“We need to ask why we choose the characters we do and what we are trying to communicate with them. We need to challenge our own biases.” Rene Denfeld talks with Kate Lemery about writing, social justice, and The Child Finder, out now in paperback by HarperCollins.
“So in the novel I’m driving at the idea that justice and freedom don’t wait. It’s not, well, you need to suffer just a little more and then things are going to be peachy in fifty years. No. That was the rationale for colonialism and you can see the wreckage that left behind.”
“It’s the ultimate act of forgiveness, I think, this deciding to let go of how our lives might have turned out differently.” Jaclyn Gilbert and Shayne Terry talk writing, running, and Jaclyn’s debut novel, Late Air, out next week from Little A.
“I’m much more interested in inner conflict than outer conflict”: Sara Batkie chats with Jesse Hassenger about the stories that make up her debut collection, Better Times, winner of the 2017 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and out now from the University of Nebraska Press.
Jen Julian talks with Joanna Eleftheriou about missing characters, science fiction, anglerfish husbands, and her new collection, Earthly Delights and Other Apocalypses, winner of this year’s Press 53 Award for Short Fiction.
Gary Sheppard sits down with his former classmate, Tom Bennitt, to discuss Bennitt’s debut novel, Burning Under, as well as representing the working class, writing unsympathetic characters, and the literature of the Rust Belt.
“For the longest time, I wrote without being published, so I know all about that”: Virginia Pye chats with Janyce Stefan-Cole about her new collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, out this week from Press 53.
“My goal when I’m writing is to keep everything as real and hard and authentic as I can”: R.L. Maizes talks with Angela Mitchell about her debut collection, personal testimony, what she looks for as a fiction editor, and where we find ourselves (or not) in our stories.
“For me, this collection is very much about the effects of globalization on cultural identity, how we choose the stories worth telling, and who has the authority to tell those stories”: Donald Quist talks with Benjamin Woodard about his new collection, For Other Ghosts, out from Awst Press.
“The great pleasure of reading is to be able to fill in and anticipate, and I want to provide that pleasure to my readers as well”: Adrian Koesters talks with Steven Wingate about Baltimore in the 1950s and writing her debut novel, Union Square.
“All the primary characters are projections of my personality, but the roaches most embody who I am”: Alice Hatcher chats with Michelle Ross about her debut novel, The Wonder That Was Ours, winner of Dzanc’s 2017 Prize for Fiction.
Alice Miller talks with Katharine Dion about her debut novel, the thorniness of sincerity, the way a poem leaps, and the crucial gift of staying alert.
