Interviews

10 Questions With Matt Bell

September 16th, 2015

Photo via Brazos Bookstore When I first started reading Matt Bell's first short story collection, How They Were Found, I almost thought of him as a literary chameleon. Each story was radically different from the next as far as genre was concerned, ranging from surrealism to noir.

Read Interview →

A Conversation with Patrick Wensink About His New Novel, 'Fake Fruit Factory'

September 15th, 2015

Patrick Wensink rose to incredible heights of fame when Jack Daniel's politely asked him to change the cover of his novel, Broken Piano for President. It's a story that LitReactor broke, and got none of the credit for, but hey, that's life, and we were honored to be there at the start of the journey. 

Read Interview →

A Couple Of Questions With LitReactor Instructor And 'The Art of Horrible People' Author John Skipp

August 31st, 2015

Horror-bizarro legend John Skipp is a busy guy. His hit LitReactor class, The Choreography of Violence, starts this Thursday. And he just released a new collection of short stories, out from Lazy Fascist Press, called The Art of Horrible People.  John is an incredible addition to our workshop program—the energy and insight he brings to the classroom is unrivaled. So to mark the occasion of a busy month, I posed a couple of questions to him.

Read Interview →

Words On The Streets: City Poet Steven Reigns

August 27th, 2015

Poets were once central to public life. The Ancient Greeks and Romans regarded poetry as the best way to record epoch-making events, laud emperors or deities, and map the quests completed by heroes. Wherever a city fell or a conqueror rose, a poet observed from the sidelines and would, later, carve their account into cool clean lines of dactylic hexameter. Civilization, politics, and moral principles compressed into feet and couplets;  history registered as art. 

Read Interview →

Chuck Palahniuk Interview - San Diego Comic-Con 2015

July 21st, 2015

For something you’re not supposed to talk about, there’s a lot of buzz about Fight Club 2 at this year’s Comic-Con. In addition to the Dark Horse comic and Beautiful You, published last fall, Chuck Palahniuk has a short story collection, Make Something Up, out now, and is currently cutting his screenwriting teeth on Andy Mingo’s adaptation of Lullaby.

Read Interview →

10 Questions With Brian Panowich

July 7th, 2015

Image via Columbia County News-Times I hate comparing novels to other forms of media. You know, movies, television, plays. Whatever. But sometimes when you read a novel, you can’t help but be reminded of that beloved “other” media. With Brian Panowich’s extraordinary debut novel, Bull Mountain, I’m going to pull the Justified card out of my hat.

Read Interview →

10 Questions with David James Keaton

June 30th, 2015

There are a couple of things you know you're going to get when you read David James Keaton. You know you're in for some damn fine writing. You know there's going to be some good laughs. You know that, in the case of The Last Projector, you're going to suffer a minor lower back injury the first time you pick it up (remember: lift with the knees). And you know things are going to get weird, in the best way possible. 

Read Interview →

A Conversation with Joshua Mohr About His New Novel, 'All This Life'

June 29th, 2015

Hashtags are like emotions that people can see.  All This Life, Joshua Mohr's fifth novel, is both a love letter to San Francisco, and a dark and hysterical dissection of social media culture. The book opens with a marching band leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge, and follows an ensemble cast of characters who were directly or indirectly involved with the event—and their slow march toward each other. 

Read Interview →

10 Questions With Rob Hart

June 10th, 2015

The LitReactor team loves Rob Hart. Seriously, without Rob, a solid portion of the site’s content would be in absolute chaos, so obviously we value the guy around here. Also, as you all know, on top of his LR duties and his full time gig with Mysterious Press, Rob’s also one hell of an accomplished crime writer, whose debut novel, New Yorked, hit the streets yesterday from Polis Books. The first book in the Ash McKenna series is one of the few P.I. novels I actually enjoyed reading in a very long time.

Read Interview →

10 Questions with Paul Tremblay

June 2nd, 2015

Let’s talk about horror for a minute. As a genre, I absolutely love it. I started writing because when I was 11 I started reading folks like Stephen King, Clive Barker, Joe Lansdale, and David J. Schow and I got it into my head that maybe if I wrote my own scary stories, people would pay me to write them. Obviously, I thought that was a pretty cool way to make a living. I also love horror movies like teenage girls love texting. Since I was 9, flicks like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist have been my jam.

Read Interview →