What You Can’t Outrun: Colleen Burner on “Sister Golden Calf” and the Joys and Challenges of Writing a Female Road Narrative

Colleen Burner

Colleen Burner’s Sister Golden Calf is a strange, gorgeous debut novel about two sisters, Gloria and Kit, who travel through the desert with their jars full of “invisible things for feeling and knowing.” It’s about grieving the death of a parent, about isolation and longing, and it features an eight-legged taxidermied calf, a ghost town, and a nude ranch. Reading Sister Golden Calf, I was moved by the propulsive, sometimes breathless sentences, and the quiet, meditative moments where Gloria and Kit find space to grieve—a space that is a car, a body, a sister willing to travel to the ends of the earth. 

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Punk Hooks and Rare Books: An Interview With SAVAK

SAVAK

Since their formation in 2015, Brooklyn’s SAVAK have been on a tremendous run, releasing album after album of blistering garage-punk at an admirable pace. Their latest album, Flowers of Paradise, is a fantastic addition to their discography, blending a postpunk urgency with the sense of warmth that longtime musical compatriots can summon. I spoke with Sohrab Habibion and Michael Jaworski about the genesis of their new album, the rare book trade, and my inability to identify an EBow.

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Checking In With Lauren Denitzio of Worriers

Worriers

It’s been a busy year and change for Worriers‘ Lauren Denitzio. Their band has released two albums since the beginning of 2023: Warm Blanket and Trust Your Gut. Worriers is now on the road sharing bills with Alkaline Trio and Drug Church, and Denitzio’s excellent newsletter Get It Together is a go-to source for musings on the creative life and terrific musical recommendations. As Worriers makes their way across the country, I checked in with Denitzio about their latest albums, life in California, and tour reading.

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Haunted Places and Haunted Stories: An Interview With Rebecca Turkewitz

Rebecca Turkewitz

Where, exactly, can you find the dividing line between a ghost story and a story about ghosts? In her new collection Here in the Night, Rebecca Turkewitz explores that fascinating boundary. There are moments that stray into the uncanny here, for sure, but Turkewitz also explores the effects of ghost stories and local folklore on her characters, leading to moments that illustrate just how tales of the uncanny can have similar effects to the uncanny itself. I spoke with her about her collection, her own experiences with folktales, and what’s next for her.

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Six Ridiculous Questions: Graham Rae

Graham Rae

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.

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Art and Literature In an Endless Cycle: Tomoé Hill on “Songs for Olympia”

Tomoé Hill

There’s a long history of literary works inspired by literary works or works of art. For her new book Songs for Olympia, Tomoé Hill opted to go one layer deeper. Her book opens a dialogue with Michel Leiris’s The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat, which is itself a response to a Manet painting. That said, a detailed knowledge of Leiris’s book is not necessary for enjoyment of Hill’s’; instead, the earlier work by Leiris and Manet provides Hill with a vantage point from which she can reckon with questions of art, gender, intimacy, and her own history. It’s a mesmerizing work, and I caught up with Hill earlier this year to discuss it in greater detail.

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Hysterical Historical Fiction: An Interview With Brad Neely

Brad Neely

Brad Neely’s debut novel, “You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant,” is probably one of the funniest books I’ve read in the last decade. I was laughing so hard at one point while reading the book that my wife came from the other room to see what was going on. The book pulls off a remarkable feat—not only is it a hilarious, quick-moving account of Ulysses S. Grant’s life and war-time work, it’s also oddly moving. Beyond the jokes and riffs, the book reminds the reader of a trait that’s accidentally, but not essentially, American, and that also happened to be demonstrated by a host of Union soldiers during the Civil War: the willingness to sacrifice yourself for your belief in what is right and just—an idea of what your country could be—and to prevent the immiseration of oppressed people. The book is a portrait of an imperfect man who was striving, like many others at the time, to create a more perfect country than the one he was born into.

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Revisiting the Rust Belt in Words and Pictures With Jay Halsey

Jay Halsey

To read Jay Halsey’s Barely Half in an Awkward Line is to be immersed in its author’s world and the places and people at their heart — sometimes literally. This book blends terse poetry, haunting prose, and mysterious images, all of which combine to bring the reader into the author’s history and the places closest to them. I spoke with Halsey about the book’s genesis and its new edition — as well as what the deal was with the masked figures that factor prominently into the book’s second half.

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