes toward questions of diaspora, belonging, and memory. His poetry and fiction illuminate the beauty, complexity, and struggles of the immigrant experience and urban life, while his translations bring contemporary Portuguese literature to English-speaking audiences.

Hugo received a 2026 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has also been awarded fellowships from The Edward F. Albee Foundation, MacDowell, and the Disquiet International Literary Program. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Barrelhouse, Cultural Daily, Electric Literature, Hobart, The Common, The Fanzine, and elsewhere.

Hugo lives in New Jersey.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book was a collection of short stories titled Then, there, about my hometown of Newark, NJ. I felt so much responsibility with that book, to capture the essence of that place. It took me about four years to write that book.

My new book, Reduction in Force, is a poetry collection that deals with very different subject matter. On the surface, it’s far from Then, there, but both books are really concerned with identity, belonging, and the systems that shape our lives.

I had an early idea for the structure of Reduction in Force, and the poems kept coming. I wrote them in almost the exact order in which they appear in the book, which is still hard to believe.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Poetry was my first literary language. Before I knew how to tell stories, I was trying to make meaning through images, rhythm, and compression.

In some ways, I think all my projects start out as poems. I think in verse and have some methods I have developed for capturing those early ideas when they emerge. As I keep working on them, sometimes they stay as poems. Other times, they evolve into something else.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

At first, I don’t really know that I’m working on something that will become a book. It’s just writing. When I find myself coming back to the same idea, I’ll make a note of that though I don’t rush in to define it right away. Longer projects kind of reveal themselves as they begin to take shape.

I am an avid note taker and those are very helpful. My first drafts tend to be explorations. They contain the DNA of the finished piece, but I revise heavily and repeatedly.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Early in a project, I am usually just writing without any kind of pretense about what it will turn into. Those first steps are an opportunity to play and investigate during which I try to find the voice and the story that is inspiring me to write. As I keep working, the play transforms into something more serious. That’s when I start to think about the shape of the project, its structure and form.

Very early on, I realized this new book wanted the architecture of a Greek tragedy. In some ways, that made the writing process easier because I knew what the book was building to. I had a clear vision for where it was going and how it would end. That allowed me to focus on the execution, which was a real treat.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I really enjoy readings and public events because they are an opportunity to build or be in community. I particularly enjoy a number of the local reading and open mic series. I like being able to share my work with a supportive audience, and I love to hear my friends’ work.

For Reduction in Force, I definitely used the open mic series in my town, at the Flemington DIY, to read the poems in a big space. I learned about the poems that way; both about what was and wasn’t working. That was invaluable and I am so indebted to all the good people who are part of that series. I named them in the Acknowledgments section of the book.  

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Each of my books has been an attempt to take on a big question or idea. In Reduction in Force, I ended up writing about the systems we create and the degree to which those systems fail to function in the interest of the individuals within them.

The book started because I wanted to investigate our relationship with work, specifically with corporate work. I was interested in the degree to which those kinds of jobs inform the identity of those individuals who make their living that way.

I have seen a number of those reductions, and I was struck by how they affect both those who are laid off as well as those who keep their jobs and continue in their roles after the fact. One of the ideas at the center of the book is the lie embedded in the phrase It’s just business. Work shapes identity, family life, self-worth, and community. When that relationship is severed, the consequences are deeply personal.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The writer’s first responsibility is to the craft. Beyond that, literature helps us see one another more clearly. I don’t think art needs to be didactic, but I do think it can challenge the stories a culture tells about itself.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I absolutely love working with a good editor. My work is always better for it. Writing can be a solitary act, while publishing is collaborative. A good editor sees both the book you wrote and the book you’re trying to write, then helps close the gap between them.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

To not take any advice. To keep going and find my own way of doing it.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories to translation)? What do you see as the appeal?

I love the freedom to move between genres. It allows me to work in accordance with what the project needs. I also learn valuable lessons in one genre that I can apply in others.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

My routine changes from project to project. When I’m deep in a manuscript, I become very goal-oriented and build systems around word counts, deadlines, and milestones. Outside of that, I am constantly taking notes, collecting ideas, and paying attention.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

When I get stuck, I have sometimes taken a break and moved to a different project. Usually, though, and if at all possible, I will try to work on a different aspect of the same project. That allows me to subconsciously work on the problem. Later, when I return to what had me stuck, I am better able to find a solution.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

A big pot on the stove. Garlic and onions sizzling in olive oil. Family gathered around a table.

