“As I get older, I’m less attached to this idea of home as a single space, and I try to envision home as something more expansive, more queer”: Carter Sickels talks with Megan Kruse about his new novel, The Prettiest Star,” building community, writing from a place of empathy, and more.
“I have absorbed a lot of influence from writers who are working outside of realism, and I do think that’s probably kind of nudged me in the direction of the strange.” Yohanca Delgado talks with Laura van den Berg about her new short story collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears.
“A story just comes out a certain way and then you either follow it or you don’t.” Maryse Meijer answers Jenn Solheim’s questions on her debut novel, The Seventh Mansion, out now from FSG.
September 8th is National Ampersand Day. J. Alison Rosenblitt on the significance of the ampersand to E.E. Cummings and his poetry, as well as its use in the work of Ocean Vuong.
“I think one of the feelings exile produces is a sense of in-between—you’re both within a place and somehow distinctly outside its borders.” Natalie Bakopoulos talks with Jennifer Solheim about her new novel, Scorpionfish, out next week from Tin House Books.
“That’s how Chapter 11 became Chapter 1.” Barrett Bowlin and David James Poissant talk short stories vs. novels, comic books, the pandemic, and Poissant’s new novel, Lake Life, out next week from Simon & Schuster.
“I wanted to understand why we do the same bad things over and over.” Ellen Prentiss Campbell interviews Ginger Eager about her debut novel, The Nature of Remains, out now from New Issues.
“I want to help advance the kind of crip lit in which people with disabilities are living their lives and doing perfectly fine, to highlight and differentiate the times when disability does and does not matter.” Elizabeth Earley talks with Teresa Milbrodt about her new collection, Instances of Head Switching.
“I wanted to be in dialogue with the literary tradition of ‘young artist comes of age in the city,'” Kyle McCarthy tells Brad Wetherell. “I wanted to write a version of that, a bent and twisted version.” Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is out next week from Ballantine Books.
