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"I hate to write. I loathe writing, but there's something in it that brings me back." Ethan Canin talks about inspiration, process, and his novel America America (Random House, 2008). His new novel, A Doubter's Almanac (Random House, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Tsitsiqui Apantzequa Chanaqua, a word in the Purépecha language found in Álvaro Enrigue's new novel, Sudden Death (Riverhead Books, 2016), translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, refers to "a game played with roses as if with balls." Several attempts are made to pronounce the term correctly, before Enrigue himself steps in.
In this humorous take on an author interview, Zach Galifianakis talks with John Wray, author of the novel Lowboy (Picador, 2010). Wray's newest novel, The Lost Time Accidents (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), follows three generations of a family through multiple time periods and geographical locations.
Darryl Pinckney, author of the new novel, Black Deutschland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), reads from "In Ferguson," an essay he wrote for the New York Review of Books on witnessing the demonstrations occurring in Ferguson, Missouri, in November 2014.
Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography (Mariner Books, 1973), adapted by Darryl Pinckney, was transformed into a music theater performance by director Cathie Boyd's Scottish production company Cryptic. Pinckney is the author of Black Deutschland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), a new novel exploring sexuality and identity.
"The days pass very slowly leading up to our departure for the autumn palace." Alexander Chee reads from his new novel, The Queen of the Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Brooklyn.
"There are traditional distinctions and there is a cultural distinction [between genre and literary fiction], but I think at the moment it's breaking down quite a lot." China Miéville, author of the new novella, This Census-Taker (Del Rey, 2016), talks about current perspectives in contemporary literature and his own creative inspirations.
"'Old people,' whispers Anna to her brother, 'are actually half robot. Only a robot could walk that slow.'" Amber Sparks reads "Cocoon" from her first story collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies (Curbside Splendor, 2012). Her second story collection, The Unfinished World: And Other Stories (Liveright, 2016), explores star-crossed lovers, taxidermists, time travelers, and space janitors.
"I set out in this book to write beyond my experience. As Colum McCann says...'Write towards what you want to know.'" Sunil Yapa recounts wisdom he learned from his mentors, and describes the inspiration for his debut novel, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist (Little, Brown, 2016), which is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
"As a writer, I love the irresponsibility of the short story.... There's something beautifully free and single gesture about writing a short story." Tessa Hadley, author of the new novel, The Past (Harper, 2016), and whose work appears in The Penguin Book of the British Short Story (Penguin, 2015), talks about her experience writing both short stories and novels.
