The Illness Lesson, by Clare Beams
by Emily Nagin
“Quietly brutal, at times hallucinatory, and laced with emotional trap doors and secret passages, The Illness Lesson vibrates with a slow burning fury”: Emily Nagin reviews Clare Beams’ debut novel.
“Quietly brutal, at times hallucinatory, and laced with emotional trap doors and secret passages, The Illness Lesson vibrates with a slow burning fury”: Emily Nagin reviews Clare Beams’ debut novel.
“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.
“I think this is what Ghostographs wants from its readers: remembrance. While much of the book is about the wild dreamscape of childhood, in the end the story is about the end of a time and place.”
“Reading A Bright and Pleading Dagger is a little like eating ortolan. Rivas’ stories are compact, tender, and razor-sharp. They combine the fairytale dread of Carmen Maria Machado with the dream-scape disorientation of Kelly Link.”
“I like binaries, but only if I get to play with them and break them down”: Lillian Li answers all Emily Nagin’s questions about writing her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, out next Tuesday from Henry Holt.
“Flash is slippery, hard to define. It has poetry’s short form and attention to detail, its disregard for what is technically possible, and fiction’s love of character and narrative.”
“Thanks! I will write that damn novel! I did pet a kitten while tripping! (Wait, did I say that?)”: Alex Behr and Emily Nagin talk music, writing, and Behr’s debut collection, Planet Grim, out now from 7.13 Books.
“Visitations is all about reckonings. Who are you at your most selfish, Upton asks, at your most desperate, your most monstrous?”: Emily Nagin on Lee Upton’s latest collection, out now from LSU Press.
“It’s a coming of age story turned up to eleven, sharp and visceral as a gunshot, and just as concerned with violence”: Emily Nagin on Andrew Bourelle’s debut novel, Heavy Metal, out now from Autumn House.
“I didn’t expect the new chapters—the ones from different characters’ points of view—to be so much fun, so interesting to write, so revealing”: David Hicks chats with Emily Nagin about his debut novel, White Plains, out now from Conundrum Press.
Surprising Things Can Happen: An Interview with Kristen Roupenian
Part of a Bigger Conversation: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai
If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi: An Interview with Neel Patel
Sometimes Taking Things Out Counts as Writing: an Interview with Celeste Ng
Influences: An Interview with Tobias Wolff
Stories We Love: “Blue Lenses,” by Daphne Du Maurier
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
