Philip Graham is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, including Interior Design: Stories, and The Moon, Come to Earth: Dispatches from Lisbon. He is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Editor-at-Large of the literary/arts journal Ninth Letter, and a contributing editor for Fiction Writers Review.
From the Archives: Philip Graham speaks with his former student Rosalie Morales Kearns about her debut collection, as well as how to enter different points of view, the legacy of colonialism in Caribbean history and Caribbean literature, and why the trickster answers so many questions.
“I don’t believe that you can totally shed your old self (sorry, family from my first novel), but neither do I believe that identity is perfectly portable”: Bryan Furuness talks with Philip Graham about his new novel, Do Not Go On, books that are “suspenseful and insightful,” and more.
From the Archives: “One frustration of writing a single essay about David Jauss’s craft essays and short stories is that every one is worthy of its own in-depth examination.”
“With these folks, the trouble stews in the heart”: Jodi Paloni talks with Philip Graham about her debut story collection, They Could Live with Themselves (Press 53).
“History, personal or collective, weighs on everyone in these stories, sculpting their inner lives. And yet, Tabucchi suggests, an unlikely transcendence is possible.”
“It was tempting to allow those two characters in ‘Body Asking Shadow’ to find a way to communicate with actual language in the final scene, but in the end it felt both truer to the story and more interesting to let them communicate only through unlikely means, and to have that nonetheless suffice.”
In Part II of Philip Graham’s interview with John Warner, Warner talks about living a literary life online: “I seem to be congenitally incapable of making plans. This is often to my benefit. . . but it also has meant an extremely ad hoc career.”
John Warner talks to Philip Graham about giving his characters an extra graceful breath: “I see mankind basically as a pestilence, bent on destroying each other and the Earth itself. . . And yet, sometimes we can break free of our monstrousness and be genuinely good and kind.”
“One frustration of writing a single essay about David Jauss’s craft essays and short stories is that every one is worthy of its own in-depth examination.”
“Here’s a theory: To be a kid with a live mind is to be deluded and self-involved, but also curious and evolving at hyperspeed. To be insightful in surprising ways, totally off base in other ways, but never afraid to make sweeping pronouncements, like a little de Tocqueville in the Land of Adults.” Philip Graham talks with Bryan Furuness about his novel The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson.
