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Read weekly interviews with authors to learn the inside stories of how their books were written, edited, and published; insights into the creative process; the best writing advice they’ve ever heard; and more.
“I needed time away from text to indulge in paintings and drawings and collage art. I spent a lot of days in art galleries mulling over my memories and the text I was writing.” —Raymond Antrobus, author of The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound
“I like the idea of action writing, putting text on the floor and playing with arrangement like abstract expressionist painting.” —Anne Waldman, author of Mesopotopia
“But fear can be galvanizing; perhaps the novel would not have been written without it.” —Xenobe Purvis, author of The Hounding
“I just remember the miraculous appearance of story seeds, bursts of inspiration, and cloudless composition.” —Ed Park, author of An Oral History of Atlantis
“I think every writer carries with them someone they wish they could’ve told all their stories to.” —Katie Yee, author of Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
“I tend to work across these different forms, on different projects at the same time.” —Issa Quincy, author of Absence
“Writing lends itself to filmmaking in terms of structuring a story, but I think filmmaking lends itself to more visually stimulating writing.” —Lawrence Burney, author of No Sense in Wishing
“Notes/fragments help me relive moments that carry seeds, sparks, moments of import, humor, and beauty.” —Rhoni Blankenhorn, author of Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet
“The research I did for this novel was so intriguing, looking at the psychology and science of siblinghood, memory, identity.” —Fran Littlewood, author of The Accidental Favorite
“If you put the hours in, the work will work itself out.” —Shoshana von Blanckensee, author of Girls Girls Girls
“[Y]ou should write, or at the very least revise, with a reader always in mind.” —Robert P. Baird, author of The Nimbus
“A book takes a long time to write, and a long time to publish. So, you know, take a breath!” —Lucas Schaefer, author of The Slip
“But so much of the work is done in those gaps, when the book sits in the back of your mind with your subconscious untangling it.” —Nicola Dinan, author of Disappoint Me
“And while it is an expansive, strange book, it manages to feel contained and possible. I think that’s in part because it was written from a place of confinement.” —July Westhale, author of moon moon
“Everything will take longer than you feel like it should, and this is a gift.” —Rickey Fayne, author of The Devil Three Times
“The magnitude of space around me must have opened a kind of interior spaciousness where the writing came from.” —Lisa Fishman, author of One Big Time
“Stories that are planned are boring and flat and unlike life, which is messy and has its own logic.” —Craig Thompson, author of Ginseng Roots
“Intuition is enough.” —Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Exit Zero
“The short story form offers me a way to indulge my obsessions and experiment with various genres and narrative modes.” —Julia Elliott, author of Hellions
“I’m a firm believer these days in discomfort on the page, whether it’s sonic, tonal, metaphorical, or imagistic.” —Keetje Kuipers, author of Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
“Write one poem at a time and resist knowing where you are going.” —Arthur Sze, author of Into the Hush
“I was playing, trying to make something I liked, something no one else had already made for me.” —Rachel Trousdale, author of Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem
“Editing down is something I dread in the abstract because I know I can lose motivation easily. But this book has ingrained the lesson in me fully.” —Dennis E. Staples, author of Passing Through a Prairie Country
“The magic happens in the writing, on the page. That’s the high.” —Mariam Rahmani, author of Liquid: A Love Story
“This isn’t writer-stuff, it’s life-stuff that bears on the poems.” —Lesley Wheeler, author of Mycocosmic
