Category: Interviews & Excerpts

“The Posthuman Realist”: An Interview with Steve Tomasula by Marcus Pactor

Steve Tomasula is a literary pioneer of both prose and page design. Those designs transform the vast depth of his cultural and scientific research into uniquely satisfying aesthetic experiences of our historical, present-day, and future worlds. His new novel, Ascension, features research notes, drawings of real and hypothetical creatures, and a variety of online links…
“The Possibility of America”: An Interview with Indran Amirthanayagam by John Wall Barger

Born in 1960 in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), Indran Amirthanayagam moved to London, England, at eight, and Honolulu at fourteen (where he attended high school with Barack Obama, who was a year younger). He attended Haverford College and then Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In his years working for the U.S. Foreign Service,…
“Each Drop Is Its Own Light”: Tiffany Troy in Conversation with Dara Barrois/Dixon about Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina

Dara Barrois/Dixon (née Dara Wier) is the author of the Wave Books titles In the Still of the Night, You Good Thing, Reverse Rapture, and also in 2022 two new chapbooks, Two Poems from Scram Press and NINE from Incessant Pipe. She’s received awards and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, American Poetry Review, The Poetry Center Book Award, Guggenheim…
“Memetic and Disoriented TV Dinners”: An Interview with Garth Miró by Claire Hopple

The Vacation is a beach read’s evil twin. But sort of a saintly one. Throw Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Aquinas, and Mike Judge in a boat headed for the jungle and you’ll be on the right track. Garth Miró torches the corporate wet blanket and sails for oblivion. Two tickets to paradise await you; you…
“I Want My Hand in the Fire”: An Interview with Jon Woodward by Zach Savich

Jon Woodward’s new chapbook, POOLGOER and SPELEOGRAPHER from The Economy Press, is composed of columns that streak down the page 1 or 2 letters at a time. The effect is immensely absorbing, pleasurable, enlivening; each page is rippled with columns. Concrete poetry that directly imitates shapes (e.g., a poem about a flower that looks like…
Astrophil Press Novel Excerpt: WAITING FOR JONATHAN KOSHY by Murzban F. Shroff

From the author of Breathless in Bombay and Third Eye Rising comes an intensely engaging novel about life, family, friendship, and duty. In the heart of Pali Hill, the Beverly Hills of Mumbai, four friends await the arrival of Jonathan, a man “greatly appreciated for his wit, his effervescence, and his indignation,” a man exiled…
“If I Could Get By Without Sleep, I Would”: Tobias Carroll Discusses His New Novel, Ex-Members, with Ryan Sartor

When I think of the New York City literary scene, Tobias Carroll is right at the top of the list. He’s consistently championing writers, whether through his interviews at book launches around the city or as managing editor of Vol. 1 Brooklyn, a vital source for all things literary fiction and nonfiction. I also just…
“Risking Chaos”: Marcus Pactor Chats with David Leo Rice, Author of The New House

David Leo Rice writes singularly weird fiction about the experiences of artists and drifters wandering hallucinatory landscapes. His latest novel, The New House, is a kunstlerroman focused on a child named Jakob, who trains to be an artist in a town of sentient dolls, blood clots who are sisters and lovers and advisors, and men…
“There Was Always Something More I Had to Know”: Marcus Pactor Interviews Gabriel Blackwell

Gabriel Blackwell never repeats himself. Each of his seven books offers a distinct approach to fiction, bending forms and genres to find new angles from which to capture the dark absurdities of modern American life. His new novel, Doom Town, is the confession of a man who has no faith in the power of confessions…