There’s a line in my book that goes, “I still love meals that stop everything.” And it’s so true.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Yes, in addition to books, I am inspired by film and music. In Reduction in Force, I have an epigraph from Frank Ocean: “If it brings me to my knees, it’s a bad religion.” That line was an anchor for me while I was writing the book.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There are so many: Fernando Pessoa is the writer I return to most often and his work has been a companion through different stages of my life; Katherine Vaz is a writer and person I greatly admire; I love the work of Percival Everett; I adore the poetry of Jane Hirshfield and Aracelis Girmay; poets like Marwa Helal, Vincent Toro, Grisel Y. Acosta, Chiwan Choi, and Peter Murphy; and I am endlessly inspired by the work of colleagues like Marina Carreira, Dimitri Reyes, PaulA Neves, Ysabel Y. Gonzalez, and Toma Zbrizher.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I would love to publish a novel.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I have a career in educational publishing. I care deeply about literacy and helping young people become readers. Had writing not found me, I suspect I would have gravitated toward work involving books, language, and learning.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I never really had a choice. Writing is how I make sense of the world. I was writing long before I ever thought of publication. It helped me understand experiences, questions, and contradictions that wouldn’t leave me alone.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I just finished reading all of Claire Keegan’s books. She is an incredible writer. I was particularly moved by Small Things Like These and Foster, which is a gorgeous poem of a novel. 

I recently watched The Secret Agent and was blown away by its depth and subtlety.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I have a novel in progress that I’m very excited about. Hopefully you’ll read it one day.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with catherine corbett bresner

catherine corbett bresner (they/she) are  the author of the chapbooks The Merriam Webster Series (2012) and Some Break A / Others Say Do (Press Brake, 2025), and the full-length poetry collections Can We Anything We See (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025), the empty season (winner, Diode Editions Book Prize, 2018), and the artist book Everyday Eros (Mount Analogue, 2017). Their poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in FENCE, VOLT, b.l.u.s.h, Denver Quarterly, Sixth Finch, Fonograf magazine and elsewhere. Currently, she are the publicist for Wave Books and co-edits Spirit Duplicator, a biannual mimeograph magazine of poetry and art, with the poet Adam Tobin. They believe in a free Palestine.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different? 

I made my first chapbook, which was handstitched at Flying Object, an artist space that existed in Hadley, MA from 2012-2015. I was so proud of this chap, and now I am bashful of its poems, which are pretty bad. But the design is beautiful, I think. Here is a picture:

At the time of my writing the empty season, my first full-length book, my father was dying quickly and prematurely, a long-term relationship ended, and I was coming out as queer. So in a way, it feels like my life was changing in very dramatic ways and the book was a culmination of a lot of different forms which I was playing around with at the time. Mainly, poetry comics, which I don’t really do anymore.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I came to poetry when I was really young. My middle school best friend, the poet Katie Fowley, and I would go into Cambridge  on a Wednesday night to hear poetry in the basement of the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, MA. This was during the days when Patricia Smith was reading a lot. We were two twelve-year-old kids and the poets there took us under their wing and treated us like adults. It all felt very glamorous, especially for me, because I was raised by a strict father who wouldn’t even let me watch TV during the week, and in a moment of clarity, made this one exception, so I treasured these trips.

