Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“We’re a Creepy Bunch”: Hillary Leftwich Talks to Sarah Read, Author of the Story Collection Out of Water

Sarah Read is a force in the horror genre and has a long-standing history of publications in numerous top tier journals. She’s the author of a new collection, Out of Water (published by Trepidatio Publishing), and one I’ve been anticipating with excitement for months now. Sarah chatted with me over email communication over a week…
“Don’t Think About the Elephant”: An Interview with Andrew Farkas, Author of The Big Red Herring

Andrew Farkas is the author of a novel: The Big Red Herring (KERNPUNKT Press), and two short fiction collections: Sunsphere (BlazeVOX [books]) and Self-Titled Debut (Subito Press). His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, North American Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, Western Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has been thrice…
“Dissonance, Shock, and the Inevitable Truth”: Gay Degani Chats with Sandra Arnold

Both the title of Soul Etchings (Retreat West Books, 2019) by Sandra Arnold, the cover with its crackled baby-doll faces, and the uncapitalized chapter titles throughout, prepare the reader for the unease found in the pages of this collection of very short stories. The author seduces us into her world, subverting expectations, almost always putting the…
“Glorious Fragments”: Andrew Farkas Interviews Ron MacLean, Author of We Might as Well Light Something on Fire

We Might as Well Light Something on Fire, Ron MacLean’s collection, immediately interested me because, in a time when everything must connect (podcast and TV show episodes, movie series, etc.) so it all can be binged more easily, in a time when all narratives must be doggedly followed to their conclusions (leaving the reader or…
Matthew Thorburn & J.G. McClure: A Collaborative Interview between Poets

Matthew Thorburn’s new book of poems, The Grace of Distance, was published by LSU Press in August 2019. He’s also the author of six previous collections, including the book-length poem Dear Almost (LSU Press, 2016), honored with the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry; A Green River in Spring (Autumn House Press, 2015), winner of the Coal Hill Review chapbook…
“Serious Play”: Dana Diehl Interviews Carol Guess & Aimee Parkison

I was first introduced to Carol Guess’s collaborative work while I was editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and we published her story, “With Animal,” co-written with Kelly Magee. It was the first collaborative work I’d read and profoundly affected my understanding of authorship and the “rules” of fiction, eventually inspiring me to pursue my own…
“Outside the door there is an animal writing my name in the blood of other animals”: William Lessard Interviews Adam Tedesco, Author of Mary Oliver

With the publication of Mary Oliver (Lithic Press, 2019), Adam Tedesco gives us a cycle of poems that places topics like addiction and recovery outside the expected psychological frame. A video artist as well as a poet, Tedesco brings a fluid sense of medium as well as outlook. The result is not Robert Lowell-style confessionalism…
What Could Be Saved, bookmatched novellas and stories excerpt, by Gregory Spatz

Going where most readers have never been—past the workshop door, behind the curtain to the hidden rehearsal space, and into the back room of a pawn shop or dealer’s office, Gregory Spatz’s new book delves deeply into the world of those who build, play, and sell (or steal) violins. This is a realm of obsession,…
An Excerpt from the Novel The Color Inside a Melon by John Domini

A disastrous earthquake has Naples reeling. While the government scrambles to maintain appearances, poverty and anarchy rack the people on Italy’s margins—the illegal immigrants out of Africa, known as the clandestini. One of whom has just been horrifically murdered. Enter Risto, a rare success story: a refugee from Mogadishu, orphaned in his teens, he’s now married…