Interviews – Page 22 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Translating “The Plague” During a Pandemic: An Interview With Laura Marris

December 6, 2021 No Comments

"The Plague"

Literary translation isn’t solely a desk job. In December 2019, a few months after agreeing to translate Albert Camus’s The Plague, Laura Marris traveled to Algeria, the author’s native country and the setting for his powerful portrait of a city enduring a deadly epidemic. Accompanied by Alice Kaplan, the author of the 2016 book Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic, Marris walked the same streets as Dr. Bernard Rieux, the stalwart hero of The Plague. “That really helped the book,” she told me, “just in terms of seeing the landscape and getting the right names for trees, things like that. I think it’s always helpful as a translator to see the place where a book is set.”

Books, Currents, Featured, Interviews

Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 63: Laura Theobald)

November 19, 2021 No Comments

Laura Theobald

LAURA THEOBALD is the author of three books of poetry—Salad Days (Maudlin House, 2021), Kokomo (Disorder Press, 2019), and What My Hair Says About You (Metatron, 2017)—plus three chapbooks. She’s an English PhD candidate at UGA in Athens and received an MFA from LSU, where she was the editor of New Delta Review. In her spare time she designs books for small press publishers. She’s on Twitter and Instagram as @lidleida.

Books, Currents, Featured, Interviews

Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 62: Rax King)

November 15, 2021 No Comments

Rax King

RAX KING is the James Beard Award-nominated author of Tacky (Vintage, 2021) and host of the podcast Low Culture Boil. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her toothless Pekingese.

Books, Featured, Interviews

They Put A Gun In My Face About Poetry: The Liver Mush Interview with Graham Irvin

November 8, 2021 No Comments

Graham Irvin

After I finished Graham Irvin’s new book, Liver Mush, I biked to the grocery store to buy some liver mush. In the frozen meat section, there was one solitary block of liver mush left—almost like it was waiting for me. I ate the liver mush on a pillsbury biscuit with American cheese, like Graham suggests in Liver Mush. The liver mush was phenomenal, an unexpected and great discovery. Liver Mush is also phenomenal, also an unexpected and great discovery. Two brand new delights in the course of an afternoon. It made for a good day. And you can discover them, too. They’re waiting for you, too. I had the pleasure of talking with Graham about liver mush and Liver Mush.

Books, Featured, Interviews

Duncan Birmingham Offers His Own Take on Cult Fiction

November 5, 2021 No Comments

Duncan Birmingham

Duncan Birmingham writes fiction about people at their wit’s end. Some of them have seen relationships implode; others have begun to glean the true shape of the world around them. Birmingham’s characters make terrible decisions and are prone to excess; the stories in which they appear blend humor and dread in unexpected proportions. Birmingham’s collection The Cult In My Garage is an excellent distillation of his skills as a writer, offering a window into a simultaneously beguiling and terrifying vision of California. I spoke with him about the book’s origins, the role of the pandemic in its genesis, and its celebrity cameo.

Books, Currents, Featured, Interviews

Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 61: Dennis Cooper)

October 29, 2021 No Comments

Dennis Cooper

DENNIS COOPER is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor, filmmaker and performance artist who currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris. He is known for the George Miles Cycle, a series of five semi-autobiographical novels (Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period) published between 1989 and 2000, and is the director (with Zac Farley) of Permanent Green Light and Like Cattle Towards Glow. I Wished (Soho Press, 2021) is his first novel in ten years.

Books, Featured, Interviews

“‘Two Snakes Fighting’ Bores the Shit out of Me”: An Interview with Josh Russell

October 18, 2021 No Comments

Josh Russell

In the Summer of 2020, I was hospitalized for almost a month and reached out via text to a limited number of writer-friends to let them know what was going on with me. Of that small number, Josh Russell has stayed in touch with me daily, in a manner that has improved my health, deepened our friendship, and, I hope, aided each other during a period in which there have been many days where both of us wondered if there was any reason to write fiction, particularly the kind of fiction each of us have chosen to pursue.

During that time, we’ve seen too how both of us, survivors of the eighties, midwesterners who’ve lived most of our adult lives in the south, married to southerners, who’ve navigated through a number of different universities—nine have seen fit to employ the two of us—have more in common than not. And I will say it unhesitatingly: I have no other correspondent whom I look forward to hearing from more.

Books, Currents, Featured, Interviews

Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 60: Tobias Carroll)

October 15, 2021 No Comments

Tobias Carroll

TOBIAS CARROLL is the author of Political Sign (Bloomsbury, 2020), Transitory (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), and Reel (Rare Bird, 2016). He is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn, and writes Words Without Borders’ Watchlist column. His writing has been published by Tin House, Rolling Stone, Hazlitt, The Scofield, Bookforum, and more. He has taught writing courses for LitReactor and Catapult.