Speculate, the new book from Eugen Bacon and Dominique Hecq, offers a fascinating and often gripping look at literary collaboration. The book is divided into two halves: in each, one author responds to the prose poetry of the other. How those responses work make for one of the book’s most thrilling elements; the other is the stylistic range involved, meaning that some of the prose poems read like dispatches from a more surreal locale and others feel compellingly candid. I spoke with Hecq about the book’s origins and the ways in which it came together.
Afternoon Bites: Madeleine Watts Interviewed, Nnedi Okorafor, José Luis Zárate Revisited, Eileen O’Leary, and More
In our afternoon reading: an interview with Madeleine Watts, fiction by Caitlin Horrocks, and more.