  The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns for many regarding personal
and public health implications, financial security and economic stability.
Alongside many other unprecedented challenges, there are increasing concerns
over social isolation and mental health. We introduce \textit{Expressive
Interviewing}--an interview-style conversational system that draws on ideas
from motivational interviewing and expressive writing. Expressive Interviewing
seeks to encourage users to express their thoughts and feelings through writing
by asking them questions about how COVID-19 has impacted their lives. We
present relevant aspects of the system's design and implementation as well as
quantitative and qualitative analyses of user interactions with the system. In
addition, we conduct a comparative evaluation with a general purpose dialogue
system for mental health that shows our system potential in helping users to
cope with COVID-19 issues.
