Sarah Gerkensmeyer's "Ramona," our online exclusive for April, is nearly a contradiction in terms. It's at once a tender-hearted, naturalistic reflection on adolescence and faded friendship and an utterly non-naturalistic look at the limits of embodiment. In this interview, we asked Gerkensmeyer about bending the rules of nature in fiction and, in the process, we learned a bit more about how she approaches a draft, a story, a novel, and key metaphors that are—at times—seemingly incidental to the ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
If You Lived Here: An Interview with Jennine Capó Crucet
The second interview in the "If You Lived Here" blog series is with Jennine Capó Crucet, author of the short fiction collection How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. How to Leave Hialeah is a beautiful and detailed map of the crowded beaches and neighborhoods of Miami as seen through the lives of the people who call them home. Her new novel, Magic City Relic, is forthcoming for St. Martin's Press in 2015. MM: I thought one of the important themes in the book was ... [READ MORE]
Karen Russell Donates Her Sleep
“The French really know how to legitimize an endeavor.” Amidst a busy semester teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, literary wunderkind Karen Russell takes some time to talk to me about her new novella, Sleep Donation, out now from Atavist Books. VS: Having been a fan of yours, then student, now friend, I felt like I was pretty up-to-date on your ouvre. I’d read your novel, both story collections, and last I heard you were at work on another novel about, I don’t know, something Western ... [READ MORE]
Review: Douglas Coupland’s Worst. Person. Ever.
Attention Simon Pegg and Nick Frost: Grab the rights immediately. Douglas Coupland's Worst. Person. Ever. might be the most Celluloid-Ready. Postmodern Novel. Ever. If this sounds like a condemnation (shallow), consider your feeling for the cerebral, hilarious, and easily digestible work of another Douglas. It's hard to imagine Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans wouldn't feel at home in this absurdist British-flavored comedy, even with its relentless barrage of invectives and crass ... [READ MORE]
Things American: The Boys Of My Youth (Baseball Seasons 1989-2014)
“Baseball breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings. And then as soon as the chill rains come it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone, when you need it most.” —A. Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989 My father teaches me two essential skills at the tender age of eighteen months: to read and to blow raspberries with my ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: Keith Lesmeister
This month, our online fiction came from Keith Lesmeister, whose tight fist of a story "Imaginary Enemies" clocks in at a trim 965 words. That's less than half of the 2,000 word maximum we here at ASF have imposed on our web fiction. That cap exists, in part, because we know that great stories come in all sizes and that the web—for all of its faults and all of its cat videos—is a particularly good venue for short work. Still, it'd be a mistake to think that any story, regardless of length, pops ... [READ MORE]