Earlier this month, we brought you Kim Addonizio's "The Other Woman," a piece that depicts three people in a tight, tense orbit. Addonizio is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer, and we were curious to ask her about working across so many different forms, and about what leads her to write in one over another. Over the course of our back-and-forth, a few things became clear: the assumptions we bring to fiction—even pieces we think we've read carefully and several times—don't always match the ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Things American: Control Magic
“The mind: a great weapon and an even greater weakness.” – Jace Beleren I. “Illusions of Grandeur” It’s 7 A.M. on a Saturday in October 2012. I'm twenty-eight-years-old and yelling “Idiot,” “Fucking terrible,” and “What were you thinking?” into my steering wheel. I’m driving home from Time Warp Comics, where I’ve just lost a Magic tournament. And not just lost, but lost lost: eighteenth out of twenty-five at the midnight release for the newest set, Return to Ravnica. My opponents? Mostly ... [READ MORE]
Online Fiction Interview: Sarah Gerkensmeyer
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]
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]