A Memoir (Beacon Press) and the Los Angeles TimesBestseller Awkward: A Detour (Bellevue Literary Press), a book-length essay

on awkwardness. A new book, Swallow, based on a collection of over 2,000 swallowed and
inhaled foreign bodies that were extracted by pioneering laryngologist Chevalier Jackson, will appear in 2010 from The New Press. Cappellos essays, literary nonfiction, and experimental prose can be found in such places asSalmagundi, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Raritan,American Letters and

Commentary, Interim, and elsewhere. Excerpts of Cappellos recently completed book, Called Back: A Breast Cancer Anti-Chronicle, are forthcoming in The Georgia Review and The Seattle Review. Professor of English at
the University of Rhode Island, Mary Cappello has received The Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination, The Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke Universitys Center for Documentary Studies, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Russia. In this interview, Cappello talks about the detour as a literary genre, aphorisms and pause, the writer as architect and archivist, word auras, the importance of making mistakes, the difference between ideas and opinions, writing at the border of poetry and prose, nonfiction as a form of anti-truth, awkward quests, and more. Student interviewers: Amanda Aagard, Amanda Dambrink, Mallory Eagar, Kimber Giles, Whitney Horito, Alma Jean, Chris John, Scott Morris, April Osborn, Kayla Quinney, Jennifer Ricks, Adrianne Roldan, Parker Valora, Kirk Wallace, and Jeanne Fischer.