“You’d find certain archetypes that would appear no matter what. For instance, the haunted merchant’s house in New York plays off the mythology of the unmarried woman, the spinster, as does the Winchester House. Things like this would crop up unexpectedly across the country, despite their radically different places and stories and cultures.”
On “Ghostland”: An Interview with Colin Dickey Read More »
“Some people take issue with calling infertility a disease, but I think that’s the only way we can advocate for better awareness and insurance coverage, so that people have choices. And my point was not to say that one path is better than another, but to portray the experience of exclusion and isolation, and the obstacles faced by so many people, with empathy.”
On “The Art of Waiting”: An Interview with Belle Boggs Read More »
“Movement is just another language used to convey an emotional experience or fantasy. There are many things your body is capable of that you are not exactly consciously aware of and Gaga in particular allows you to continually surprise yourself because of its non-structure. The most satisfying discoveries for me are when through movement I find how to articulate something I cannot accurately put into words.”
On Research, Movement, and Mixing Mediums: An Interview with Ben Green Read More »
“I generally work because I am struck by something that someone has said. Playwriting is an oral art; it’s not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard. And so I think that if I hear a character speaking, either one I’ve invented or one I’ve confronted, it starts a process of creating which I can’t control or even describe properly. If I could describe it I probably wouldn’t do it.”
An Interview with Arthur Miller Read More »
“Deciding which medium I use to explore an idea comes down to immediacy. If there’s something urgent that I want to think through — the pool essay, for example — I like addressing it through nonfiction. The Internet makes it easy to join a ongoing conversation. Fiction, at least for me, moves much more slowly. The ideas I take on in fiction are usually ideas that I’ve been thinking about for years.”
On “The Mothers”: An Interview with Brit Bennett Read More »
“I suppose I realized I was working toward a book when I asked myself, How close can you get to an extinct bird? And then, I set out to try. My journey of combing through museums and specimen drawers was what ultimately spurred the longer narrative. Once I held an extinct bird skin in my hands, I knew I had to start sounding some alarms about our own environmental crises.”
On “Flock Together”: An Interview with B.J. Hollars Read More »
In college I had a writing teacher who said, “If you’re ever writing about a childhood memory and you think your mother was wearing a blue dress, but you’re not sure if your mother was wearing a blue dress, then don’t write that.” And it’s great advice, but it sent me into this whole tailspin about what it means about myself if I imagined her wearing that. What else would be inaccurate? Did it mean the whole memory was fake? So, I became very interested in family stories as a place where narrative, and the facts, are constantly in contention. It’s a sphere where there is no proof, no objective truth of any matter, and I think that among all people who share large parts of their lives — families, couples who’ve been together for a while — this argument is very common.
On “I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This”: An Interview with Nadja Spiegelman Read More »
“When I turned eighteen, the cult just turned into the Devil’s playground. The cult was insisting on things from me and harassing me. They shaved my head, they forced me to do hard labor, I was being told I didn’t deserve nice things and I believed it. I think having my head shaved caused me to go into shock, but I then went to my dance teacher and I said to her that at Synanon, all the women shave their heads. My dance teacher couldn’t handle my shaved head and threw me out the school. And then it got worse and worse and worse.”
Always Looking: An Interview with Gina Bonati Read More »
“Initially, I was going to tell the story of Amy and her murder, the subsequent criminal trial, the [Truth and Reconciliation] Commission, and her parents’ amazing feat of forgiveness. It’s a story that’s pretty well known in South Africa, and one that was at one point quite well known in America.”
On “We Are Not Such Things”: An Interview with Justine van der Leun Read More »
“From a plot perspective, each of my characters has the opportunity to help another character, and they all take that opportunity. Now, in order to facilitate those decisions, I had to introduce them to peril. I was fine sticking them in dire situations, knowing that they’d make it through unscathed. Nobody comes off worse than he or she begins.”
On “Froelich’s Ladder”: An Interview with Jamie Duclos-Yourdon Read More »
