“The Politics of Writing Are a Process of Self-Growth and Examination”: An Interview With Carmiel Banasky

Reading The Suicide of Claire Bishop, the first novel by Carmiel Banasky, one can be overwhelmed (in the best possible way) by the themes and narrative strands that it draws together. There are several decades of political unrest and dissent; there’s art; there are heists and plots. It helps that the novel’s two main characters are each extremely compelling: the title character, inspired to change her life after seeing an artist’s unexpected portrait of her; and West, a young man […]

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The Thaw: An Excerpt From Carmiel Banasky’s “The Suicide of Claire Bishop”

We’re pleased to have an excerpt up from Carmiel Banasky’s forthcoming novel The Suicide of Claire Bishop, due out next week on Dzanc Books. In a recent interview for The Rumpus, Banasky said that “[m]y novel is equally about madness and the fear of madness. So what that meant was presenting schizophrenia as a relatable experience, without reducing or romanticizing it.” Juxtaposing narratives set in multiple decades with observations on art and obsession, Banasky’s novel covers a number of haunting […]

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