If you haven’t run across Amina Gautier’s fiction yet, I feel safe in saying that you will. She’s the author of three award-winning short story collections, At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, and most recently, The Loss of All Lost Things, and continues to publish new work in a wide variety of literary journals. A…

Margot Livesey grew up in the Scottish Highlands, at a boys’ private school where her father taught. Her mother was the school nurse, but passed away when she was very young. After her formal education was finished, Livesey spent much of her twenties “working in shops and restaurants and learning to write.” She published her…

For decades, Americans’ relationship with truth — or even simply, fact — has grown increasingly elastic. Philosophical theses about the nature of perspective, hyper-specialization in the professions creating an emotional distance between us and the very goods and services that compose a typical life, the polarizing aesthetics of 21st century journalism — all have eroded…

Photo: Deborah TreismanJohn Freeman’s writing and criticism have appeared in many publications across the world. He served as Editor-in-Chief at Granta and was president of the National Book Critics Circle. His most recent project is Freeman’s, a themed biannual literary anthology-meets-journal. The second issue, Freeman’s: Family, is available now. Freeman’s main aim is bringing in…

What motivations shape a critic’s decisions to write about the books they defend and those they dismiss? And what are the ethical or moral dimensions of those decisions? Beyond mere conflicts of interest, what lines do they draw for themselves in their work? Are there personal forces or experiences that affect their preferences about what…

Photo Andy Vernon-Jones Helen Phillips grew up in Colorado and moved east for college and graduate school. A writer and professor, she is also an avid walker and mother of two. Her writing blends elements of the literary, the fantastical, and the mundane into complex stories that challenge notions of what is usual and question…

The Three Lives of Jonathan Force (Fomite Press, February 2016) is a big novel, one that tells the story of one man’s life from beginning to end, a project that took you decades to complete. Over the years, you’ve published portions as single short stories and a volume of linked stories. You considered publishing Jonathan’s…

Like the characters in Hard Toward Home (Press 53, May 2016), his debut short fiction collection, C. D. Albin lives in the Ozarks, a place that can have an almost mystical hold on the hearts of its people, despite the hardships that life there can bring. Albin tells the stories of people who know this…

Photo: Tara DaceyPatrick Dacey grew up on Cape Cod and went to Syracuse University hoping to become a professional football player, an offensive lineman to be specific. Because of an injury, he was unable to pursue a collegiate football career, and after taking a class with George Saunders, he was inspired to be a fiction…

It was recently announced that two stories from Grant Faulkner’s Fissures (Press 53), his collection of one hundred 100-word stories, were chosen by Stuart Dybek and Series Editor Tara L. Masih for inclusion in the forthcoming Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press). Last year I reviewed Fissures for Necessary Fiction, noting that the collection…

This spring, Ig Publishing will release the first four titles in their “Bookmarked” series. In these books, authors are invited to write about a book that influenced their work and lives. In this first wave, Curtis Smith writes about Slaughterhouse-Five, Kirby Gann takes on A Separate Peace, Paula Bomer writes about The Man Who Loved…

A Conversation between Two Authors Diversity in fiction is receiving some publicity these days, and writers of color are maybe not as ignored as they were a few decades ago. Yet there is a lot of work to be done before South Asian women writers telling stories from diaspora become mainstream. Issues like dual identity,…