The first poem I remember reading over and over again was Ginsburg’s “Sunflower Sutra” in HOWL, trying to memorize it just so that I could listen to it all day in my head. Also, I have a middle school memory of a performer named Odds Bodkin who came into my school to perform, over the course of three days, The Odyssey in bard.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It comes when it comes, which is always a surprise to me. I don’t start projects as much as I get language earworms that need to wriggle their way out or I get obsessed with a subject  and then naturally I start writing into it. A poem might start with a line, which may not even be its first line. Sometimes it is not a line but just one word that needs some investigating. I write most days, and I am not very disciplined. Over the years, my poetry practice has not been as much about daily writing as much as it is an act of attention in the day.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

It changes with each poem. If I am paying attention, there is nothing ‘usual’ about the beginning of a poem at all. It is a surprise and a calling most of the time. For example, Can We Anything We See, my most recent book, is a long poem concerned with A.I. and personhood. For this book, it would seem like a “project book,” and in some ways, my writing constrictions made it a project. But I didn’t set out to write a book. I followed the language that became a long poem, which happens to be book-length. It is important in my practice to make that distinction, as my poems aren’t very good when they come from a place of knowing or planning instead of coming from a place of curiosity. For CWAWS I started writing language – about a line or two a day – in response to various randomly selected AI photojournalism pictures that I found through keyword searches. The line was usually written on a typewriter so that I would need to pull my attention away from the screen to write. I think I might have even started our writing in pen, but then handwriting seemed too lyrical for the poem, and the language demanded a serif font. I wrote pages and pages of these lines, most of which did not end up into the slim manuscript. So by starting from a place of ekphrasis but omitting the photographs, I created a sort of reverse ekphrastic for the reader. Human beings are always doing this – filling in the gaps with our own narratives, and this poem lays that bare.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love giving readings, but I hate to go last and I don’t like Q&A’s. My first experiences of poetry were aloud. Sometimes reading aloud is a way I can edit my poems, and I’ve been known to edit a poem extemporaneously during a reading.  And more than reading my own poems, I love listening to other people’s poems, which why I typically request to read first, even at my own book launches. Although I’ve given many readings,  I always get really nervous, and I am relieved to sit down and relax and give all of my attention to the poets around me afterwards. Also, talking is perhaps my least favorite form of communication, which is why I get shy at live Q&A’s. I’d rather just folks come up to me after a reading and engage me in conversation.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

This is such a beautifully impossible question for me to answer, as the theoretical questions I have change book-to-book and poem-to-poem. For CWAWS, I was really curious (and yes, concerned) with the ways in which AI technologies can not only shape an individual’s sense of personhood but also shape an individual’s sense of collective identity in relation to that personhood. What keywords drive daily browser searches? What do these searches say about our fears and obsessions? How can we believe anything we see? In what ways do we rely on photos, specifically photojournalistic ones, for evidence and why? How do captions shape our meaning-making?

As I write this, I am rethinking about a lot of these questions not only because I just read today that AI’s leading developer, Nvidia, is worth 3 trillion dollars, a staggering number that could feed countries and end wars. Instead, the U.S. is spending billions of dollars investing in the “Lavender,” an “A.I. targeting system used to bomb Gazans with little human oversight and permissive policy for casualties.” When I wrote this poem, however, I remember that I was thinking about my own gender identity a lot in relation to AI, and in my digging around., I came across “The Gender Panopticon: AI, Gender, and Design Justice” by Sonia K. Katyal and Jessica Y.Young,” which is cited in my notes,. This article started to shape a framework for my thinking around the many ways AI shapes a collective sense of personhood, for better or worse (and as the authors argue, more often the latter).

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I think that depends on the writer, the specific culture, and the current moment. Which is to say, I don’t think there is a singular answer. For me, my role is only to write.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I find it to be both. I do get pleasure and a thrill sharing my work with a trusted reader/editor for the first time. I have an intimate list of poets who challenge and inspire me, and whom I often share early versions of my work.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

“Don’t pay for an MFA.”—Peter Gizzi given to me directly at my undergraduate thesis dissertation.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between text to visual work? What do you see as the appeal?

