A conversation with Nate House
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing?
I was really fortunate to have great professors, both as an undergraduate and graduate student at Temple University. They had the most influence because they looked at my writing and then told me what to read. They suggested people like John Hawkes, Patricia Highsmith, and J.M. Coetzee. I also got to know some visiting writers who were really instrumental: R.M. Berry and Carole Maso.
How do you decide when a piece you’ve written is “finished” enough to publish?
A conversation with Olivia Chadha
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing?
I enjoy heroic journeys and narratives that somehow get to a character’s bones rather than simply skimming their skin. Most great writers have this uncanny ability, but I always return to three genres for this reading experience since I was a child: Greek Classics and mythology, literary fiction, and graphic fiction. I enjoy reading texts that explore a character on the brink, a character about to learn what they are made of, viscera to toes. Authors whose work is inspiring to me include people like Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Rohinton Mistry, Gish Jen, Neil Gaiman, Homer, and Dante. We can follow a tragic character along their path toward potential heroism in, obviously, Homer’s work and, not so obviously, in Jen’s Typical American, Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Gaiman’s Sandman. I enjoy reading stories that explore the essential parts of human motivation (i.e. survival, protecting one’s family, identity, and honor) but also ones that explore elements in society that push us to our limits. It is in those small but precious moments that we truly understand ourselves just a little more.
How do you decide when a piece you’ve written is “finished” enough to publish?
A conversation with Heather Fowler
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing?
I feel I have a variety of influences behind my work. Flannery O’Connor and her collected stories have been very formative, as have the collected stories of Vladimir Nabokov, which I used to carry around constantly. I select Flannery for her density, bold characterization, and brave pursuits of moments of violent grace—and Nabokov for his elaborate and detailed combinations of image and meaning that spark the most fascinating alchemies with his words. I’ve also been quite absorbed and entertained by authors like Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood and Federico García Lorca, Shakespeare and Kafka, Shirley Jackson and T.C. Boyle—this could go on and on. I should stop here. Basically, I’m a ravenous beast.
I feel each one of the authors named above has been formative for my work. I have stolen the glimmering bits I love from their efforts and incorporated them in my own writer’s toolbox. But there are several types of influences that can be discussed—influence of stylistics, of politics, of topical treatments, etcetera. What I love is when I read a book and it lights my eyes on fire, when the idea or story looms up like a living thing from the page and sweeps me into its fabric. I also enjoy every time I have a moment when I read something and feel intense jealousy pangs, coupled with delighted awe.
A roundtable conversation with Mud Luscious Press
As the next installment in our ongoing, occasional series of roundtable conversations, we’re thrilled to present this conversation between JA Tyler, founder and editor of Mud Luscious Press and four authors whose books MLP is publishing this year: Gregory Sherl, Matt Bell, Ken Sparling, and Robert Kloss.
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To begin with, share a little about where your book started — how was it initially formed, how long did it take to write, what was your drafting process, and how did you decide when the manuscript was ready to send to Mud Luscious Press?
Stripped: A Conversation About How Writers Write Gender
Recently published by PS Books, Stripped, A Collection Of Anonymous Flash (available in paperback and ebook) gathers stories by an impressive list of familiar and emerging writers — including a number of Necessary Fiction contributors — but leaves the bylines out of the book. A year after its release, on February 1, 2013, the author of each story will be revealed. In the meantime, the anthology raises some compelling questions about gender and writing, so we invited Stripped editor Nicole Monaghan to lead a discussion of those questions with some of the book’s contributors. And no, we don’t know who they are, either.
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Nicole Monaghan: Roughly, what percentage of your work is written from the perspective of a character opposite your sex? Have you thought about the reason(s) for this breakdown?
A conversation with Matt Baker & Mel Bosworth
Like many writers of a similar age and background, some of my most exciting memories of reading involve Choose Your Own Adventure books and playing/reading Interactive Fiction like Colossal Cave Adventure on my Commodore 64 (and, much later, discovering the more literary projects undertaken by Michael Joyce, Adam Cadre, Emily Short, Andrew Plotkin, and others. Lately I’ve had the pleasure of reading new works written and translated, respectively, by Mel Bosworth and Matt Baker both of which feature interactivity and hypertextuality in the service of literary fiction. So I invited the two of them to have a conversation about their recent works and their writing in general, then got out of the way to let them talk.
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Mel: Hey, Matt. Let’s begin by talking about The Numberless, a seemingly bottomless novel written by Jianyu Pên and translated by you. It’s being published online by the somewhat esoteric Beggar Press in an as-it-happens kind of way with fresh content appearing roughly once a week. And it’s going to continue until Pên’s death, or at least that’s the plan, yes? The whole concept is pretty mind blowing. I’ve got a million questions bubbling in my head already, but I’ll begin with just a few. What got you interested in doing work as a translator? How did you get involved with this particular project? Have you ever met Jianyu Pên, and if not do you ever plan to? What’s up with Beggar Press?
Shut Up/Look Pretty: a roundtable
Recently published by Tiny Hardcore Press, Shut Up/Look Pretty is a new anthology featuring Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale and Amber Sparks. To celebrate the release of the book, and these five fine writers, we invited them to have a conversation about the anthology, writing, and whatever came up. Think of it as an interview without an interviewer — something we plan to bring you more of in the future.
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EF: I was extremely busy during the back half of 2011, and didn’t have the time to read that I would have liked. I would really love it if each of you could recommend something I should check out for myself as soon as possible.
5 Questions for Amelia Gray
After gushing about this exciting new writer coming out of Southwest America, I was able to ask her a couple questions regarding her start in publishing, making the transition to novels from short stories, and what she’s up to L.A.
The stories in AM/PM were wonderfully unraveled and exhilarating to read. How did you come to write the stories of your many characters in this fun, puzzle piece way? What did that process look like? And did anything inspire you to use this style of writing?
Writing AM/PM came out of a hard period of my life right after grad school, when I wasn’t sure if I should go get a job as a technical writer or head back to teaching or move out of the city or state or country. I started writing one story in the morning and one at night as a kind of grounding force; the process made me feel like I was accomplishing something, anything, and it became a good outlet. In the first draft, there are mostly no named characters. It took two months to write that first draft and over a year to begin threading together narratives, naming characters and linking similar stories, editing, expanding and cutting. I had character maps and lists. I wasn’t sure the right way to do any of it so I made up my own way.
June 4, 2013:
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Interviews:
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Writer in Residence:
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Research Notes:
Why We Never Talk About Sugar
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