Conversations – Page 2 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

How To Catch a Coyote: A Conversation with Christy Crutchfield

July 9, 2014 No Comments

I haven’t read much fiction about coyotes, but a couple coyotes wandered down my street once and my neighbor said he started pawing at the dirt with his foot or something and they ran off. I don’t know, the whole thing could be apocryphal. Which is kind of what Christy Crutchfield’s new book, How To Catch a Coyote, is about. It’s about how one character, Daniel grows up and his perceptions about his family–what to believe and what not to […]

Books, Conversations, Featured

Chance Operations, Literary Specificity and La Monte Young: A Conversation with Jeff Jackson

May 27, 2014 No Comments

The first time I met Jeff Jackson, I wasn’t sure what to expect. His debut novel Mira Corpora, a surreal and occasionally horrific coming-of-age story, had left me reeling as I read it; as it circled its narrator’s experiences with violence, and those experiences’ effect on him, I found myself haunted. In person, Jackson is an incredibly friendly guy–affable, well-versed at discussing everything from jazz to literature in translation, and erudite about his own working process. Earlier this month, I met […]

Books, Conversations, Featured, music

Minutiae, Michigan Punk, and the Memoir: A Conversation with Sean Madigan Hoen

May 20, 2014 No Comments

Songs Only You Know, Sean Madigan Hoen’s first book, is the story of a harrowing period of his life, as his family imploded due to his father’s addiction and his sister’s depression. Hoen vividly describes the process of losing himself in obsessive behavior and cathartic live performances with his band. It’s a staggeringly powerful read. In person, Hoen is soft-spoken; we met at Greenpoint’s BÚÐIN and discussed the process of writing this memoir, hardcore in the 90s, Denis Johnson, and […]

Books, Conversations, Featured

“One Can Make Work Out of the Abandoned Stuff”: A Conversation with Ivan Vladislavić

May 14, 2014 No Comments

It was via Teju Cole’s introduction to the novel Double Negative that I first encountered the work of the South African writer Ivan Vladislavić. That novel looked at the political and cultural evolution of South African through the eyes of one character, a photographer, over the course of several decades. Now, an earlier novel of Vladislavić’s is seeing release in the U.S. for the first time. The Restless Supermarket focuses on Aubrey Tearle, an aging proofreader who finds himself alarmed by the social changes […]

Conversations, Featured

A Conversation with Guillaume Morissette

May 12, 2014 No Comments

One of my favorite Canadian authors is Guillaume Morissette. I just identified him as Canadian, because I really don’t read that many Canadians, but that shouldn’t matter. But it kind of does, because Montreal and Quebec and Concordia University play a role in the new novel from Guillaume–called New Tab (Vehicule Press, 2014). I first came across Guillaume via the Internets a few years ago, and really liked the easy fluidity of his story collection, I Am My Own Betrayal. […]

Books, Conversations, Featured, Poetry

Literary Enthusiasm, Challenging Forms, and the Dos-à-Dos: Dicussing The Agriculture Reader with Justin Taylor

April 18, 2014 No Comments

It was a cold spring morning when I arrived in Carroll Gardens to meet with Justin Taylor at a coffee shop. I was there to talk with him about The Agriculture Reader, the journal he co-edits with Jeremy Schmall. More broadly, I was also curious to see how the publication’s focus on poetry and esoteric fiction dovetailed with Taylor’s own concerns as an author. Taylor had a number of past issues of The Agriculture Reader with him, and I snapped a few photos, documenting […]

Books, Conversations, Featured

“What It Means to Bond with People Like That”: A Conversation with D. Foy

April 2, 2014 No Comments

On the evening of March 19, I interviewed D. Foy at BookCourt. The topic of conversation was, primarily, his new novel Made to Break, the story of five friends embroiled in a series of toxic friendships who are forced to confront unpleasant truths about themselves when a trip to an isolated cabin goes awry. It’s a tense, harrowing read that both subverts expectations and does interesting things with structure. Sometimes horrific, sometimes visceral, and sometimes unexpectedly funny, Made to Break […]

Books, Conversations, Featured, Poetry

Poetry, Translation, and “Spectacles of Suffering”: An Interview with Gabriele Tinti

March 31, 2014 No Comments

There are many ways to write about sports, but the Italian writer Gabriele Tinti has opted for a seemingly unlikely blend of form and subject. His recent collection All over takes as its focus boxing, with poems focusing on the likes of Arturo Gatti and Arthur Cravan. I caught up with Tinti via email to learn more about evoking the rhythms of boxing, the process of translation, his friendship with Burt Young, and more.