Features & Reviews
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Human and No Less Miraculous: The Craft of Explication in Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca
Within Bianca, the speaker must choose the life she has over and over again, as a way forward—not as a stoic rendition of the eternal return of the same, but as desire.
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The Intimacy of the Short Story: A Conversation with Daphne Kalotay
Compassion is a window, and ideally the reader feels that—even if they’re reading a character whom they don’t necessarily like—this person is a rounded character with good qualities, bad qualities, and in-between qualities.
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Imprisoned by Insomnia: Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq
Memoir is less common territory for Darrieussecq, but with insomnia, she has found a real-world subject appropriate for her ongoing concerns about making sense of the absurd.
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The Turbulent Landscape of Identity: A Conversation with Jinwoo Chong
I’ve always wanted to write plot-driven novels that borrow from a lot of different traditions and institutions. That’s something I like most to read, and whenever I write something, I try to write something that I enjoy reading too.
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Hope is never wasted: A Conversation with Ashley M. Jones and Rebecca Gayle Howell
I’m sure you’ve seen your own versions of these stories. These truths, these stories, are everywhere. Quiet, but waiting.
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Giving Voice to Illness: A Comparative Review of Three Recent Cancer-themed Collections
All three poets contemplate the female body and the voice both literally and metaphorically, appealing to outside powers as they ponder how much a person can bear.
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No addition without subtraction: A Conversation with Hilary Leichter
As fiction writers, we’re always saying that what we write is not “real,” but as soon as we write it, it becomes a part of the world.
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Everyone sees themselves as the main character: A conversation with Larrison Campbell
When you’re writing about family, there’s what’s really relevant and has meaning to you. And then there’s what has meaning to the audience.
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I Had to Make it Mean Something: A Conversation with John Cotter
. . . the process of writing really was a devotion. It gave me a reason to keep going. And because I’m interested in formal problems, it was the crafting of sentences, finding rhythms, shaping my material that helped me…
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When the Underworld Comes Knocking: Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto
“You were a cop and then a robber and a cop again,” recalls Officer Munson. And on this fateful night, he wants Carney to play again, this time with deadly stakes.
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The Price of Power, Cannibalism, and Transmutation: A Conversation with Shanta Lee Gander
While I do see there is importance in recognizing identity, I also want there to be a broader field to go beyond the identity itself, the identities that were forced upon us, in addition to what we continue to reinforce…
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Maybe Home is the Thing We Carry: A Conversation with Janika Oza
. . . This is a story of a family trying to find their place in a world that is constantly shifting beneath them, and I wanted them and their relationships and emotions and memories at the center of this…