It took eight years to write the story of Richardson Bay’s boat community, known as the anchor-outs.
interviews
Posted inNonfiction
‘Midwesterners Have Seen Themselves As Being in the Center of Everything.’
In “The Heartland,” Kristin L. Hoganson says America’s Midwest has been more connected to global events than popular history allows — especially popular history as told in the Midwest.
Posted inNonfiction
United States of Conspiracy: An Interview with Anna Merlan
“Most people in America believe in one conspiracy to some extent, but the far end of the pool … is this desire to show that you really do reject all knowable authority.”
Posted inNonfiction
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World
The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.
Posted inStory
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’
Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.
Posted inStory
‘I’m Always Writing Against This Idea That Denver’s a White Space.’
Kali Fajardo-Anstine talks about her new short story collection “Sabrina & Corina,” her obsession with dualities, and Chicano and Indigenous history in Denver.
Posted inNonfiction
‘There’s Virtually No Conversation In Chicago … About the Aftershocks of the Violence.’
In “An American Summer,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz tries to report on gun deaths on Chicago’s South Side with the same attention to survivors, anniversaries, and aftershocks that is paid to mass shootings.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
‘Craft Is My Belief System. My Obligation To Writing Is Religious.’
Nathan Englander talks about the “super-American world” of Orthodox Judaism, Philip Roth’s funeral, and training himself to write his new novel “kaddish.com” while daydreaming.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, History, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
Namwali Serpell on Doing the Responsible Thing — Writing an Irresponsible Novel
“I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Irvine Welsh on Brexit, Existential Panic, and His Latest ‘Trainspotting’ Sequel
“The books from ‘Trainspotting’ onwards have been about deindustrialization … the cruel existential panic that we feel, in the sense that we don’t really know what we’re here for anymore.”