Interview

Back Draft: Lisa Dillman

By Ben Purkert and Lisa Dillman January 13, 2021

The translator on selecting her subjects, discovering the work of Andrés Barba, and the dangers of cultural hegemony.

Back Draft Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Alistair Ian Blyth: Translating Post-Soviet Moldova

By Alicia Kennedy January 7, 2021

Iulian Ciocan’s translator on bringing the Moldovan writer to a global audience.

Lit World

Interview

Barbara Demick: “I want to portray history through the eyes of the people living it.”

By Judith Hertog December 7, 2020

The journalist talks about how humans respond to crisis, reporting on repressive regimes, and why she wanted to write about Tibet.

Asia & Oceania Lit World

Interview

Back Draft: Danez Smith

By Danez Smith and Ben Purkert December 3, 2020

The poet on a hard year for books, getting a rise out of an audience, and “Frankensteining” your archives.

Back Draft Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Alex Ross: Wagner in the Twenty-First Century

By Arya Roshanian November 30, 2020

The New Yorker music critic on the composer’s enduring impact, both good and bad.

Arts & Culture

Interview

Claire Messud: Life Among the Animals

By Madhuri Sastry November 18, 2020

The writer on Camus, COVID-19, and the undoing of our meaningful lives.

Arts & Culture

Interview

Hilton Als: “It’s always so moving to see how art claims us out of a kind of loneliness.”

By Mary Wang November 12, 2020

Using a selection of his favorite cinema excerpts, writer and critic Hilton Als talks about what happens when artists tell the truth.

Miscellaneous Files

Interview

Sejal Shah: “All my life, I have been biking with brakes on.”

By Kelly Sundberg November 9, 2020

This Is One Way To Dance is a timely collection about identity—where it comes from, what it means (and doesn’t), and what happens when we lose it.

Lit World

Interview

Talia Lavin: Into the Abyss

By Amy Brady November 3, 2020

The journalist discusses her new book on the history and nature of white supremacy in the digital age.

Politics Religion

Interview

Sunisa Manning: Flexibility is Subversive

By Monica Sok November 2, 2020

The author of A Good True Thai talks about political imagination, writing about revolt, and liberating her characters.

Lit World

Interview

Claire Cronin: Blue Light Hauntings

By Maggie Lange October 28, 2020

Horror writer Claire Cronin discusses her new book, the digital uncanny, and how obsession demands a sideways approach.

Lit World

Interview

Anna Bruno: Can Women Win in Literature?

By Maria Kuznetsova October 26, 2020

The writer on “likeable” women, loyal dogs, and the luck of “breaking out.”

Lit World

Interview

Jennifer Hijazi: Climate and the Courts

By Amy Brady October 20, 2020

The climate reporter on what a Justice Amy Coney Barrett would mean for the environment.

Climate & Environment Lit World

Interview

Natalie Diaz and Nathalie Handal: Map of the Next World

By Nathalie Handal and Natalie Diaz October 19, 2020

The two award-winning poets consider borders, both real and figurative, through the lens of their new collections.

Conflict MENA

Interview

Anne Helen Peterson: “What else is there but my ability to work?”

By Mickie Meinhardt October 14, 2020

The journalist and academic on defining the burnout generation—and literally writing the book on it.

Miscellaneous Files

Interview

Destiny O. Birdsong: Infinite Negotiations

By Lily Meyer October 12, 2020

“I like the idea that a poem is a dress that can fit the wearer.”

Lit World

Interview

Sarah Kasbeer: Dissecting the Damage

By Sara Petersen October 5, 2020

A new collection of essays considers the weight of patriarchy and the ordinary traumas of being a woman.

Gender Lit World

Interview

Tiffany McDaniel: Spilling Secrets

By Carissa Chesanek September 28, 2020

The author of Betty talks about using family as the basis for fiction, and why she’s not smiling in her author photo.

Lit World

Interview

Darin Strauss: Beyond Biography

By Michele Filgate September 21, 2020

The writer on blending fiction and memoir, and exploring the nature of celebrity.

Lit World

Interview

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Everything that Made Us Still Belongs to Us

By Lisa Factora-Borchers September 17, 2020

The writer of a poetic trilogy on listening to ancestral voices, Black feminism, and seeing salvation in marine mammals.

Lit World

Interview

Chana Joffe-Walt: Nice White Parents

By DJ Cashmere September 15, 2020

The producer of the hit podcast talks about how race and power shape public education, and what it will take to create a more equitable system.

