An Interview with Louise Marburg
by Mary Volmer
“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.
“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.
“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.
“Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Welcome Home alongside a new collection of Lucia Berlin’s short stories, Evening in Paradise, on the same day as the midterm elections last week. A knowing wink from the publisher to the politics that these books contain? Perhaps.”
“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.
“My overall feeling is that it likely took a lot of energy just to keep track of what was going on around me at home—to make sure everyone was okay and the day wasn’t going to veer off into territory that felt fraught and unstable.” Paula Saunders talks with Steven Wingate about her novel The Distance Home and the winner-take-all emotional violence that underpins America.
“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.
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
Stories We Love: "Incarnations of Burned Children"
