Like the protagonist of her debut novel Re Jane (Pamela Dorman Books, May 2015), Patricia Park grew up in Flushing, Queens. She then attended Bronx High School of Science, Swarthmore College, and Boston University. Her writing is feminist and socially conscious with a mix of humor and lightness that delivers the serious themes beneath her…

Art credit: Grace LawrieDerek Palacio is determined and capable — the type of person who has about twenty projects going at any given time, and can juggle them all while sipping coffee and answering questions with a warm smile on his face. At the time of this interview, in late-August 2013, he had just returned…

Very early in Foreign Gods, Inc., the second novel from Nigerian-American writer Okey Ndibe, we find Ikechukwu “Ike” Uzondu strolling through the eponymous Manhattan business where ancient relics and statues of deities are sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s his first trip to the store, though he already knows this is where he…

I sat down with Jeffrey Condran this fall — me at a computer in Ogden, Utah, and Jeff at a computer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — to chat about this breakthrough moment in his career. Our conversation ranged from there to his travels through Eastern Europe and the inspiration he found there to the art of…

Three innovative authors — Jenny Bitner, Jønathan Lyons, and Catie Jarvis — published in the new anthology Writing That Risks: New Work from Beyond the Mainstream talk with editor and Red Bridge Press founder Liana Holmberg. + Liana Holmberg: Your styles range from surreal to experimental. In this book, there’s a shapeshifting kindergartener, a conversation…

Posting, commenting, tweeting, texting — how have the protocols of social media and online communication affected the form and content of what we read and how we write? As the next installment in our ongoing, occasional series of roundtable conversations, we present this colloquy between Shawn Syms, editor of Friend. Follow. Text. #storiesFromLivingOnline, a new…

What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? As a child, the novels and short stories of Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Leguin introduced me to fiction’s possibilities. In college, John Irving’s The World According to Garp made me push in all the chips and say, “This is what I’m going…

Jared Yates Sexton, an Indiana native, is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University. His short story collection, An End to All Things, was published by Atticus Books in 2012, and he is putting final touches on his second novel. His work, which has appeared internationally, has been nominated for two Pushcarts,…

What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? I’ve been most influenced by writers who balance their stories on the fault lines of political/social turmoil and the inner lives of the characters. Early on, I discovered Laura Z. Hobson and I’ve admired her books (Gentlemen’s Agreement, First Paper, Tenth Month, Consenting…

What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? I’m almost embarrassed to answer this question, partly because my biggest influences (Tolstoy, Kafka, Joyce and Shakespeare) might seem just a bunch of “the usual suspects,” and partly because merely saying that these authors “influenced” me seems to imply that I have somehow…

1. What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? There are a ton of them, far too many to name. I read in order to be influenced, to pick up as many influences as possible. That said, if there’s one influence that has remained consistently strong since early in my writing…

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…