Against Cleverness
Depicting inarticulate speech patterns in fiction should be easy, right? Somehow, it isn’t—but it’s necessary, because humans are generally an inarticulate bunch.
Depicting inarticulate speech patterns in fiction should be easy, right? Somehow, it isn’t—but it’s necessary, because humans are generally an inarticulate bunch.
“The energy in the room was urgent, generous, palpable”: Jennifer Solheim on the first gathering of The Conversation: a Chicago literary series.
David Savill on how William Maxwell gets away with breaking the rules in “Over By The River.”
From the Archives: Colson Whitehead talks process in his 2009 novel, Sag Harbor, the art of manufacturing genuine nostalgia, and the duality of veering “between the capricious horribleness of the everyday and the absurd beauty of existence.”
“I tell my students to focus on developing aspects of their characters that they don’t share”: Neil Connelly talks with Steven Wingate about presses tiny and huge, teaching in MFA programs, and his new collection, In the Wake of Our Vows.
In her debut collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans’s characters, like most of us, struggle to belong. Their loyalties to place, to family, and to self are often divided. Melissa Scholes Young interviews the author to find out how the identities we claim or deny often define the people we become.
“Always Happy Hour combines all the addictive ingredients of a pop song with a self-awareness and emotional insight that is both searing and deeply sympathetic”: Emily Nagin on Mary Miller’s latest collection.
David Galef reflects on the writing of his new book, Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook
Debra Spark on what’s funny in fiction—and what’s not. “The humor that works in literary fiction, the humor I like, is female. I mean ‘female’ in a pretty stereotypical way here. I don’t mean that the literary work is by women, per se, but that it is relational.”
“The story evolves, and I evolve with it”: Michelle Ross chats with Eleanor Gallagher about growing up, flash fiction, and her debut collection, There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You.