Education Race

Interview

Back Draft: Emma McMillan

By Kat Herriman and Emma McMillan September 9, 2020

The painter on frottage, a decorative rebellion, and the destruction of the traditional family unit.

Back Draft Arts & Culture

Interview

Shruti Swamy: The Intensity of Language

By Alexandra Chang September 4, 2020

The writer on confronting fear on the page, motherhood, and how stories help us make meaning.

Lit World

Interview

Angie Thomas: We Have to Get Uncomfortable

By Freddie Coffey August 25, 2020

The bestselling YA author discusses how young people can make change, how grief shapes activism, and what it would mean to defund the police.

Lit World Race

Interview

Makenna Goodman: Motherhood and Isolation

By Nathan Scott McNamara August 17, 2020

The debut author of the The Shame discusses book hoarding, life in Vermont, and the weight of the past.

Lit World

Interview

Diane Cook: “Our humanity is what makes us so particularly wild.”

By Rachel Heng August 10, 2020

The author reflects on writing the physical world into fiction, what makes someone a “bad mom,” and what a wilderness community has in common with The Office.

Bodies & Nature Lit World

Interview

Hazel Carby: “If it can’t actually cope with the entanglement of all these histories, then to me, it’s useless.”

By Sabrina Alli August 5, 2020

Using archival images across Britain and Jamaica, the writer and academic discusses the knotty colonial histories beneath our everyday soil.

Miscellaneous Files

Interview

Back Draft: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

By Ben Purkert and Rachel Eliza Griffiths August 3, 2020

The poet on radical revision, our reflections, and photographing poets.

Back Draft Lit World

Interview

Porochista Khakpour: I’ve Become Uninterested in Darkness

By Ann Tashi Slater July 21, 2020

Porochista Khakpour’s Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity tells a deeply moving—and often startling—story of being brown-skinned in America.

Lit World Race

Interview

Rebecca Kauffman: We have the same survivalist impulses that animals do

By Pete Tosiello July 14, 2020

The author on class, the ensemble novel, and the complexity of the human heart

Class Family & Relationships

Interview

Garth Greenwell: Incredibly Vulnerable Beings

By Liv Lansdale July 2, 2020

"Art is about plunging oneself into the abyss."

Lit World

Interview

Megha Majumdar: What Will You Surrender?

By Madhuri Sastry June 26, 2020

The novelist discusses the politics of silence, questioning your idols, and the accumulation of shame.

Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Miscellaneous Files From Racial Justice Activists Around the World

By Mary Wang June 19, 2020

Sylvana Simons, Rosebell Kagumire, and Amanda Adé use their tweets, screenshots, and Instagram videos to discuss how a time of momentous change has transformed their work.

Miscellaneous Files

Interview

Miscellaneous Files From Racial Justice Activists in the US

By Mary Wang June 19, 2020

Cat Brooks and Eric Ward use screenshots of Zoom-meetings, resource manuals, and policy proposals to discuss how this time of momentous change has transformed their activism.

Miscellaneous Files

Interview

Ira Shor: Liberating Education

By DJ Cashmere June 17, 2020

"They’re on strike against an institution which has subordinated them, underestimated them, and undereducated them."

Education

Interview

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: DREAMer memoirs have their purpose. But that’s not what I set out to write.

By Lucas Iberico Lozada June 10, 2020

The writer on taking control of her narrative, her telepathic connection to Stephen Miller, and the army of mutants.

Lit World

Interview

How Three School Social Workers Do Their Jobs in a Pandemic

By DJ Cashmere June 9, 2020

“Kids with more resources are adjusting well. Others have collapsed into themselves.”

Education

Interview

Ken Liu: “We get to define the stories we want to be told about us.”

By Mary Wang May 28, 2020

Using photos of his text editors, mapmaking software, and 3D-printed prototypes, the writer talks about technology, myth, and telling stories during a pandemic.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Meredith Talusan: I’m Not Brave

By A.E. Osworth May 27, 2020

The writer and editor on resisting the expectations for minority voices, her French-inflected prose, and the complications that make life worthwhile.

Gender Lit World Race

Interview

Stephanie Danler: Empowered by Choice

By Elizabeth Lothian May 14, 2020

The novelist and memoirist discusses generational trauma, developing compassion for oneself, and feeling empowered by choice.

Lit World

Interview

Back Draft: Miranda Popkey

By Kate Dwyer and Miranda Popkey May 5, 2020

The novelist discusses the shape of a narrative, and the value of retyping.

