For every page of a writer’s work that makes its way into the light, there must be hundreds that remain hidden, mythic, gnarled roots in the darkness. 

I learned I was a nonbeliever at age six or seven. I think the experience must be common: one observes a certain lack of feeling. It was summer, dull bright morning, my sisters and I hanging on a mossy tree. I told them what had passed through my mind.

As someone who often writes historical fiction, I’m used to doing traditional research.

I don’t remember why I started running in the Pine Barrens. Yes, I was sick of the few trails in the city and, yes, I needed something to quell the unending anxiety that came with being alive in the summer of 2020, but there were other more convenient trails, ones that weren’t out-of-state, I never…

My novel ping pongs on vibes. Told from five different points of view, it’s about the potential sale of a property in the Catskills over the summer of 2014, but really, the plot is a dime store jar for a potpourri of obsession: predation, desire, faith, inherited trauma, motherhood, the circle jerk of life and…

I started a zine in the summer of 1996; it was called Eventide, because I thought that sounded appropriately melancholy. When it began, it was largely focused on music; I was inspired pretty heavily by the zines Rumpshaker, Trustkill, and Anti-Matter.

Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Chris Cander writes about A Gracious Neighbor from Little A. + I’d never heard of the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Susan Glaspell until my daughter, Sasha shared one of her short stories…

Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Ravi Mangla writes about The Observant from Spuyten Duyvil. + I’ve always admired writers that put a great weight on research. The practice calls to mind literary idols like (to name…

Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, DeMisty D. Bellinger writes about New to Liberty from Unnamed Press. + I never planned to write this book. It serendipitously grew from the reading for my comprehensive exams in grad…

Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Leigh Ann Ruggiero writes about Unfollowers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction from University of Massachusetts Press. + The foundation of writing is research: having the proverbial notebook at the…

Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Valerie Nieman writes about In The Lonely Backwater, published by Fitzroy Books. + The Naturalist: Linnaeus and In the Lonely Backwater Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with…

Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Jonathan Howland writes about Native Air, published by Green Writers Press. + I’m drawn to novels that spiral around a single, cataclysmic event, typically a reverberant loss or grief. In life…