A Conversation with Laird Hunt

A criminal operative helps a woman fill her shelves with mundane objects. A gentleman with psychic powers reflects on the days before his wife went insane. A

(Editor's note: this month, I asked a former Warren Wilson classmate of mine, Anna Clark, to – in a virtual setting – sit down with two other former classmates on the occasion of the publication of

AMY: Hello, Victor. Thank you for agreeing to talk with me again. As with our last interview, I'd like to start with a quote — not from Bruce Campbell this time, but from the epigraph of your

The drinking life has been rendered in print on so many occasions, it seems unlikely that anyone could find anything new to say about it. It seems unlikely, but then Patrick DeWitt's

Molly Gaudry yanked me back from a depressing precipice. For the past three weeks I've been immersed in the world of Cormac McCarthy, climbing inside his mind via his newly opened archive at Texas

Kyle Beachy's debut novel The Slide is the kind of first novel that makes you happy for the presence of books in the world. It's weird and wild and hilarious and touching all at once. This book

I first read J. Robert Lennon in a short-lived lit mag out of Philly called Night Rally. I picked up a copy of the first issue at Borders after a Michael Chabon reading in October 2000, and

Larry Fondation is the author of four books, all of which display his mastery at quilting micro and short fictions to create large bodied tales.

His latest collection, Unintended

Jedediah Berry's first novel The Manual of Detection came out in February from the Penguin Press to uniformly awesome reviews from places like the New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The

NOTES ON GRIM TALES

 

I see the dates on the work go from 1996-2004. Were these written one by one and then later compiled in a certain order? How did the construction process for Grim

Joe Meno is the author of six books, most recently the story collection Demons in the Spring and The Boy Detective Fails. His new novel, The Great Perhaps, is out in May.

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Erin McGraw teaches writing at Ohio State, where she works with her husband, the poet Andrew Hudgins. She's the author of The Good Life, Lies of the Saint, and The Baby Tree. In her latest

Paul Maliszewski's Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters and Other Great Pretenders, was published in January by The New Press. The book is a collection of essays, interviews, and reports

I first became a fan of Hannah Tinti's writing when I read her story, "Home Sweet Home," (appearing in her collection Animal Crackers). The story begins: "Pat and Clyde were murdered on pot roast

John Brandon's debut crime noir novel Arkansas is full of men who become bored or dissatisfied with the straight life and who, in the process of trying to find something else, end up working as

There is much to admire in the life and work of the author Michael Kimball: his sentence craft, his innovation, his generosity and enthusiasm. He's also a quite a thoughtful interview

Leni Zumas' wonderful book Farewell Navigator is full of the kinds of stories I love and the kind of writing I envy. Every word is chosen carefully. Every sentence fits with the previous and the

Cathy Day grew up in Peru, Indiana, where the Great Porter Circus lodged from 1884 to 1939. Her first book, The Circus in Winter, illuminates the rise of the circus, its collapse, and the legends

I discovered Yannick Murphy through her Bookworm interview and bought a copy of Here They Come (McSweeney's Books, 2006) soon after. I've read it twice already and know that this is a book I'll

Temporary People is subtitled "A Fable." What does that mean to you? And how do you think the fable adapts to long-form fiction? And one that's acutely aware of world history and politics at

It takes a lot to get me to read an entire book. I buy, borrow and steal books by the hundreds, but the actual number I read from beginning to end are very few. In the last seven years, I've

C.J. Hribal (a.k.a. – Juice Hardball) is a stone cold baseball freak. The kind of guy who can tell you who played third base for Cincinnati in 1990*, or who was commissioner when the designated

Samedi The Deafness, the debut novel from Jesse Ball released this September is baffling readers and reviewers. The novel itself is being described as a "mnemonist trapped in a sanatorium for

Ryan Boudinot is a Hobart favorite -- heck, he edited our fourth issue. There are few contemporary writers we'd rather read. His work is funny, dark, and flat-out brilliant.

When I first read

NOTE TO READERS: this interview with Victor LaValle went much longer than expected, and we couldn't bear to part with any of it. So, consider this a teaser for the full interview, which you can