Back Draft Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Maisy Card: “There is this hazy quality to my family history that no amount of research can clarify.”

By Mickie Meinhardt April 28, 2020

The author unpacks the archival finds and emotional reckonings behind a novel that took her 12 years to write.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Cathy Park Hong: I’m So Sick of the Fact That It’s Not Changing

By Sejal Shah April 17, 2020

The poet and critic on “coalitional writing,” upending the avant-garde, and Asian American identities.

History Race

Interview

Beth Alvarado: Grieving in Dreams

By Kimi Eisele April 1, 2020

Two writers discuss the “apocalyptic imagination,” finding connection through loss, and the liminality and fragility of the borderlands.

Interview

Mark Bibbins and Paul Lisicky: Sooner or Later

By Paul Lisicky and Mark Bibbins March 20, 2020

The two writers and friends discuss the uses and abuses of nostalgia, cynicism, and trauma porn—and how their new books reflect their experiences of the AIDS crisis.

Lit World

Interview

Meaghan Winter: Progressives Can’t Give Up on the States

By Spencer Green March 16, 2020

The political journalist on the timidity of liberal foundations, the peril of ignoring local reporting, and whether organizers have succeeded where party politics has failed.

Government Politics

Interview

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: “It is not possible to decolonize the museum without decolonizing the world.”

By Sabrina Alli March 12, 2020

The political theorist argues that those whose worlds have been destroyed by five centuries of imperialism have the right to live near the objects that have been plundered from their culture.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Mira Jacob: I’m Not Going to Hold It for You

By Briana Gwin March 11, 2020

The acclaimed writer and graphic novelist on the importance of owning your shame.

Family & Relationships Lit World

Interview

Jenny Offill: The Doomy Bits

By Drew Johnson March 6, 2020

The author of Weather talks about confronting dread, navigating hope, and how to not write a bad book about climate change.

Climate & Environment Lit World

Interview

Darcey Steinke: How to Be in a Body

By Elizabeth Lothian March 3, 2020

The writer embraces menopause, matriarchy, and the language of the body.

Bodies & Nature

Interview

Back Draft: Emily Wilson

By Ben Purkert and Emily Wilson February 24, 2020

The translator on being drawn to Homer, and the timelessness of toxic masculinity.

Back Draft Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Emma Eisenberg: Holding Contradiction

By Hillary Brenhouse February 21, 2020

The author of The Third Rainbow Girl on internalizing shame, creating healing, and scrambling gender in a place where “the earth loves you and also wants to kill you.”

Gender Justice USA

Interview

Katherine Rowland: The Force of Women’s Longing

By Darcey Steinke February 18, 2020

The public-health researcher and author of The Pleasure Gap on the medicalization of women’s sexuality, the politics of “faking it,” and why female desire “inspires panic and fascination.”

Gender Health Sex

Interview

Namwali Serpell: “I almost always find my errors productive.”

By Mary Wang January 21, 2020

Using archival photos, excerpts from language courses, and eBay finds, the author and critic explains how she mines mistakes for discoveries.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Carmen Maria Machado: “I speak into the Silence”

By Marissa Korbel December 18, 2019

The writer on intimate partner violence and the forces that made it a hard story to tell.

Family & Relationships Gender Lit World

Interview

Lilly Dancyger: There Are So Many Different Ways to Be Angry

By Jane Ratcliffe December 3, 2019

The editor of Burn It Down talks about the stabilizing benefits of women’s anger, the slow pace of change, and why it’s important to take up space on the subway.

Gender Lit World

Interview

Robert Gipe: A Cure for Despair

By Graham Oliver November 25, 2019

The author and activist on gallows humor, the need to tell stories, and helping communities thrive.

Arts & Culture Class USA

Interview

Shannon Pufahl: Queering the Western

By Mickie Meinhardt November 21, 2019

A slow-burning epic, On Swift Horses paints a new picture of our American mythology.

Gender Lit World

Interview

Rene Denfeld: What Happens After the Trauma

By Jane Ratcliffe November 18, 2019

The novelist on writing as activism, mislabeling monsters, and the healing power of imagination.

Family & Relationships Justice

Interview

Ben Fama: “Life begins once its valorization ends.”

By KrisAnne Madaus November 15, 2019

The poet talks about his latest book, the economic forces at work behind social media, and the stuffed animals in his life.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Diana Marie Delgado: The Germ of Someone

By Nicole Treska November 12, 2019

The poet on growing up around storytellers, understanding the charming trickster, and acknowledging women’s trauma.

