Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“A Catalogue of Things That Follows from Looking”: William Lessard Interviews Julia Madsen

Julia Madsen is a writer who thinks like a filmmaker, a filmmaker who thinks like a writer, and an artist who thrives on intertextual uncertainty. With the publication of The Boneyard, The Birth Manual, A Burial: Investigations into the Heartland (Trembling Pillow Press, 2018), the first-time author joins Anne Boyer, Michael Martone, Ander Monson, and…
“Change Is Always Possible”: Hillary Leftwich Interviews Mairead Case

Mairead Case is a teacher, writer, and editor in Denver, Colorado. She publishes widely, and wrote the novel See You in the Morning (featherproof), the poetry chapbook TENDERNESS (Meekling), the forthcoming novel Tiny, and, with David Lasky, the forthcoming Georgetown Steam Plant Graphic Novel. Mairead holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a…
The Heavy Feather Holiday Special: “Winter Solstice,” a short story by Jordan A. Rothacker

In the front yard, there is a nativity scene that awaits the birth of its Christ. Mother set up the display about two weeks ago. Father and she used to do it together. The first weekend of December they would go up in the attic on Sunday afternoon and bring down all of the supplies.…
“Rooms Echo Louder without Anything Inside of Them”: Hillary Leftwich Talks to Steven Dunn

Steven Dunn’s second novel, water & power, is published by Tarpaulin Sky and available to order now. Shortlisted for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, he is the author of Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2016), which was co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize and finalist for a Colorado Book Award. Dunn was…
“WITH EDGES THAT MOVE. A river. A crisis.”: Carrie Lorig Talks to Meredith Blankinship

In spring 2016 I interviewed Carrie Lorig about her book The Pulp vs. the Throne (Artifice Press), and her now-published chapbook The Book of Repulsive Women (Essay Press). So much has happened since then, but Lorig’s ways of thinking and writing through “poetry / voice / space / life” is still very necessary to hold…
“Playing Catch-Up”: A Conversation with Allison M. Charette on Translating Fiction from Madagascar by Rick Henry

Allison M. Charette translates literary work from the French, with a growing interest in the literature of Madagascar. Her translation of Naivo’s Beyond the Rice Fields was long-listed for the Best Translated Book Award in 2018. Among her many accomplishments: an NEA Fellowship in Literary Translation and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. She visited SUNY…
“Mythical Magic”: Gay Degani Interviews Tara Campbell

When I first picked up Circe’s Bicycle by Tara Campbell with its clean, stylish cover, I had to remind myself exactly who Circe was in mythology. Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Circe (/ˈsɜːrsiː/; Greek: Κίρκη Kírkē pronounced [kírkɛː]) is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, witch, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. I soon found…
Excerpt: SITU, fiction by Steven Seidenberg

SITU is a hesitant unfolding of demise, a text that occupies the interstices between diegetic, philosophical, and poetic discursive timbres. From this tension—which finds form in an indeterminate subject’s relationship with a bench, his anguished site of rest and motion—the subsequent flux at the center of the narrative voice facilitates a kind of epistemology of…
An Excerpt of Laura Catherine Brown’s Comic Novel Made by Mary

Made by Mary is a black comedy using magic realism to blow up myths about women, mothers, daughters and motherhood. Unable to conceive and, because of her husband Joel’s youthful conviction for marijuana dealing, unable to adopt conventionally, Ann and Joel pinned their hope on Jessica, an unwed pregnant girl who offers them her baby.…