From the Archives: Leah Falk talks with A. Van Jordan about his fourth poetry collection, The Cineaste, his intentions for this new work, and what’s changed about the way we go to the movies.
From the Archives: “If I came into writing feeling largely without history or place, writing became a means of discovering both; it also became, as it did for George Willard, a means of discovering a way out, the road ahead. Sherwood Anderson gave me a map.”
From the Archives: “Art needs to be honest. Sometimes, it’s the only pure honesty you’ll get all day.” Emily Nagin reviews Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
From the Archives: What does our reading have to do with our writing, exactly? Charlotte Boulay departs from traditional talk about fiction, reflects on her own reading list, and finds comfort and enthusiasm in reading Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’s letters to each other, in which they discuss everything they read—and the fact that they read all the time.
From the Archives: Why do we love Sherlock Holmes? The famed detective nearly sent his creator off the deep end, and has been the object of countless films, odes, debates, letters, and pilgrimages over the past century.
From the Archives: NoViolet Bulawayo’s stunning debut novel asks difficult questions amid the contrasting landscapes of a Zimbabwe shantytown and bone-chilling Michigan.
From the Archives: “I think characters resist being known in the way real people do. When I start to construct a character, I never begin with their deep dark secrets or biggest fears or hidden shame. I usually start with the surface details—physical features, occupation, interests—and over time, I learn the things the character secretly wants or hates or tries to hide.”
From the Archives: “I have always felt that scientists don’t get written enough as real people”: Eileen Pollack and Allie Tova Hirsch discuss sex scenes, melodrama, and Eileen’s novel A Perfect Life.
From the Archives: On our delayed discovery of Lucia Berlin and what we miss when we miss independent presses.
From the Archives: “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.”
