“[My favorite] stories, by the way, were submitted to over 100 literary journals before they found homes. I really loved them, which I guess is why I kept plugging away at the revisions until they were accepted”: Julie Zuckerman talks with Jolene McIlwain about persistence, family lore, and the thrill of publishing her first collection of linked stories.
“Each story presents the embodiment of a different performer, and each presents a concept you could spin into a metaphor for something about contemporary American life.” Shawn Andrew Mitchell reviews Mark Meyer’s debut story collection, Aerialists, out now from Bloomsbury.
“I wanted to explore how the uniquely female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding might impact women who otherwise often try to resist traditional gender roles”: Polly Rosenwaike talks with Danielle LaVaque-Manty about her debut collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You.
“That is the enormous power of perspective in literature. By changing one thing, you have managed to change everything”: Neel Patel chats with Emily Smith Gilbert about his debut collection, If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi, out July 10 from Flatiron Books.
“They thrive under repeated analysis”: Jennifer Audette grapples with the twelve stories that make up Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s debut collection, Heads of the Colored People, out now from 37ink/Atria.
“The fun part of writing for me is the inspiration and initial outpouring; the painful part is spending five hours paring away 250 words. It’s like sticking pins in my eyes”: Kim Magowan answers Michelle Ross’s questions about her path to fiction, her writing process, and Undoing, her debut collection, out next week from Moon City Press.
From the Archives: “Quatro’s stories are often fabulist, if fabulism is magical realism plus a reckoning.” Rebecca Scherm on Jamie Quatro’s debut collection, I Want to Show You More.
“It took me writing these stories to understand that I’d been carrying rage with me, and what I’d done to suppress it even as I didn’t believe in suppressing it”: Danielle Lazarin talks with Lee Thomas about her debut collection, Back Talk.
“Rather, for Skinner, it’s writing and reading that triumph”: Mari Carlson reviews Woody Skinner’s debut collection, A Thousand Distant Radios, out today from Atelier26 Books.
“Often I get a really good draft done and then spend years polishing it”: Caitlin Hamilton Summie chats with Steve Yarbrough about her debut collection, To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts, out now from Fomite Press.
