As soon as I started writing the novel I had this fitful voice in my head.
“In ways large and small, the task of a novelist who writes about the past is to make it come to life, to find singular details that make the story breathe”: Christina Baker Kline talks with Jennifer Solheim about her new novel, The Exiles.
“Readers are always on the side of romance; if two remotely promising people meet, we fan the flames. I wanted to use those expectations and to subvert them.” Mari Coates talks with her mentor Margot Livesey on the occasion of publishing of The Boy in the Field, Livesey’s ninth novel.
“As I get older, I’m less attached to this idea of home as a single space, and I try to envision home as something more expansive, more queer”: Carter Sickels talks with Megan Kruse about his new novel, The Prettiest Star,” building community, writing from a place of empathy, and more.
“I have absorbed a lot of influence from writers who are working outside of realism, and I do think that’s probably kind of nudged me in the direction of the strange.” Yohanca Delgado talks with Laura van den Berg about her new short story collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears.
“A story just comes out a certain way and then you either follow it or you don’t.” Maryse Meijer answers Jenn Solheim’s questions on her debut novel, The Seventh Mansion, out now from FSG.
September 8th is National Ampersand Day. J. Alison Rosenblitt on the significance of the ampersand to E.E. Cummings and his poetry, as well as its use in the work of Ocean Vuong.
“I think one of the feelings exile produces is a sense of in-between—you’re both within a place and somehow distinctly outside its borders.” Natalie Bakopoulos talks with Jennifer Solheim about her new novel, Scorpionfish, out next week from Tin House Books.
“That’s how Chapter 11 became Chapter 1.” Barrett Bowlin and David James Poissant talk short stories vs. novels, comic books, the pandemic, and Poissant’s new novel, Lake Life, out next week from Simon & Schuster.
“I wanted to understand why we do the same bad things over and over.” Ellen Prentiss Campbell interviews Ginger Eager about her debut novel, The Nature of Remains, out now from New Issues.
Surprising Things Can Happen: An Interview with Kristen Roupenian
Part of a Bigger Conversation: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai
If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi: An Interview with Neel Patel
Sometimes Taking Things Out Counts as Writing: an Interview with Celeste Ng
Influences: An Interview with Tobias Wolff
Stories We Love: “Blue Lenses,” by Daphne Du Maurier
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
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