Bodies & Nature Family & Relationships

Interview

Dina Nayeri: The Craft of Writing the Truth about Refugees

By Jessica Goudeau November 5, 2019

The writer discusses the complexity of migrants' lives in a world that demands their simplicity.

Class Conflict Politics

Interview

Mira Ptacin: What Does It Feel Like to Have a Ghost in the Room?

By Sarah Kasbeer October 28, 2019

In her new book, Ptacin goes deep with mediums and clairvoyants, and embraces the unknown.

Bodies & Nature Religion

Interview

Kimberly King Parsons: Humor is an Antidote to Dread

By Robert Lopez October 23, 2019

Parsons' short fiction debut Black Light isn’t afraid of the dark.

Interview

Back Draft: John Murillo

By Ben Purkert and John Murillo October 21, 2019

The poet discusses chasing butterflies, and the perpetual relevance of political verse.

Back Draft Lit World

Interview

Four Storytellers Tackle Climate Change

By Amy Brady October 15, 2019

Experts in art, writing, journalism, and policy discuss why climate change is the biggest story of our time.

Climate & Environment

Interview

Victor LaValle: Imagine Downton Abbey, but with Smells

By Tobias Carroll October 11, 2019

The award-winning writer on editing his first anthology, horror versus sci-fi, and the American tradition of voter suppression.

Lit World

Interview

Wendy S. Walters: There Is No Neutral Body

By Amy Wright September 25, 2019

Loneliness, anti-blackness, and the need to tell new stories on the 400th anniversary of the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to the New World

Bodies & Nature Race

Interview

Susan Choi: The Limitation of Perspective

By Christopher M. Hood August 23, 2019

The author of “Trust Exercise” on her evolving narrative preoccupations and the radical contradictions of adolescence.

Arts & Culture

Interview

Aya de Leon: Fiction of Empathy and Escapism

By Ilana Masad August 13, 2019

The author of the Justice Hustlers series talks about writing at the nexus of consciousness raising and commercial fiction.

Americas Sex

Interview

Back Draft: Martín Espada

By Ben Purkert, Martín Espada, and Donald Hall August 12, 2019

The poet discusses his relationship with the late Donald Hall and the power of art, incarnate.

Back Draft Lit World

Interview

Plumbing the Silences Between Mothers and Children

By Madhushree Ghosh August 9, 2019

Michele Filgate, Nayomi Munaweera, and Sari Botton on a new anthology, What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About.

Family & Relationships

Interview

Alex Kotlowitz: Violence and Resilience in Chicago

By DJ Cashmere July 26, 2019

“To label this kind of trauma as ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ is perhaps a little dangerous, because there's nothing ‘post’ about it.”

Conflict

Interview

Helen Phillips: “Living with the awareness of the abyss is probably a good thing.”

By Mary Wang July 19, 2019

The writer discusses why motherhood lends itself perfectly for speculative fiction—and the album that helped her during writing and labor.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Catherine Chung: The Vast and the Intricate

By Steph Cha July 11, 2019

The author discusses the limits of identity, the power of ownership, and the narrative beauty of math.

Arts & Culture

Interview

Ayesha Harruna Attah: “I Write to Find out Who I Am”

By Arvind Dilawar July 5, 2019

How the discovery of an ancestor named only “the slave” inspired the Ghanaian author’s latest novel

Africa Lit World

Interview

Kristen Arnett: It Starts With An Image

By Victoria Brown July 3, 2019

The writer on depicting experienced sex scenes, finding humor in the absurd, and the exciting possibilities of the gross.

Arts & Culture

Interview

Wayne Koestenbaum: “I use obscene as a term of praise.” 

By Mirene Arsanios July 2, 2019

Critic, essayist, and poet Wayne Koestenbaum talks about the reissue of his only novel to date, Circus, while offering a glimpse of his art works, unpublished writings, and family archive.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Becoming a Map for Survival: Interview with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

By Lisa Factora-Borchers June 18, 2019

The writer on resisting racist ableist erasure in her latest essay collection about disability justice.

Arts & Culture Bodies & Nature

Interview

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Writing to Re-member

By Helen Scott June 17, 2019

The author discusses the refugee crisis, US foreign policy, and the problem of ‘narrative scarcity’ for marginalized and minority populations.

