Writing Archives - Page 2 of 5

Interviews

America’s Epidemic of Domestic Violence

An interview with Rachel Louise Snyder

April 28, 2020 • by Rachel Louise Snyder and LaVonne Elaine Roberts

LaVonne Roberts [LR]: You point out that most (54 percent) of mass shootings intersect with domestic violence. As a Texan, I grew up hearing about Charles Whitman, who, on August 1, 1966, after fatally stabbing his mother and his wife, killed 14 people and wounded 31 others. Is there any hope that convicted domestic ...

Democracy

Why Egypt Didn’t Get the Revolution it Needed

An interview with Peter Hessler

April 27, 2020 • by Peter Hessler and Michael Schmale

For American expatriates living in China in the first decade of the 2000s, Peter Hessler was already something of a household name, not just as the New Yorker’s China correspondent, but as a public intellectual. His books became fixtures of laowai bookshelves almost as soon as they were published. His ...

Why Egypt Didn’t Get the Revolution it Needed

Interviews

Pay Attention to the Language Itself

An interview with Lydia Davis

April 13, 2020 • by Lydia Davis and Pune Dracker

-- “The Fly,” Lydia Davis A classic short story -- yes, short story -- from the writer whom the Los Angeles Times Book Review has called “one of the quiet giants in the world of American fiction.” In Essays One, the reader is treated to a compilation of Davis’s commentaries, explorations, and ...

Body & Mind

The World Is Absolutely Full Of Wonder

An Interview with Mary Ruefle

April 9, 2020 • by Gina Chung and Mary Ruefle

Gina Chung [GC]: I thought we could start by talking about the title of your book. What do you think are the benefits of embracing one’s own “duncedom”? Mary Ruefle [MR]: You know, we’re all dunces, to begin with, and I guess at my age, I am not afraid to be ...

Literature

The Strangeness and Miracle of Being

An Interview With Ilya Kominsky

March 27, 2020 • by Ilya Kominsky and Jessalyn Johnson

The following interview with Ilya Kominsky, a 2020 finalist in poetry, is part of a series of NBCC interviews conducted by New School creative writing students. In his book Deaf Republic, award-winning poet Ilya Kaminsky explores political disorder in a community where the people are united in a time of tragedy, ...

Feminism

Leading the Resistance Into Battle

An Interview With Sonia Purnell

March 24, 2020 • by Sonia Purnell and Taylor Sue Leonhardt

The following interview with Sonia Purnell, a 2020 finalist in biography, is part of a series of NBCC interviews conducted by New School creative writing students. In her biography, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, Sonia Purnell captures the ...

Uncategorized

A Joint Emotional World

An Interview With Edwidge Danticat

March 20, 2020 • by Edwidge Danticat and Heran Abate

The following interview with Edwidge Danticat, the 2020 award winner in fiction, is part of a series of NBCC interviews conducted by New School creative writing students. Edwidge Danticat’s Everything Inside is a finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction. This short story collection takes us into the intimate depths of ...

Uncategorized

A Glimpse of Poetic Possibility

An Interview With Ben Lerner

March 14, 2020 • by Ben Lerner and Zac Ginsburg

--- Zac Ginsburg [ZG]: It is well known that The Topeka School draws from your own life. Similar to Adam Gordon, you grew up in Topeka, Kansas, your parents are psychologists, and you competed in high school debate. Adam Gordon is also the name of the protagonist in your first novel, ...

Feminism

Celebrating the “Female Byron”: An Interview With Lucasta Miller

The National Book Critics Circle finalist on her biography, L.E.L.

March 13, 2020 • by Lucasta Miller and Kate Tooley

Lucasta Miller, author of The Bronte Myth, returns to the world of 19th century female authors with L.E.L., an extensively researched recasting of the life and career of Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Long ignored and dismissed by critics, recently unearthed information has shed light on Landon’s personal life and by extension offered a new perspective ...

Celebrating the “Female Byron”: An Interview With Lucasta Miller

Literature

On The Hatred of Literature

Liberalism is about life and everything it contains

March 10, 2020 • by Jon Baskin

When I was in college, at the end of the last century, the prevailing school of literary interpretation was called “New Historicism.” The foundational assumption of this approach was that artworks were primarily of value insofar as they could offer us insight into the context and conditions of their historical ...

Interviews

Permission To Be Yourself: An Interview With Mira Jacob

The National Book Critics Circle finalist for her Autobiography, Good Talk

March 6, 2020 • by Mira Jacob and Ramya Ramana

--- Ramya Ramana [RR]: So first I want to say thank you for writing this, from the bottom of my heart because it was just so refreshing to read a story that I could see myself in, and so much of your journey. I felt like I see myself and I ...

Permission To Be Yourself: An Interview With Mira Jacob

Psyche

Trauma, Transitioning, and “Puberty Book-Ended by Free Fall”

In a new cycle of poems, poet Isa Guzman explores their personal experience of gender-confirmation

February 18, 2020 • by Isa Guzman

1. I think with observable sunsets my mother’s bodily purging calm hums abstracted pigeons awake along a broken wall of context the way the hip doesn’t curve won’t ever the alienating anatomic bone structure of verbs growing winds and winding contours of hysteria anatomical witchcraft another day another extension of empty ...