A girl, a fax machine, a dog, another planet. This is how Marie-Helene Bertino explains the focus of her new novel, Beautyland, which came out last week with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Like all of Bertino’s writing, Beautyland teeters on the knife’s edge of fantasy. The book follows an alien’s […]
An Interview | Diana Reid on Relationships, Morality, and How to Write a Contemporary Novel
Diana Reid dared herself to write a novel. She loved reading, so why not try? If she couldn’t write one during the pandemic, then she figured she probably never would. Unlike most of us who resolved to finish In Search of Lost Time or master the sourdough starter, Diana was […]
“I was still just some guy at a party:” Andrew Martin on Success, First Novels, and the Role of Revisions
There’s a moment in the short story “No Cops” where the heroine of the story Leslie is hanging with her closest friend as she closes up a patron-less bookstore in Missoula, Montana. Leslie holds a “waifish” book of contemporary poetry as she spaces out and contemplates the merits of intention […]
An Interview | Saborna Roychowdhury on Class, Muslim Stereotypes, and her new novel, Everything Here Belongs To You
Saborna Roychowdhury’s novel, Everything Here Belongs to You, written in the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent backlash against Muslims, takes on the ambitious task of addressing the vast gulf of prejudice across nations, religions, and classes by brilliantly bringing together under one roof all the characters who embody different positions in this geopolitical conflict that spans nations, from the US to Afghanistan and India.
An Interview | Finding a Speaking Voice: Colm Tóibín’s “Vinegar Hill”
Irish politics, gay saunas, Expressionist painting, and the influence of Ashbery, Binchy, and Bishop on Tóibín’s captivating new book from Beacon Press, Vinegar Hill.
An interview | Robert Jones Jr. on Black Love, Community, and Resistance in The Prophets
Robert Jones, Jr. is the author of The New York Times Bestselling novel, The Prophets, which was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction and has been translated into nineteen languages. He was born and raised in New York City and received his BFA in creative writing […]
An Interview | Beth Morgan on Jake Gyllenhaal, Mushrooms, and the Perils of Pursuing Self-Actualization
A Touch of Jen, written by Brooklyn College MFA alum Beth Morgan, centers Alicia and Remy, two codependent Brooklynites miserable in their coupledom but bonded by a shared infatuation with the titular Jen—a breezy influencer with freckled boobs and adult braces whose appeal is equated to that of a “hot […]
Now/here Fast: An Interview with Chris Campanioni
The hybrid writer discusses his latest book, the Internet is for real, and new horizons for identity in the digital age. Chris Campanioni wants to know if I think his newest book, the Internet is for real, is productively excessive. The request surprises me—not for its candor, but for the […]
An Interview | Danniel Schoonebeek
Over the past few years, I’ve seen Danniel Schoonebeek read three times, mostly from poems that appeared in his book Trébuchet. At every reading, I got the kind of spiritual and political catharsis that I’m always looking for in great writing. In both American Barricade (YesYes Books, 2014) and Trébuchet […]
An Interview | R.O. Kwon
R.O. Kwon is the author of The Incendiaries, a stunning novel that explores the fresh pain of loss and the lure of the absolute. Psychologically deep and haunting, the story is set on the campus of a Northeastern college and told from the perspective of three characters: Will Kendall, a […]
An Interview | Madeleine George
Madeleine George is an award-winning playwright and author. Her plays include Hurricane Diane, The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, Precious Little, and The Zero Hour, and have been produced across the country. She was a founding member of 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.), the Obie-winning playwright’s collective, […]
An Interview | Edwidge Danticat
As a writer, Edwidge Danticat is revered for her elegant prose and her moving depictions of Haiti and the Haitian diasporic experience. She has written more than a dozen books, including her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, which was an Oprah Book Club selection, and the memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, […]
An Interview | Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li is the author of two story collections, two novels, and, most recently, a book of essays called Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. When I read her novel Kinder than Solitude, I was just beginning to take writing seriously, and the psychic familiarity of her characters spooked […]
An Interview | Lisa Ko
Lisa Ko is the author of the much-acclaimed The Leavers, which won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction. The novel follows the story of an undocumented immigrant woman and her child in the U.S. – a story […]
An Interview | Phil Klay
Phil Klay is the author of the short story collection Redeployment, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2014. He’s a graduate of the MFA program at CUNY Hunter, and a Marine Corps Veteran who deployed to Iraq. I met Phil a year after I left the military and returned to […]
An Interview | Monet Hurst-Mendoza
Monet Hurst-Mendoza is an accomplished NYC-based playwright from LA. Rising Circle Theater Collective, Looking Glass Theatre (NYC), Amios, Playwright’s Playground at Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and many others have developed her plays. She is a current member of the 2017 Emerging Writers Group at The Public […]
An Interview | Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill is the writer of three story collections, three novels and, most recently, a book of essays called Somebody with a Little Hammer. She was my teacher last summer at the New York State Writers’ Institute, where my classmates and I hiked, ate several kinds of fruit pie right […]
An Interview | Wells Tower
From the archives: Evelyn Spence talks with Wells Tower. Does fiction begin with the story or the sentence? Pick up any Wells Tower story, and the first thing that jumps off the page is the language: It’s in turns dazzling, tight, comic, and dark. In “The Brown Coast,” a house […]