Interviews – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“You Grow a Paragraph Like a Branch Grows Leaves”: An Interview With Katharine Coldiron

July 23, 2024 No Comments

K. Coldiron

I first met Katharine Coldiron when she conducted a brief interview with me. Since then, our paths have crossed at conferences, and is our punishment for living in a modern age, social media. Since our introduction, I’ve grown to know Coldiron as a skilled writer and critic who is capable of moving between genres and styles with savvy flair and cutting edges. Her book Cerimonials is a breathtaking lyric novella following two young lovers with style and bite. Her books on film, Junk Film and Plan 9 from Outer Space are clever and offer smart insights. With her latest book, Wire Mothers, Coldiron presents us with a handful of tightly written short stories probing bad things—bad parents, bad choices, and bad feelings. As I’ve done with all of Coldiron’s writing, I read the collection in what felt like a heartbeat. Coldiron was kind enough to take a few moments from her busy schedule to chat about craft, broken things, and the homes we can’t seem to shake.

Featured, Interviews, music

Bizhiki On the Making of Their Stunning Debut “Unbound”

July 19, 2024 No Comments

Bizhiki

Unbound, the debut album from Bizhiki, brings together a trio of talented musicians with some high-profile guests to create one of the most immersive, compelling, and wide-ranging albums you’ll hear in 2024. The group, comprised of Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, Joe Rainey Sr., and S. Carey, have done terrific work on their own; seriously, if you haven’t listened to Rainey’s 2022 album Niineta, you’re in for a treat. I talked with with Bizhikiins Jennings about the making of Unbound and the challenges of collaboration.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Haunted Words, Diabolical Inspiration: Ananda Lima on Writing “Craft”

July 16, 2024 No Comments

Ananda Lima

It’s hard to find the right way to describe Ananda Lima‘s new book Craft: Stories I Wrote For the Devil. On the simplest level, it’s a collection of uncanny stories, many of them involving the act of writing and a series of ominous Satanic presences. But there are also — as the title implies — subtle links between all of the works in the collection, establishing this book as more than the sum of its (impressive) parts. I talked with Lima about the genesis of Craft, its relationship to her poetry, and the art of structure.

Featured, Interviews, music

It’s All In the Timing: An Interview With Paddan

July 9, 2024 No Comments

Paddan

Sigtryggur Baldursson and Birgir Mogensen have been making music for a very long time. They first played together in the group KUKL along with future members of the Sugarcubes; the music the duo makes now as Paddan, though, takes them in a very different direction. Their debut Fluid Time is a hypnotic collection of songs, both propulsive and willing to linger and explore unexpected sonic corridors. I spoke with Baldursson about their debut, their approach to collaboration, and the subgenre they’ve coined to describe their sound

Books, Featured, Interviews

“This Novel Drove Me Out of My Mind”: Nicholas Rombes on “The Rachel Condition”

July 8, 2024 No Comments

Nicholas Rombes

There’s a lot going on in The Rachel Condition, writer and filmmaker Nicholas Rombes‘s followup to his excellent debut, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing. In its broadest terms, it’s about a man sent to Detroit to infiltrate a countercultural group in search of a literary artifact. And if that was the full breadth of this novel, it would be compelling enough — but Rombes goes further. Slowly, it becomes clear that the version of Detroit (and of the United States as a whole) are not quite the same ones we’re familiar with. And it’s these small moments of dissonance which turn out to have huge implications on the story being told. I spoke with Rombes about the genesis of this book, his fondness for nestled narratives, and his own relationship to Detroit’s musical history.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Daryl Gregory on Short Books, Big Ideas, and the History of “Revelator”

June 24, 2024 No Comments

Daryl Gregory

Daryl Gregory is not a writer who likes to repeat himself. The paperback edition of his novel Revelator was published earlier this year, and tells a story that involves familial secrets, violent clashes between bootleggers, and a godlike being that lives in isolation. It’s a compelling read, and it’s also a huge stylistic shift from his earlier novel Spoonbenders, about a family of psychics. That, in turn, was wildly different from the horror-tinged We Are All Completely Fine; what they have in common are compelling characters, complex themes, and a haunting quality that’s hard to shake. I spoke with Gregory about his latest book, his thoughts on genre, and what’s next for him.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Joan Leegant on Writing “Displaced Persons”

June 14, 2024 No Comments

"Displaced Persons"

I met Joan Leegant the first time I attended a writer’s residency—in 2017—at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I was excited to read Leegant’s new short story collection, Displaced Persons, winner of the New American Fiction Prize, set half in Israel and half in America. Aside from elegant and accomplished writing, what grabbed me about these stories, especially the ones set in Israel, especially now, is the window into ordinary life. Israel has a large immigrant and refugee population; many people who live there have been displaced at one point or another. Meeting the characters in these stories, finding their humor and humanity on the page, was uplifting.

Books, Featured, Interviews

John Freeman on the Perpetual Evolution of “Hit and Run”

June 11, 2024 No Comments

John Freeman

It’s always daunting to talk with a writer who’s made a significant impact on you. Given that John Freeman’s How to Read a Novelist had a seismic effect on the way that I write about books, the opportunity to talk with Freeman about his new novella Hit and Run was both enticing and imposing. Thankfully, Freeman was a warm and engaging conversationalist, and I was happy to talk to him about this new book, which follows a character not unlike Freeman who witnesses a horrific incident and finds his life shifting in its aftermath.