River Under the Road, by Scott Spencer
by Mari Carlson
“The characters personify competing ways of getting ahead in American culture”: Mari Carlson on Scott Spencer’s latest novel, River Under the Road, out this week from Ecco.
“The characters personify competing ways of getting ahead in American culture”: Mari Carlson on Scott Spencer’s latest novel, River Under the Road, out this week from Ecco.
“I don’t think you can really go home again. I was more interested in what happens if you have to”: Melissa Scholes Young chats with Aline Ohanesian about motherhood, small-town USA, and her debut novel, Flood, out this week from Center Street/Hachette.
“We must lie and lie well in order to make the reader cry, or sigh, or slam their fists on the table in anger”: Neil Connelly and Genaro Kỳ Lý Smith talk about crafting fiction from life.
“That’s how the work gets done. No shortcuts, no strategies to make the process easier than it ever can or will be”: Jack Driscoll chats with Mary Stewart Atwell about his latest collection, The Goat Fish and The Lover’s Knot.
“I didn’t expect the new chapters—the ones from different characters’ points of view—to be so much fun, so interesting to write, so revealing”: David Hicks chats with Emily Nagin about his debut novel, White Plains, out now from Conundrum Press.
Maile Meloy in an interview From the Archives: “I think you have to find an emotional connection to the story, to make anyone else care about it, but I would find writing only what I know to be limiting.”
“A lot of things are inherently funny when there is a conflict and an opposition. We’re not simple people. Everybody is complex”: Nina Buckless catches up with Marvin Cohen, whose strange and wonderful fiction is still finding new audiences 40 years later.
“Troubles arise, but Sidney’s frankness, her eye for detail, and her big-hearted determination carry the story”: Julian Anderson on Courtney Yasmineh’s debut novel, A Girl Called Sidney.
“In spite of the loss that pervades my novels, I hope that readers feel the continual making in the language, the poetry that shores us up against the loss”: Andrew Krivák talks with Shann Ray about family, landscape, and his latest novel, The Signal Flame, out now from Scribner.
Joshua Bodwell celebrates Black Sparrow Press’s fiftieth anniversary as a trade publisher—with five footnotes, one for each decade.
Stories We Love: “55 Miles to the Gas Pump,” by Annie Proulx
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
capitalization as Stylistic Device
