Interviews

Cover of You Should Pity Us Instead side by side.
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Origin Stories: Amy Gustine’s You Should Pity Us Instead

Amy Gustine’s debut collection, You Should Pity Us Instead, is an unsentimental exploration of people in distress. I recently asked Gustine where she drew her inspiration. She told me that stories come alive for her when she opposes two equal forces, which explains why each one feels like such an exquisitely engineered work of tension….

Bridging the “Dreadful Gulf”: An Interview with Sarah Death

Bridging the “Dreadful Gulf”: An Interview with Sarah Death

Sarah Death is a translator and scholar of Swedish literature. She edited the Swedish Book Review from 2003-2015 and lives in Kent, England. She has twice won the Bernard Shaw Translation Prize: in 2003 for The Angel House by Kerstin Ekman and in 2006 for Snow by Ellen Mattson. Her most recent novel translation is…

Cover of Private Citizen side by side.
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Origin Story: Tony Tulathimutte’s Private Citizens

Tony Tulathimutte’s debut novel, Private Citizens, charts the spectacular floundering of four recent college graduates. His eye is so sharp, his characters so recognizable, and his truth so pitiless that I sometimes had to close the book, as if he might read my soul through its pages. This is one of the most provocatively intelligent…

An Interview with writer Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
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An Interview with writer Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow is a fiction and nonfiction writer from Singapore. Her stories appear in the anthologies From the Belly of the Cat (2009) and Let’s Tell This Story Properly: Commonwealth Short Story Prize Anthology (2015), as well as in the journal Mänoa. Her nonfiction work includes Singapore: A Biography (2009), co-authored with Mark Ravinder Frost and commissioned by the National…

“Different Paths Up the Same Mountain”: An Interview with Adele Kenny
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“Different Paths Up the Same Mountain”: An Interview with Adele Kenny

Adele Kenny’s poems speak from the head and the heart, giving thoughtful scrutiny to the moments that move us—whether to wonder or to grief. She is the author of more than 20 books of poetry and nonfiction, including What Matters, winner of the 2012 International Book Award for Poetry, and A Lightness, A Thirst, or…

“Sufficient Ambiguity”: An Interview with Deborah Smith

“Sufficient Ambiguity”: An Interview with Deborah Smith

Deborah Smith is a translator of Korean and the founder of a new non-profit London-based publisher, Tilted Axis Press. Recently, she has worked with Korean author Han Kang to bring her novel The Vegetarian to an English-reading audience. The book is a collection of three linked novellas about a woman who gives up eating meat…

Jeremy Tiang's It Never Rains on National Day

It Never Rains on National Day: an interview with writer Jeremy Tiang

  Jeremy Tiang is a fiction writer, playwright, and translator from Singapore. His short story collection It Never Rains on National Day was published by Epigram Books in 2015, and is available at Epigram Books’ website. He lives in Brooklyn and was recently featured in the Singapore Writers Festival. We caught up in an email interview. Xin…

“Unexpected Brightness”: An Interview with Elaine Sexton
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“Unexpected Brightness”: An Interview with Elaine Sexton

Elaine Sexton’s poems are active, nimble, curious—they often seem to be trying to solve a problem or puzzle out the right words to describe our too-often wordless emotions. No wonder her first book is called Sleuth. Elaine’s other books include Causeway and, most recently, Prospect/Refuge. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and New York…

“Subjects We Never Completely Learn”: An Interview with Daniel Nester
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“Subjects We Never Completely Learn”: An Interview with Daniel Nester

Daniel Nester’s prose zings back and forth between the heart and the funny bone. His latest book, Shader, is a kaleidoscopic coming-of-age story told in brief chapters called “notes.” It’s like one of those family slideshows that make us laugh, groan, squirm in our chairs, and sometimes cry. His previous books include How to Be…