Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“The Power of Kayfabe”: An Interview with Box Brown by Dan Mancilla

The accolades continue to pile up for artist and graphic novelist Box Brown. Aside from his Ignaz Award, his publishing house, Retrofit Comics, continues to put out quality independent graphic art. And aside from all that, of course, Brown’s labor of love, Andre the Giant: Life and Legend (First Second Books, 2014), spent three weeks on…
“Virtuosic Metaphors, Verbing Nouns, and Kaleidoscoping Adjectives”: An Interview with Lee Ann Roripaugh by Jillian M. Phillips

When you come across a poetry collection with a word you’re not familiar with as the title, and a picture of some sort of cocooned humanoid on the sun-yellow cover, you’re bound to be intrigued. Buy that book. That book is Lee Ann Roripaugh’s fourth collection, Dandarians (Milkweed Editions, 2014), and is as mysterious and…
“Animals Appear out of Nowhere”: An Interview with David James Poissant by Dana Diehl

David James Poissant’s debut short story collection, The Heaven of Animals (Simon & Schuster) was released last year to great critical acclaim. Among its accolades, the collection was named one of Amazon’s Best Short Story Collections of 2014, One of Atlanta Journal Constitution’s 9 Best Books of 2014, Best Short Story Collection of the Year by Tweed’s Magazine, Winner of GLCA…
“To Escape to Something Beyond the World”: Matt Weinkam Interviews Joanna Ruocco

Joanna Ruocco has been busy. In the last five years, she has written five books, including A Compendium of Domestic Incidents, which won the 2009 Noemi Press Fiction Chapbook Contest, and Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith, which won the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize judged by Ben Marcus. She published stories in Conjunctions,…
“We Push Up Against Change and Resist It, Sometimes Violently So”: An Interview with Peter Grandbois by Cameron Contois

I was very excited to interview author Peter Grandbois. Grandbois, who has authored six books, did not disappoint with his compelling and thought-provoking insights. His novel, The Gravedigger, was picked for the “Discover Great New Writers” program by Barnes & Noble. His hybrid memoir, The Arsenic Lobster, has also received high acclaim. More recently, Grandbois…
“The Tension between Order and Chaos”: An Interview with Kristina Marie Darling by Shin Yu Pai

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of twenty books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and Scorched Altar: Selected Poems and Stories 2007-2014 (BlazeVOX Books, 2014). Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as…
Contributors’ Corner: Laura Ellen Scott

Welcome to “Contributors’ Corner,” where each week we open the floor to one of our contributors to the journal. This week, we hear from Laura Ellen Scott, whose story “A Texas” appears in 2.2. Laura Ellen Scott is author of the novel Death Wishing (Ig Publishing, 2011), a comic fantasy set in post-Katrina New Orleans and…
“I Think We Recognize Ourselves in the Flawed”: An Interview with Charles Dodd White by Linda Michel-Cassidy

A Shelter of Others, by Charles Dodd White (Fiddleback ltd), is set near the southern border of North Carolina, in a rugged holler punctuated by alcohol abuse, drug trade and brutish policemen. While the extremes to which these characters are pushed nears the surreal, White never allows them to become the other. By the time…
Contributors’ Corner: Nathan Blake

Welcome to “Contributors’ Corner,” where each week we open the floor to one of our contributors to the journal. This week, we hear from Nathan Blake, whose story “When Us Men Tell” appears in 3.1. Nathan Blake’s first chapbook, Going Home Nowhere Fast, is available from Winged City Chapbook Press, and you can find some…