Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of the novel The Border of Paradise and the best-selling essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias, published in January. Called “riveting” by NPR and “mind-expanding” by the New York Times Book Review, The Collected Schizophrenias offers an intimate and rigorously nuanced exploration of the myriad meanings of schizophrenia—cultural, sociomedical, and personal. In this interview, we talk structure, subjectivity, and liminality. — Jennifer duBois: Can you talk … [Read more...] about Against Arguments: An Interview with Esmé Weijun Wang
Novels
Video Games, Trash TV, and Death Metal Music: An Interview with Jennifer duBois
Jennifer duBois, author of the acclaimed novels Cartwheel and A Partial History of Lost Causes, has a new novel that was published last week: The Spectators. LitHub lists it as one of the “Most Anticipated Books of 2019,” and Booklist calls is “brilliantly conceived” and “utterly unforgettable.” An excerpt from The Spectators was published in Issue 63 of American Short Fiction. In this interview, we dig into the genesis of duBois’s latest novel, its structural challenges, and what nineties talk … [Read more...] about Video Games, Trash TV, and Death Metal Music: An Interview with Jennifer duBois
Editorial Outtakes: The Floating World
Editorial Outtakes is a series in which we publish excerpts from recent books that you won’t find anywhere else because, prior the publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene from novelist C. Morgan Babst's debut The Floating World. Published in 2017 and out this month in paperback, Babst's acclaimed story of life in New Orleans following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina has been hailed as a poetic and tragic family tale with the … [Read more...] about Editorial Outtakes: The Floating World
From Printed Page to Silver Screen: An Interview with Novelist Ted Thompson
Ted Thompson's one of the very first people I met in Iowa City in the fall of 2009 when my wife and I moved there so that she could attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Knowing Ted has given me a close view of watching someone move from drafting a book to editing it, then to selling it to a publishing house and editing it some more. On Thursday, an adaptation of that book—The Land of Steady Habits—will premiere on Netflix. Adapted and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Nicole Holofcener, the movie … [Read more...] about From Printed Page to Silver Screen: An Interview with Novelist Ted Thompson
Editorial Outtakes: This Darkness Got to Give
Editorial Outtakes is a series in which we publish excerpts from recent books that you won’t find anywhere else because, prior the publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene from fiction writer Dave Housley's new novel, This Darkness Got to Give. In the vein of character-driven contemporary horrors like Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps and A Questionable Shape by Bennet Sims, Housley engages with and subverts what readers may … [Read more...] about Editorial Outtakes: This Darkness Got to Give
Things American: On Quitting the (not so) Great American Novel
I want to tell you, because maybe it’s four in the morning and you’re googling “how to know when to give up on a novel.” How you are supposed to know? I’ve wondered this many times myself over twenty-three months, through a hundred and fifty thousand words, dozens of chapters, three false starts, and too many conversations to count. Then—in a moment—I came to the answer and I gave up on the book. I’ve written three books that came easily. The novel I walked away from was not one of those. The … [Read more...] about Things American: On Quitting the (not so) Great American Novel