“What makes Let’s Get Back to the Party so successful ultimately is the way in which it ignores or transcends so many of the issues that normally feel like an obligation when you’re writing stories that involve LGBTQIA+ characters”: Deborah Solo Collins on Zak Salih’s debut novel.
“More broadly, the book, and the short story form in general, is interested in the way that certain choices preclude others.” Danielle Evans talks with Melissa Scholes Young about her new collection, The Office of Historical Corrections.
Rachel Swearingen talks with Caitlin Horrocks about her new collection, Life Among the Terranauts, as well as her thoughts on the short story form, childhood and the imagination, and writing in these fraught times.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell meditates on the influence of teachers, fulfilling promises, and becoming who we’re meant to be in this homage to her teacher Sally Nash.
“The horror of the residency is not that one can’t leave; it’s that one doesn’t have to”: Nora Kipnis on Carmen Maria Machado’s version of the cabin in the woods.
“Fiction is my first love, especially novels. While I also love history, my focus must be to tell stories about people, their lives, their loves, their struggles, and then I can tell how politics and political events impact them.” Eleanor J. Bader talks with Marisel Vera about her new novel, The Taste of Sugar, as well as Puerto Rican history, Hawaiian sugar plantations, the legacy of colonialism, and more.
“Creatively, music’s biggest impact is attention to sound—mainly rhythm. A sentence always needs a certain number of syllables in it. And my characters have soundtracks.” Steven Wingate talks with Chris Harding Thornton about her debut novel, Pickard County Atlas.
“When you say that I’m prolific, I never think of myself that way because I really don’t spend all day writing for the most part. But I do write almost every day. It just adds up.” Leigh Camacho Rourks talks with John McNally about his new collection, The Fear of Everything.
“I loved researching this book, finding out about chronophotography, pictorialism, the 1906 earthquake, and the artists of the time.” Ron Nyren talks with Margot Livesey about his debut novel, The Book of Lost Light.
“Like plot, adulthood is a scam, and Lau wants us to feel the discomfort of a coming-of-age story that resists epiphany and catharsis.” Josie Tolin reviews Jamie Marina Lau’s Pink Mountain on Locust Island, published by Coffee House Press.
