“Doubt is there for me, but I don’t see it as an engine in my life or in this novel. For me, the big engine is trying to align myself to the flow of a life that is spiritual in absolutely every aspect and moves in ways I can’t comprehend, but simply have to live”: Rolf Yngve interviews Steve Wingate about his new novel, Of Fathers and Fire, out from the University of Nebraska Press.
“I thought the time for the book had come and gone, but when I pulled the book out again in 2017, I realized the topic had become relevant again in the intervening years.” Julie Landsdorf chats with Kate Lemery about her debut novel, White Elephant, out tomorrow from Ecco.
“So, in a weird way I was flipping the script. The husbands and boyfriends are the sperm donators and support staff, and they’re feeling their marginality.” Laura Catherine Brown chats with Hillary Jordan about motherhood, womanhood, and Made by Mary.
Aaron Brown talks with Chigozie Obioma about his new novel, as well as Igbo history and cosmology, predestination and determinism, narrative construction, and more.
From the Archives: Neelanjana Banerjee talks with Helen Oyeyemi about why she’s drawn to supernatural subjects (but not “magical realism”), why vampire stories are really about race, and how to write stories that will freak your readers out.
In her inaugural interview with women crime writers, Contributing Editor Polly Atwell talks with Amy Gentry about women’s truths, the influence of Henry James, likeability, and her new novel.
“For me, the setting of a novel is the novel in many ways, and it seems right to devote time and space to establishing the geography and history of the place. This forms a frame inside which the rest of the story takes place.” Andrew Michael Hurley talks with Steven Wingate about rural England, the “ghost story” spirit, and developing writerly patience.
“The best and maybe only way to describe my path is that I’m a ‘primitive,’ coming to writing in a very organic fashion through reading. If I’d studied it in college (or even stayed in college) I’d surely have had the storyteller intimidated out of me.” Peter Geye talks with Sarah Stonich about Northern Minnesota, unconventional career paths, and being a literary chameleon.
“One of the things I also wanted to happen over the course of the collection was to unsettle people enough that even when they were reading realism, they didn’t know that they were reading realism”: Kristen Roupenian talks with Michelle Cheever about genre, empathy, and more.
“I think all honest, literary effort reflects the fact that we humans are imprisoned by our cultures. It isn’t so much getting the internal conflict onto the page, it is letting it come out.”
“Between those lines I sketched a person. I hope I did her justice.” Carrie Callaghan talks with Kate Lemery about bringing seventeenth-century painter Judith Leyster to life for her debut novel, A Light of Her Own, out now from Amberjack.
“Yes, I have faith in my process, but I also know that it could fail me at any time.” Louise Marburg chats with Mary Volmer about patience, process, and the short story form.
