Time as a Malleable Material: Part Two of a Conversation with Charles Yu
by Shawn Andrew Mitchell
From the Archives: In part two of Shawn Andrew Mitchell’s interview with Charles Yu, the two writers continue their conversation.
From the Archives: In part two of Shawn Andrew Mitchell’s interview with Charles Yu, the two writers continue their conversation.
Rachel Swearingen talks with Caitlin Horrocks about her new collection, Life Among the Terranauts, as well as her thoughts on the short story form, childhood and the imagination, and writing in these fraught times.
“What is the end of the world to us? Is it the end of a marriage? The end of our families as we know them? Is it the splintering of a relationship with a loved one? Or is it the literal Rapture?”
Jennifer Marie Donahue talks with Liz Breazeale about her debut collection, Extinction Events, writing obsessions, story structure, trusting in your individual strangeness, and the powerful feminist and contemporary issues Breazeale explores in her work.
“I love that short stories are tales—that you need to hold somebody’s attention the way you would if you were talking to them. With novels, it’s a Scheherazade situation, and you’re trying to get them to come back and stay.” Carrie Messenger talks with Jennifer Solheim about her debut collection, as well as fairy tales, Eastern European history, translation, and more.
What if you could flip a coin and change your life?
In his novel Animals, we follow Don LePan’s characters into a not-too-distant future, where human beings with birth defects are slaughtered as edible products. Readers’ sense of injustice will be roused by LePan’s descriptions of suffering in the feedlots–but can a novel inspire us to stop eating factory-farmed meat? Laura Roberts hopes it can.
I don’t know about you, but when I see a movie after reading the book on which it’s based, I almost always prefer the book to the movie. Okay, there are exceptions: The Lovely Bones, for instance, where I prefered the film, and The Princess Bride—I love both the movie and William Golding’s novel deeply, and differently. But when it comes to Harry Potter, I land firmly on the book side. For me, much of the fun is in the details of Rowling’s world: the Fizzing Whizbees and Puking Pastilles, the elaborate recipes for Polyjuice Potion and the Draught of […]
Alissa Nutting has “story” written in ink on every page of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, her lively, well-imagined, and jaw-droppingly smart prize-winning debut. Imagine Donald Barthelme writing smart feminine narratives, Mary Gaitskill sans the kinky sex, or Margaret Atwood turning to dry, Colbert-style humor, and you may start to get an idea of what to expect.
NPR’s Marion Winik has called Janice Eidus’s latest novel, The Last Jewish Virgin, “Twilight…with a sense of humor, a brain, and a feminist subtext.” At the Algonquin hotel, Eidus talks with Lauren Hall about paying homage to—and reinventing—the vampire myth; judging a book by its cover; and writing longhand in the mountains of San Miguel de Allende.
