Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“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…
“Something to Believe”: An Interview with Charlie Mosbrook by Robert Loss

Voted the city’s “Best Singer-Songwriter” in 2011 by Scene magazine, Charlie Mosbrook has been one of a handful of people at the heart of the Cleveland folk scene over the past twenty years. Known for his intimate performances, warm voice and sterling songwriting, he’s also been the emcee of many open mics, fostering with understated…
“Cabbage Language”: Joseph Riippi Interviews Robert Duncan Gray

[Let’s call this paragraph a professional “full disclosure.” I first met Robert Duncan Gray as a publisher, not a poet (although one could say he had the look of a poet). Gray, alongside Lindsay Allison Ruoff and Riley Michael Parker, founded HOUSEFIRE Books a few years back. In 2011 they had asked me to write…
“I Thought Often of the Hem of a Skirt, Unraveling While Someone Runs, the Thread Creating Its Own Design”: An Interview with Kristina Marie Darling & Carol Guess by Nathan Moore

Here I get the chance to talk to Kristina Marie Darling and Carol Guess about collaboration and their book X Marks the Dress: A Registry, forthcoming from Gold Wake Press in 2014. Our conversation takes place via e-mail over a period of about two weeks. Carol Guess is the author of eleven books: Seeing Dell…
“There’s a Difference between Quirky and QUIRKY, and We Get a Lot of the Latter, Especially”: An Interview with Aaron Burch by Nathan Floom

Aaron Burch teaches writing at the University of Michigan, edits Hobart, and has had stories appear in New York Tyrant, PANK, Barrelhouse, Another Chicago Magazine, and Unsaid. He is the author of How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew (PANK, 2010) and How to Predict the Weather (Keyhole Press, 2010). HFR: What is “indie lit,” and who…
“KISS Scared the Living Shit Out of Me Back When I Was a Little Kid—or, More Precisely, It Was Gene Simmons”: An Interview with Joshua Kornreich by Jason Teal

Joshua Kornreich’s characters are oftentimes detectives of the familiar, deconstructing what once passed for the reader’s everyday, in processes just as equally regimented or overlooked. With The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars Kornreich delivers a mystery unlike any other, in his positioning of sentences outside of the traditional paragraph structure. This gives weight not only to the…
“Just in Case There Are Any Odd Little Paste-eating Girls Reading This, I’d Like to Give Them Some Small Ray of Hope”: An Interview with Julie Innis by Robert Vaughan

Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Julie Innis now lives in New York. Her stories and essays have appeared in Post Road, Pindeldyboz, Gargoyle, and The Long Story, among others. She holds a Master’s in English Literature from Ohio University and is currently on staff at One Story as a reader. She is the author of Three…