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Category: Interviews

  • An interview with Daniel Evans Pritchard

    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…

  • An Interview with Helen Phillips

    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…

  • An Interview with Richard Hawley

    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…

  • An Interview with C.D. Albin

    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…

  • An Interview with Patrick Dacey

    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…

  • An Interview with Grant Faulkner

    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…

  • Bookmarked Authors Interview

    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…

  • Of Diverse Literature and Stereotypical Narratives

    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,…

  • An Interview with Patricia Park

    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…

  • Unshakable: An Interview with Derek Palacio

    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…

  • An Interview With Okey Ndibe

    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…

  • The Many Hats of Jeffrey Condran

    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…