Interviews – Page 11 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Inside the Uncanny Histories of Robert Kloss

February 27, 2023 No Comments

Robert Kloss

Late last year, Inside the Castle published new editions of two novels by Robert Kloss: The Woman Who Lived Amongst the Cannibals and A Light No More. Describing either book isn’t easy — Kloss combines the hallucinatory history of acid Westerns with the linguistic experimentation of Caroline Bergvall’s Drift. The overall sensibility is both fragmentary and all-encompassing, unlike anything else out there today. With these new editions made more widely available, I chatted with Kloss about the process of putting them together and exploring what might be next for him.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Todd Dills on “Shining Man,” Southern Literature, and the Search for Joy

February 23, 2023 No Comments

Todd Dills

Some of the first readings I ever did were with writer Todd Dills, who was and is one of the most engaging people to see read from their work in front of their audience. (I still have fond memories of watching Todd shaking an upside-down mic stand at an event at an Atlanta coffee shop.) The guy’s a fantastic writer as well, and when his latest novel Shining Man was published in 2019 — it’s a followup to his earlier Sons of the Rapture, which I also highly recommend — I eagerly read it and sent him some questions on it. And then the pandemic happened and the interview was paused for a bit. And now it’s complete — and features Dills discussing everything from the literary influence of Ralph Ellison to the role NASCAR plays in his work.

Books, Featured, Interviews, Six Ridiculous Questions

Six Ridiculous Questions: William Lessard

February 21, 2023 No Comments

William Lessard

The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.

Books, Featured, Film, Interviews

Shaping Horror on the Screen: Paul G. Tremblay on Film and Fiction

February 14, 2023 No Comments

Paul Tremblay

A couple of years ago, while on a trip to a city I’d wanted to visit in ages, I ended up with an extra night there due to a canceled flight. At least, I nominally had an extra night in town — but instead, I stayed in my hotel room because I’d just started reading Paul G. Tremblay‘s The Cabin at the End of the World — and there was no way I was going to put it down before I knew how it ended. Since then, I’ve sought out more of his work, impressed by both his command of dread and his ability to sustain narrative ambiguity across the space of a novel. Knock at the Cabin, an adaptation of the novel that first drew me to Tremblay’s work, is now in theaters, and provided the perfect backdrop to talk to him about his work, the movies, and the places they intersect.

Books, Featured, Interviews

The Art of Collaboration: Eugen Bacon and Andrew Hook on “Secondhand Daylight”

February 13, 2023 No Comments

"Secondhand Daylight" cover

Every writer writes each book a little differently from the one before it. When authors collaborate on a novel, that sense of reinvention increases exponentially. For collaborators Andrew Hook and Eugen Bacon, creating the new book Secondhand Daylight involved challenges large and small. The two writers discussed their process for working together on a very distinctive novel of time travel, and shared an excerpt from it as well.

Book Review, Books, Featured, Interviews

Dreaming Like a Boat: A Review of Benjamin Niespodziany’s “No Farther than the End of the Street”

February 2, 2023 No Comments

"No Farther...." cover

Benjamin Niespodziany’s debut book of poems, No Farther Than the End of the Street, limits itself to scenes set within the space of a single block. It is equal parts domestic and dream, love letter and daily grief. In lieu of a traditional review, what follows is a “review” limiting itself to text contained in the book. It is meant to replicate the sensory experience of reading Niespodziany’s book for the first time. As such, it is not singular, but one snapshot among the many possible illustrations of the book’s emotional resonance.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Who Writes “The Writer”? Mallory Smart, That’s Who.

January 18, 2023 No Comments

Mallory Smart

When I first heard about the AI program, ChatGPT, I didn’t think too much of it. You type in a question, and it gives you an answer. You give it commands and it responds in kind. I assumed it would be a hyped-up program that would be trendy for a bit then fizzle out, like the AI profile pics I had been seeing. I was wrong, as I often have been about these kind of things (I didn’t think Facebook or Netflix would last very long). Then I saw people posting whole essays written by the program. During a conversation with my brother-in-law, I suddenly saw the potential for writers to use this as a creative new tool. I could write a book much faster. I put that thought on the backburner. Maybe it would be a project for a rainy day. But I knew that this program wasn’t going to fizzle out. Then shortly before the start of the new year, Mallory Smart tweeted that she would be releasing a human/AI collaboration book on New Year’s Eve. My first thought was that the literary world is about to change. My second thought was, I need to talk to Mallory about this.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Skulls, Detectives, and the Texas Surreal: Robert Freeman Wexler on Writing “The Silverberg Business”

January 13, 2023 No Comments

Robert Freeman Wexler

There’s a point early on in Robert Freeman Wexler‘s novel The Silverberg Business where you might have an idea of where things are heading. Protagonist Shannon is on the trail of a man who disappeared with money intended to benefit Jewish refugees in 1880s Texas. A detective, hot on the trail of an elusive target — it’s the stuff of classic private detective fiction, right? And then a group of skull-headed people show up and, as the saying goes, things get weird. After reading the novel, I was immediately intrigued and sought out Wexler to learn more about the book’s origins — and the music and art that helped inspire it.