In her debut collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans’s characters, like most of us, struggle to belong. Their loyalties to place, to family, and to self are often divided. Melissa Scholes Young interviews the author to find out how the identities we claim or deny often define the people we become.
“The story evolves, and I evolve with it”: Michelle Ross chats with Eleanor Gallagher about growing up, flash fiction, and her debut collection, There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You.
Mary Stewart Atwell talks with Alan Heathcock as part of her interview series with writers of rural fiction, undertaken in partnership with The Art of the Rural. The two discuss Heathcock’s debut collection, Volt, as well as his Midwestern influences, film, politics, and more.
“To love and to express it is to be vulnerable. To create works of art is to be vulnerable, and it’s hard for people to let themselves be vulnerable. Especially in this world, where the internet lets us democratically savage one another, it’s even scarier, but the courage to be an artist means also the courage to love and to express it.” So says Robert Olen Butler in this candid interview with Emily Alford.
“I didn’t want to shy away from giving Ecuadorians central roles in the book for fear of misrepresenting something”: Katherine Sherbrooke with Lynne Griffin on writing about South America, female friendship, and her debut novel, Fill the Sky.
In this 2009 interview from our archives, Lee Thomas talks with Aravind Adiga about neo-realism, myth, and being a misfit.
Jennifer Solheim talks with Sam Allingham about his debut collection, The Great American Song Book, as well as the role music played in shaping these stories, borrowed forms, and what it was like to release a book the week after the presidential election.
“I believe difficulty and loss of control forge us into our truer, fuller selves, and I hoped to bring each of these characters to that real-ness”: Sonya Chung talks with Melissa Scholes Young about her new novel, The Loved Ones.
“Hot Season is essentially what I did with my nostalgia for a place that I still really love”: Susan DeFreitas with Mo Daviau on the Southwest, activism, and her debut novel.
“We read a ton of bad writing on the Internet, and I think people are content with low quality until they are shown something better”: Zan Romanoff with Emma Gordon on getting paid for your work, the 2016 election, and her debut novel, A Song to Take the World Apart.
Patrick Ryan on the pitfalls of penning a period piece, the interesting part of writing villains, and the joys and anxieties of editing Alice Munro and Joy Williams
“Those are the moments when the book comes alive, precisely the moments when you, the author, seem to have the least say-so over it”: Lamar Herrin talks with Paul Cody about Southern writing, Homer, and his new novel, Father Figure.
