“Sometimes I read pronouncements on Twitter like, ‘Let’s face it, there’s no reason a book should ever be 500 pages long,’ and I always think, of course there should be 500-page books. And fifteen-page books. There should be every kind of book.” Jenny Shank talks with Paula Younger about her new collection.
“Creatively, music’s biggest impact is attention to sound—mainly rhythm. A sentence always needs a certain number of syllables in it. And my characters have soundtracks.” Steven Wingate talks with Chris Harding Thornton about her debut novel, Pickard County Atlas.
“I wish I had a great answer to the question of finding the right mix of pursuing activism and art, but it comes down to simply using one’s time as effectively as possible.” Steven Wingate talks with David Heska Wanbli Weiden about his novel Winter Counts.
“Twenty-five years ago, serious writers in Idaho were denying the [regional] label in any way they could. Today the climate has changed. One of my students complained, ‘You’re from Montana. I’m just from New Jersey and I have nothing to write about.’” Mary Clearman Blew talks with Steven Wingate about writing the West and her new novel, Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin.
“The strongest characters in this book are the ones who are most adrift, most ready to latch onto whatever comes next, and this makes them both tragic and dangerous”: Steve Wingate on Maxim Loskutoff’s debut collection.
“True love with a cost may be Pete Fromm’s calling card,” writes Heidi Willis in the review of this new novel, “his stories peppered with characters who inhabit broken places.”
“This willingness to myth-bust is critical to the continuing maturation of books set in the American West,” writes contributor Laura Pritchett in her review of The Home Place. “La Seur is elegant and graceful and quiet in her approach, but she succeeds.”
Down-and-out Benjamin Benjamin on a zany road trip riddled with crises – mechanical, personal, existential.
Debut novelist Jenny Shank brings her affection for the American West to The Ringer, a searing tale of racial and class tension set in contemporary Denver. As the Books & Writers Editor at NewWest.net, Shank champions stand-outs of the current Western-lit cannon.
