This week on the Sewanee Review Podcast, Visiting Assistant Professor Jim Whiteside interviews Maria Zoccola, whose debut poetry collection Helen of Troy, 1993 reimagines Helen as a housewife in 1990s Tennessee. Zoccola speaks on the challenges presented by a persona project that invokes both the deep history of ancient poetics as well as her personal history as a native Tennessean. She and Whiteside touch down on a variety of topics: the elephant-themed poetry she submitted to Natasha Trethewey’s workshop as a freshman at Emory University, the fearlessness of adolescent writers in creative writing classes, and the freedom that accompanies stepping into verse as a trained fiction writer. Of the latter Zoccola remarks, “I hope that more people can consider themselves multi-genre artists because there’s so much to be gained by looking outside of those stratified walls.”
Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer from Memphis, Tennessee. Her fiction and poetry can be found in the Sewanee Review, the Atlantic, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her collection Helen of Troy, 1993 was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Pick upon its release in early 2025. Jim Whiteside is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University and now serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Sewanee. His poetry has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Poetry, and elsewhere.
The Sewanee Review Podcast is recorded in the Ralston Listening Room at the University of the South. This episode is produced by Kate Bailey and edited by ProPodcast Solutions with music by Annie Bowers. Image credit to Morgan Lyttle. Don’t miss any of our conversations with some of today’s best writers. Subscribe to the Sewanee Review Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.