From the Archives: Manil Suri gets into the nitty-gritty of novel writing—throwing out hundreds of pages, rewriting histories, and choosing between plot and character—with Nawaaz Ahmed.
From the Archives: “Have you ever heard it said in workshop, ‘What’s at stake for this setting?'”: Ayşe Papatya Bucak with five ideas on how to characterize setting.
From the Archives: Renowned for her stirring and insightful stories about Haitian life, Edwidge Danticat recently turned her eye to genre as the editor of Haiti Noir, part of Akashic Books’ noir series. The book was published in December, following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Danticat discusses the disaster’s impact on the book and the way that noir captures some of the mystery, darkness and complexity of her homeland.
From the Archives: The debut novelist talks to Zachary Watterson about writing religions, communities, and landscapes not his own, all with complexity and compassion.
From the Archives: Your one person dies. Does life’s plot float away like a sinister version of the house in Up? Amelia Gray’s debut novel, Threats, gets cozy with chaos. Anxious? You damn well should be.
From the Archives: “What does my reaction to all this say about me as a reader, as a person? … Am I angry at Ben Lerner and his book or am I angry at me?”: Jennifer Audette on learning to love Lerner’s 10:04.
From the Archives: “So the story was an experiment in that way too. I put a lot more of my own life in it”: Kelly Link talks with Alice Sola Kim about her new collection, Get In Trouble, and more.
From the Archives: What do the 2011 Japanese Tsunami, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and one family’s personal heartbreak have in common? For Ellen Prentiss Campbell, the answer lies in Pearl S. Buck’s 1948 young adult novel, The Big Wave, and the individual acts of creative defiance that help survivors not only carry on, but value life’s beauty more highly because they know it will not last.
From the Archives: “Trusting the mind and imagination to work in concert as we explore the author/character vortex is no grave sin—provided that we let both mind and imagination do their jobs in peace…”
From the Archives: “When structure is done well, it should be like architecture: you sense the overall feel of the building—tall, or airy, or strong—but you’re not looking at the buttresses that hold it up or the seams where parts are fastened together.”
