“People are messy. What does it even mean to be likable?”: An Interview with Kristen Arnett
Much of Kristen Arnett’s second novel is about how we craft our stories to fit our needs, especially when we feel trapped, or frightened.
Author: JA Tyler
“To write about Geppetto is to write about fatherhood, and at the same time he is a creator of a monster”: An Interview with Edward Carey
Pinocchio is such a fixture of culture that most authors would be too nervous to interact with the classic story in any extended way. Edward Carey’s latest novel is audacious in this regard, giving us the untold tale of Geppetto in bold illustration and dynamic, resonant text.
“Paris, in its own way, is a character in the book”: An Interview with David Hoon Kim
David Hoon Kim’s debut novel is as much about its protagonist and the characters around him as it is about the city itself, as much about the narrative momentum created through his wanderings as it is about the languages that carry and charge through him.
“Climate change is coming for us all”: An Interview with Matt Bell
Matt Bell’s Appleseed is a sci-fi novel. It is also a re-imagining of a western, a portrayal of a dystopia, and a techno-adventure. Above all, Appleseed is a novel of warning, an air-raid siren of impending environmental collapse.
“Much of this novel is about queer and trans people fighting to see ourselves as sacred”: An Interview with Zeyn Joukhadar
In Joukhadar’s new novel, during the search for what seems almost to be a mythical bird, and for an explanation as to how exactly a disappeared artist and the protagonist’s mother are linked, Nadir also begins searching for his transgender identity—a separate and daunting migration all his own.
“I’m not sure we ever arrive at wholeness”: An Interview with Ethel Rohan
Ethel Rohan’s stories are expertly laced with opposition and convergence, a curled fist and an open palm. Her most recent collection—out this week—features relationships rife with both dissonance and confluence, characters in pairs and triads stretching away and snapping back together.
“A lot of the novel is about stories—the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves, the ones we don’t know but that shape us in some way”: An Interview with Gabriela Garcia
Gabriela Garcia’s non-chronological debut novel, built on glimpses of memory and history, digs into issues of cultural identity, social and political unrest, and the complexities of lives informed by migration, oppression, and racial inequality.
“These two books, taken together, offer a nice survey of my anxieties and preoccupations over the past decade”: An Interview with J. Robert Lennon
J. Robert Lennon’s new novel and short story collection, both released last week, offer up an aesthetic of the uncompromising, the surprising, and the fantastic, either cloaked in the everyday or surreally spread.
“I really try to let the characters speak for themselves”: An Interview with Brandon Hobson
Hobson’s latest novel is a brilliant, artfully crafted story of Native heritage, family dynamics, and ancestral hope.