Interviews

10 Questions with Aaron Gwyn

May 20th, 2014

Photo by Angus Lamond I first read Aaron Gwyn in Esquire's gone-too-soon Fiction For Men eZine. His chilling 2nd person short story, "You and Me and the Devil Makes Three", was one of the most innovative and stark pieces of short fiction I’d run across in years. Based solely on the strength of that story, I bought Gwyn’s collection, Dog on the Cross. The book was every bit as striking, albeit the tone and subject matter were far different.

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10 Questions with Jeff VanderMeer

May 6th, 2014

Image: Francesca Myman/Courtesy of Abrams Books Like so many new-to-me authors over the past seven years, I was introduced to the novels of Jeff VanderMeer by longtime friend and editor, Brian Lindenmuth. In 2009, Lindenmuth wrote me letting me know that he'd just mailed me two books, with a note saying I had to read both ASAP. The books were Brian Evenson's short story collection, Fugue States and Finch By VanderMeer. I cracked Finch first.

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10 Questions with Christopher Priest

May 2nd, 2014

Christopher Priest wants to trick you. His stories are multi-layered, steering you through a dark subterranean labyrinth full of twists and pitfalls to an ending you couldn’t imagine, let alone anticipate. The characters you encounter, each brimming with Priest’s trademark breath of life, will attempt to lead you astray at every turn as they methodically reveal their tales.

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10 Questions with 'Made to Break' Author D. Foy

April 7th, 2014

D. Foy is a man running on coffee and willpower. I first met him when he stopped by the LitReactor booth at AWP a month ago, and he has literally been on the road every day since then promoting his first novel, Made to Break. Released in March by Two Dollar Radio, the book, which he refers to as his “old man,” has had a sixteen-year journey to publication.

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A Few Questions With Evan Saathoff, Author of 'Madea Lives! A Film-by-Film Guide To Loving Tyler Perry'

April 4th, 2014

Evan Saathoff has written about Tyler Perry online for years, often the lone defender of the director's amazingly strange body of work. A couple of years ago he decided to take it upon himself to write the book the world was missing: a book that examined the deeply conflicted themes, delightful weirdness and sometimes shockingly bad execution of Tyler Perry's films. Last month Badass Digest Publishing released Saathoff's Madea Lives!

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Douglas Coupland: Best. Canadian. Ever.

April 3rd, 2014

Header photo via Metro. Body photo © 2013 Byron Dauncey His bestselling novels may have earned him honorary global citizenship, but Douglas Coupland is still a Canadian at heart. In fact, it has been suggested (by me, just now) that maple syrup runs through his veins instead of blood. Is this why his books go so well with pancakes?

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10 Questions with Blud Series Author and LitReactor Instructor Delilah S. Dawson

March 26th, 2014

As a reader, paranormal romance isn't really in my wheelhouse. But I'd been hearing good things about Delilah S. Dawson's work. Plus, she's a hoot on Twitter. So I picked up Wicked As They Come, the first entry in her Blud series, and within the first hundred pages I knew two things: 

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10 Questions with "29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy" Illustrator Lisa Brown

March 10th, 2014

One the best parts of becoming a parent is discovering a whole new world of kid's books—which have evolved in amazing ways since I was a child. I enjoy finding unique books for my daughter as much as—and possibly more than—I enjoy finding them for myself! It could be the instant gratification with the kid's books and the decreased chance that they will sit idle and unread on my bookshelf for years. 

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10 Questions with John Hornor Jacobs

March 5th, 2014

The only novelist currently working that I can compare John Hornor Jacobs to is Joe R. Lansdale. Not so much because of the tone of narrative voice, but because of the diversity of storytelling and sheer production.

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A Few Questions With Tom Hammock and Megan Hutchinson, Creators of Aurora Grimeon

February 20th, 2014

One of the great joys of writing about comic books is that people will ask you what they should read, and then you get to tell them. Every so often, and with increasing frequency, I have been asked to recommend good comics that aren’t about superheroes. There was a time when I would have just stared at these people with naked incomprehension, but eventually I learned that not every comic book is about tightly spandexed superpeople throwing buildings at each other.

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