Writer and editor Adam Soto has long been a part of American Short Fiction's editorial team. As one of our assistant editors, he regularly read submission to the journal, wrote copious feedback for authors, and helped determine which stories would ultimately appear in our print edition. So, when we made the decision to bring on another web editor this spring, Adam was a natural choice for the role. This month, he joins our longtime web editor Erin McReynolds as our website's co-editor, and … [Read more...] about Everything Old Is New Again: An Interview With Co-Web Editor Adam Soto
Interview
What We Have Learned: An Interview with Clare Beams
Clare Beams’s Bard Fiction Prize-winning story collection We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books, 2016) transports us to saltwater marshes that promise healing and schools that promise transformation (in more ways than one), to bodies in decay, tightly corseted, breaking apart, and numbed—worlds singularly strange yet incredibly, vibrantly real. Beams possesses an astonishing depth of imagination and clarity of vision, and she guides us compassionately through this collection that … [Read more...] about What We Have Learned: An Interview with Clare Beams
Web Exclusive Interview: Joy Baglio
Though our Web Exclusive "Belly of the Beast" was published on Halloween, it's a timeless story, drawing on folk tale traditions of employing monsters to contend with painful human realities. In this case, a spouse grows distant, frightening, and dangerous, lost (literally) inside of a beast. It's a tender and desperate story that accommodates any number of ways in which our partners can abandon us. We talked with author Joy Baglio recently about the flash form, the Master Switch of Life, and … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Joy Baglio
Web Exclusive Interview: Nora Lange
In Nora Lange's flash fiction, “Her Cousin Lena,” Rose records a long-distance phone call with her mother. Their exchange reveals a disconnect that, though often funny, describes the “love and horror” of a certain flavor of mother-daughter relationship. Haunting the conversation is the absent figure of Rose’s cousin, Lena, to whom the mother constantly compares her daughter, and who becomes the axis point of their unaddressed tensions. We chatted recently with Nora about her story and … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Nora Lange
The Internal Conversation Is Constant: An Interview with Danielle Lazarin
Danielle Lazarin’s debut story collection Back Talk (Penguin Books, 2018) features women grappling with what they—often deliberately—leave unsaid and displays the intricacies of the desires and rages that live inside those silences. Hailed as “beautifully crafted” by the New York Times, Back Talk is a story collection that lingers long after a first read, not only for its beautiful prose and unforgettable characters but for its quiet, powerful tensions. Here, Lazarin discusses her title story, … [Read more...] about The Internal Conversation Is Constant: An Interview with Danielle Lazarin
Putting Emotion into Language: A Conversation with Polly Rosenwaike
In her artfully constructed debut collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You, Polly Rosenwaike presents stories about motherhood, pregnancy, and the range of emotions that surround becoming—or not becoming—a parent. Rosenwaike expertly explores anticipation and excitement, loss and longing in twelve stories, which Kirkus calls “An exquisite collection that is candid, compassionate, and emotionally complex.” Here, Rosenwaike talks about her technique for capturing emotion on the page, writing what … [Read more...] about Putting Emotion into Language: A Conversation with Polly Rosenwaike