I take photographs for the same reason I write poems. I am curious about the result. And it is very easy to move between the two mediums for me, as photography seems very externally focused, and poetry seems grounded in interiority. I like to think of each act as a kind of breath, poetry an inhale and photography an exhale, and I breathe throughout the day.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I am not a disciplined writer, but I do write daily. I keep a notebook with me everywhere I go. A typical day for me begins with making my daughter her lunch while slugging coffee. I am always writing in my head until it is on the page.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I would say that I am lucky in that I don’t really get stalled, not in the ‘writer’s block’ sense. But the truth is I do get stalled… by my chronic clinical depression. I have a history of outpatient and inpatient care in psychiatric hospitals, and I have also struggled throughout the years with alcoholism and self-harm. As I get older, I try to share about this as candidly as possible when appropriate, as my experience is very common within writer communities, but often not discussed. So where do I return for inspiration? In a way, I could say medication and therapy, as these things restore inspiration to me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

mothballs and pipe tobacco

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Yes, all of the above and more.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

The writers who were specifically on my mind and on my nightside table in the creating of Can We Anything We See were Renee Gladman’s Plans for Sentences, Rosmarie Waldrop’s Lawn of the Excluded Middle, Radi Os by Ronald Johnson.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Make pottery. Learn to crotchet. Speak Spanish fluently. Start a children’s book imprint. Write a review for the film HOME starring Isabelle Huppert and directed by Ursula Meier.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I don’t think it is an either/or situation, but I do have dreams of becoming a beekeeper someday.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

20 - What are you currently working on?

I just started finishing a long lyric poem called Some Say Break / Others Say Do which I started in October 2024. The first thirty-five pages were published in a chap from Press Brake.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Summer Brenner, Dust

I’m appreciating the ease of San Francisco writer Summer Brenner’s prose through her recent memoir, Dust (New York NY: Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), a book exploring her upbringing and family circumstances: from her father’s distraction, her mother’s deflections and entitlements, and her brother’s difficulties and enduring sweetness. In his blurb for the collection, James Nolan writes how Brenner “captures the tumultuous fifties and sixties of a genteel Jewish family in Atlanta, with the South’s oppressive segregation and anti-Semitism. The family drama is fraught: the brother is a schizophrenic, the mother is a Gucci-clad Medusa, and the father a suicide.” The prose is engaged, engaging; offering the distance of time but an immediacy of enormously rich detail. The language seems uncomplicated, but is crafted, riveting. As she begins the third chapter, “The Toy Store”: “In summer the daylight is nearly white. Its color is dulled by the flat, hot, heavy air. The sky and sun are buried in a white vapor that hangs like a starched sheet. The thick air presses down on everything. The nearby objects—my red wagon, my parents’ blue car, the houses—pulse with the heat around them. From the road, the asphalt sends up zigzag waves of heat.”

“Whenever the KKK marches through downtown,” Brenner writes, “they pass Leb’s. They deliberately choose a route that passes Leb’s. They wear long white robes and carry their hoods in their hands. They can’t hide behind their hoods. There’s a law now that makes them show their faces.” She continues:

I know about the KKK. I know they burn crosses and do things that I can’t let myself imagine. I know they hate Jews. They hate Blacks, Catholics, and Jews. Because Daddy stands up for the rights of Blacks, I worry they’ll come to our house. I worry they’ll burn a cross in our yard.
            At Leb’s our family likes to sit in a booth by the window. If the Klan is marching, I see them through the window. They’re grinning when they pass us. Or maybe grin is incorrect. Maybe grimace is the correct word. I see how proud and happy they are to march. I’ve been taught you’re only supposed to be proud of good things. I wonder if they think they’re good. I wonder if it makes them happy to hate.

There’s something quite stunning in the way she describes her childhood surroundings, from live-in maids and segregation to her father’s refusal to adhere to those artificially-drawn social and colour barriers, and the later discovery, in her teens, that her father had been a regular visitor at some of those same integrated jazz clubs as she, all in secret from her mother. “I tell Mother that she should go too. However,” she writes, “Mother doesn’t approve of mingling. She believes in rights but not mingling. She thinks mingling is stepping into other people’s business. Or maybe she’s afraid. Maybe equality is better in theory than practice.” Given how Brenner describes how she herself moves with the period, ending up in a commune in California with a small child by the 1960s, the distances she achieves through this break seem incredible. Her parents are set firmly within the context of their settings, as Brenner describes in detail how she lifts herself out of it, and into another.