Lit World Politics

Interview

Terese Svoboda: Writing the Desert

By Amy Brady May 14, 2019

The author and translator on the changing American region that shaped her thinking.

Climate & Environment

Interview

Binnie Kirshenbaum: “If you think you shouldn’t say something, say it.”

By Mary Wang May 13, 2019

Writer Binnie Kirshenbaum shares the drafts of her latest novel, Rabbits for Food, and talks to us about writing unreasonable characters.

Miscellaneous Files

Interview

Sheila Heti: “All of Living is Thinking”

By Kelley Deane McKinney May 7, 2019

The author discusses Judaism, visual art, and “the annoying, circular thinking that happens alongside living.”

Lit World

Interview

Laila Lalami: Home Is An In-Between World

By Anjali Enjeti May 1, 2019

The writer on migration, bigotry, and the inheritance of loss.

Lit World

Interview

Fernando A. Flores: “The oldest stories of this land were fantastical in essence”

By KrisAnne Madaus April 26, 2019

An emerging voice in fiction discusses writing as performance, translating rhythm into narrative, and writing the “anti-research” novel.

Americas Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Hilary Hahn: Entering the Sublime

By Emily Fragos April 25, 2019

The renowned violinist on the joys and intensities of creative life.

Arts & Culture

Interview

David Shields: Men Should Acknowledge Their Brokenness

By Cathy Alter April 16, 2019

The author discusses marriage, #MeToo, and how we are all vectors on a vast grid of animal drives.

Family & Relationships Lit World

Interview

Leanne Shapton: “The mix of proof, shock, and totally crappy images.”

By Mary Wang April 12, 2019

Writer and illustrator Leanne Shapton gives us a tour through her studio and shows us her mock layouts, her collection of ghost stories, and the pile of scrapbooks she found on Etsy.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Sam Lipsyte: “I Depend on Not Knowing”

By Leah Dworkin April 9, 2019

The celebrated novelist on “mental archery,” writing while parenting, and searching for deep focus in a culture of corporatized wellness

Interview

Sarah Blake: A Biblical Woman Gets a Modern Voice

By Mickie Meinhardt April 9, 2019

The author of the stunning debut novel Naamah on reimagining the story of the ark to be feminist and surreal, with a healthy dose of agnosticism.

Gender Religion

Interview

Back Draft: Edward Hirsch

By Ben Purkert and Edward Hirsch April 5, 2019

The poet discusses insomnia, civility (or the lack thereof) in cities, and losing his sight.

Back Draft Lit World

Interview

David Means’s New Collection of Stories is Unstuck in Time

By Sam Schieren March 26, 2019

“I like stories that helix on themselves and twist,” says the author of Instructions for a Funeral.

Interview

Morgan Parker: “In the back of my mind I’m on a slave ship, yet I’m also here just telling you how it is.”

By Sasha Bonét March 22, 2019

Poet Morgan Parker shares a collection of screenshots that feed her audacity and fuel her despair.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Sandra Newman: “We need to reclaim utopianism”

By Alan Scherstuhl March 21, 2019

The author on being broke, inventing one’s own language, and being “good” at Twitter.

Lit World

Interview

David Wallace-Wells: “We Will Need to Learn How to Navigate a New World with New Rules”

By Amy Brady March 8, 2019

The provocative journalist on why we should stop speculating about the “threshold of catastrophe,” and instead ask ourselves “How bad are we going to let it get?”

Climate & Environment

Interview

Reema Zaman: “Once I saw how it all connected, I became free”

By Gerri Ravyn Stanfield March 7, 2019

The writer on how to rise from trauma and heal collective wounds.

Gender Lit World

Interview

Back Draft: Natasha Trethewey

By Ben Purkert and Natasha Trethewey February 26, 2019

The acclaimed poet discusses a devastating fire, and the painterly in poetry.

Back Draft Arts & Culture Lit World

Interview

Valeria Luiselli: “There are always fingerprints of the archive in my books.”

By Mary Wang February 12, 2019

The writer opens her archives to reveal maps, recordings, and questionnaires that have fueled her work—including photos that didn’t make it into her new novel.

Miscellaneous Files Lit World

Interview

Heather Widdows: The Ugly Side of Beauty

By Regan Penaluna January 30, 2019

The philosopher on how our appearance intolerance hinders ideas and human flourishing

Bodies & Nature Gender

Interview

Joyce Carol Oates: Failure is Just Preparation

By Alan Scherstuhl January 22, 2019

The author on her career, Shirley Jackson, and why we should all be more like cats.