Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“The Stories We Tell to Keep Ourselves Alive”: Wendy Bourgeois Interviews Thea Prieto

Thea Prieto’s debut From the Caves, winner of the Red Hen Novella Award, contains an entire post-apocalyptic world that is both empty and claustrophobic. In the core days of a blazing summer, four people fight for survival with only each other and their storytelling to drive them forward. Resources are catastrophically limited; the world is…
“The Reasonable Liminality of Silent Hill 2”: Chris Kelso in Conversation with YouTuber Jacob Geller

As an educator, I can confirm my controversial belief (and with some certainty) that video games are the nascent form of cultural expression in the 21st century. It might be time for us all to emerge from Plato’s cave and accept that some of the traditions we know and love are dead or quietly dying.…
“Always Dress for Mud”: James Braun Interviews Peter Markus, Author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds

I first came to Peter Markus not knowing what I needed was Peter Markus. That’s how most of us come to him—not knowing. Us being his students. Not knowing being something we had in us, before any of us ever came to Peter Markus. That’s what Peter likes best, I like to think: when new…
“Promise Me Home”: Tiffany Troy in Conversation with Naoko Fujimoto

Naoko Fujimoto was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan. She is the author of Where I Was Born (Willow Publishing, 2019) and three chapbooks: Mother Said, I Want Your Pain (Backbone Press, 2018), Silver Seasons of Heartache (Glass Lyre Press 2017) and Home, No Home (Educe Press 2016). She is an associate and outreach translation…
“Back Alleys and Hidden Corners”: Marcus Pactor Interviews Brian Evenson, Author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

Brian Evenson has for many years been one of America’s chief practitioners of innovative dark fiction. His work regularly adopts and breaks free of sci-fi and horror tropes. It captures our oldest fears and bleakest futures in admirably hard, detached, concise prose. It freaks me out, and I love it. Among the numerous plaudits for…
“Slipping the Fox’s Trap with Hannah Arendt”: Tiffany Troy Converses with Joshua Corey

Joshua Corey is a poet, novelist, translator, and critic. Influenced by Charles Olson, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Duncan, Corey pushes formal structure towards fracture, engaging themes of failure, desire and the pastoral. His latest book, Hannah and the Master (MadHat Press, 2021), is his fifth full-length poetry collection which takes on the story between Nazi…
“A Restless Sensibility”: Marcus Pactor Talks to John Domini, Author of The Archaeology of a Good Ragù

John Domini’s latest book, The Archeology of a Good Ragù: Discovering Naples, My Father, and Myself, marks his first venture into memoir. As in so much of his work, Domini’s writing here busts through the thin shell of its genre. The book expectably documents a critical period of his life—a period in which he rebuilds…
“A Book Is a Different Kind of Riddle Altogether”: Evan Isoline in Conversation with Vi Khi Nao about PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY is Evan Isoline’s debut full-length book and was published by 11:11 Press on May 18, 2021. Vi Khi Nao: I really love your name, Evan Isoline. It reminds me of a waterbottle company from Greenland or something. Though probably a country that fits your book more would be blueland, to match…
“Interview”: Ben Segal Talks to WORKS Author Grant Maierhofer

Grant Maierhofer’s Works collects four separate books into a sprawling volume that functions simultaneously as a compendium and a bildungsroman, showing a range of work and the development of a singular writer through various stages of literary production. I initially planned a to write a conventional review the book, but I prefer conversation to critical…