It is a remarkable story of how one emerges, able to find clarity in one’s surroundings and chaos, and be able to step outside of it, seemingly unhindered by the limitations of her parents, of her community; of where and how she grew up. How she managed to emerge as a seemingly-emotionally healthy, capable and empathetic person. Through all the chaos. Through all the bluster and anger and resentment and turmoil, capturing the detail of a time and a place and a sense of it that is deeply compelling.

snow day (new book!) + reading soon in Vancouver w Christine,

I’ve a new poetry book this month! My third title with American publisher Spuyten Duyvil, Snow day (2025)—following How the alphabet was made (2018) and Life sentence, (2019)—is now available to order! A collection built out of a sequence of sequences, it includes the title poem, “Snow day” (produced as an above/ground press chapbook in 2018), and “Somewhere in-between / cloud” (also produced as an above/ground press chapbook in 2019), was composed for and published as part of Dusie Kollektiv 9: “Somewhere in the Cloud and Inbetween”—A Tribute to Marthe Reed (1958-2018) as an unofficial/official element of the New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 18-21, 2019. Much thanks to Susana Gardner for her ongoing support. This poem, in places, utilizes the occasional word and phrase from the late Marthe Reed (as well as a fragment quoted from Timothy Morton), including from her co-editor afterward, “‘Somewhere Inbetween’ : Speaking-Through Contiguity” from Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene, edited by Linda Russo and Marthe Reed (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2018).

The poem “What they write in the snow” was included in the first issue of Julian Day’s +doc: a journal of longer poems (Winnipeg MB: null pointer press, summer 2021). “for my fifty-first year,” appeared as the great silence of the poetic line through Derek Beaulieu’s № Press (Banff AB) in an edition of fifty copies, July 26, 2024. Thanks much to all the editors/publishers involved, and the whole team over at Spuyten Duyvil! Now, of course, we get to work on the final copy/proofs for another title with the same publisher, my forty-page essay, A river runs through it: a writing diary , collaborating with Julie Carr (2025); stay tuned!

Hopefully I’ll even have copies of Snow day on-hand soon, including for the reading Christine and I are doing later this month in Vancouver. You are coming out to hear us, yes?

Poetry in Canada: Off the Shelf Reading Series Part 5
Featuring: CHRISTINE MCNAIR + rob mclennan

February 28, 2025
Doors: 6:30 pm /  Event: 7 pm
SFU Belzberg Library
SFU Harbour Centre, 515 Hastings St. Vancouver BC

https://www.poetrycanada.org/

I'm also reading to launch the new book in Ottawa soon, the day after my birthday, with Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya, Rob Manery, Grant Wilkins + Chris Turnbull, so if you're around, that would be good to see you. Oh, and here are the blurbs on the back cover. Brilliant thanks to all three for their generous words:

There is snow and the school buses are cancelled. Letters come from afar in spite of the weather. In Snow Day, rob mclennan documents the detritus of living – the snow, the children, their toys, their resistance to naps, the accumulation of small daily events that make up this specific life. Except for what filters faintly through the media, there are no bombs, no daily fights for food or shelter. Even so, mortality is the quiet accompaniment rumbling beneath this work. We live on and find connection in spite of death. “How do [people] get strength to put their clothes on in the morning?” notes rob, quoting Emily Dickinson. By observing the private moments, specific to his world but common to many, he finds some kind of answer and some kind of grace.
            Samuel Ace, author of I want to start by saying (CSU Poetry Center, 2024)

In Snow Day, rob mclennan squints through the hazy weather of everyday life to wonder what value a writing life might offer. As time passes from his desk, his couch, his car, his books, his screens, mclennan looks forward and back in time, his continued commitment to the process-based long poem working its way through a midwinter day boiled over into weeks, months, years, decades, centuries. These poems show us how the smallest gestures can open onto wider fields of connection, bringing things into contact even when they feel distant.
             ryan fitzpatrick, author of No Depression in Heaven (Talonbooks, 2025)
                         and Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023)

In Snow Day, rob mclennan offers a quiet sibling to Bernadette Mayer’s beloved Midwinter Day, a personal reverie to revisit each year as the world darkens. Part history, part elegy, Snow Day weaves together an international poetry community, reflecting mclennan’s long-term commitment to spinning and repairing that creative web.
            Jessica Smith, author of How to Know the Flowers (Veliz Books, 2019)