Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“My Ex Boyfriend Came to Me in a Dream and Told Me Everything I Had Must Fit into a Shoe Rack Inside of His Car”: Tanner Hadfield in Conversation with Elizabeth Mikesch

Elizabeth Mikesch is a prose stylist to shout about. Her debut collection Niceties: Aural Ardor, Pardon Me (Calamari Press) is a breathtaking work of fire, of hips, of sound, of saying. When I approached her about an interview, she asked if I felt like experimenting. I consented, though I wasn’t sure what she had in mind. I…
“Night Songs”: An Interview with Kristina Marie Darling by Sally Deskins

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of sixteen books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and a forthcoming hybrid genre collection called Fortress from Sundress Publications. Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as grants from the…
“Call It the Melodrama of Starting Out”: An Interview with Jack Christian by Gabe Durham

Most of my favorite booky conversations with Jack Christian took place on a disc golf course connected to a dog park that was a couple miles away from our respective homes in Northampton, MA. The quiet of the woods plus the beers in our backpacks really encouraged the kind discursive arts conversation I can only…
“It Seemed to Make Sense with How I View the World”: An Interview with Dash Shaw by Jason Teal

*Ed.’s Note: Click images to view larger sizes. I first witnessed Dash Shaw’s comics on the Fantagraphics tumblr, a tumblr which, if you follow HFR there, you know I subject to many reblogs. It was a few panels featuring President Obama, quickly followed by a succession of posts promoting New School (Fantagraphics, 2013), his latest…
“Lennon and the Spectacles of Fandom”: An Interview with Christopher Bundy by Daniel J. Cecil

I recently re-watched Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. I was house sitting for someone with a television. It was on Netflix. Sue me. I don’t know why I chose that movie in particular. There were hundreds of things to choose from–but there I was watching this strangely pre-9/11 post 9/11 film. Maybe I wanted to…
“We”: An Interview with c.vance by Ben Spivey

Ignore the limitations of history. All is accounted for as c. vance reimagines the lives of his family from five different perspectives (father, mother, they, we and she). What we have here is a fabulist’s bildungsroman—a possible history told with solid language and emotional sentences. c. vance composes his pseudo family history as if channeled…
“Gabe Durham’s Fun Camp”: Interview and Thoughts by Joseph Riippi

So I did a little research on real-life fun camps. The Parks and Recreation in Webster, New York, offers a couple fun camps in the summertime, one for second and third graders, another for fourth and fifth graders. Camps are offered for older kids, too, but those are no longer deemed “fun.” For the youngsters,…
“What Things Are Made Of”: An Interview with Charles Harper Webb by Nathan Moore

Here I get the chance to talk to Charles Harper Webb about his latest book, What Things Are Made Of (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). The conversation takes place mostly during April over email. Charles Harper Webb is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Reading The Water (Northeastern, 1997), Liver (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), Tulip Farms…
“I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying”: An Interview with Matthew Salesses by edward j rathke

Matthew Salesses is the author of I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying and The Last Repatriate. He was adopted from Korea at age two and has written about adoption, race, marriage, and parenting for The New York Times Motherlode blog, The Good Men Project, The Rumpus, Hyphen Magazine, ALIST Magazine, and others. His fiction has…