John Zheng is the author of A Way of Looking and the editor of Conversations with Dana Gioia and Conversations with Sterling Plumpp. He has published interviews in African American Review, Arkansas Review, Mississippi Quarterly,and a few other journals. He has received two artist fellowships from Mississippi Arts Commission.
When Don Evans, the founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, contacted me in August 2019 to contribute a piece for the program that honored Sterling Plumpp with the Fuller Aw…