“My most general advice to writers working on historical fiction is to do as I say, and not as I did, and to try to relax at least a little, and trust in both the power, and the necessity, of imagination”: Caitlin Horrocks talks with Marian Crotty about her novel, The Vexations, as well as how short fiction helped her prepare for a longer project, her work as an editor at Kenyon Review, and more.
“I come from patriarchy, and I would like to have written myself out of it. Strong female forces commanded several generations. The women were bent and sometimes destroyed by the pressure to submit, and the stories, the narrative drives, kept coming up male.” Terese Svoboda talks with Steven Wingate about her new short story collection and our species’ long-term relationship with the open spaces of the Midwest.
“I love that short stories are tales—that you need to hold somebody’s attention the way you would if you were talking to them. With novels, it’s a Scheherazade situation, and you’re trying to get them to come back and stay.” Carrie Messenger talks with Jennifer Solheim about her debut collection, as well as fairy tales, Eastern European history, translation, and more.
“I’m Costa Rican-Colombian-American. And to constantly try to explain yourself with a hyphen, with saying you’re a little bit of this and a little bit of that, is tiresome and disorienting.” Stephanie Jimenez talks with Danielle Lazarin about the complexities of female friendships, self-knowledge, how we market literature, and more.
“I know the point of fiction is supposed to be to differentiate characters, but one thing you notice about the army is that the experiences one person has are often very similar to the experiences other people have, and I tried to write the novel in a way that speaks to that”: J.A. Bernstein talks with Michael Reid Busk about his debut novel, Rachel’s Tomb.
“Ultimately the novel is—at least to me, privately—as much about the act of making a novel as it is telling a story”: Amanda Golblatt talks with Jennifer Solheim about her debut novel, Hard Mouth.
Carley Moore talks with Eleanor J. Bader about her first novel, The Not Wives, as well as about writing, revision, teaching, disability, and the possibility of progressive activism in Trumpian times.
“If friendship is the shared shore, sometimes you’re standing on solid ground, and sometimes you’re the one at sea:” Elizabeth Ames talks with Natalie Bakopoulos about her debut novel, The Other’s Gold.
“The Municipalists was a way for me to dig deeper into the idea of cities in general, both to explore the ways in which they can be great and to come to a better understanding of how they need to change:” Seth Fried talks with Shawn Andrew Mitchell about his debut novel, ‘lightness’ as a revision strategy, idea generation tips, and more.
