“If I go into the forest, I can hear the birds and crunching of the leaves. It’s about the sound of the whole forest, not isolating the sounds,” Janice Lee tells interviewer Margaret Juhae Lee.
Category: Interviews
“Being a mother is dynamic, and the dynamism of motherhood lends itself to narrative,” Julie Phillips tells interviewer Margaret Juhae Lee.
(interviews)
“If a doctor says, ‘The curve of your spine makes me think of a river, or a snake in action,’ that would make me feel like part of nature instead of an unnatural aberration,” Riva Lehrer tells interviewer Irina Ruvinsky.
I go to the county jail to see one father and discover that the other one is there.
(interview)
“I think that as long as you treat your characters with compassion, and you’re thoughtful and empathic and you do what you can to support their narrative and their truths,” Emily Maloney tells Barbara West.
(interview)
“If you want to be a writer, you get to be one forever. Sometimes that means big chunks of time where you are not building sentences because you’re living the experiences that you’re going to build the work out of. So drop the shame about it,” Megan Stielstra tells Barbara West.
(interview)
“Really it was like possession . . . Renata is her own complete being as far as my psyche and processes know,” Frank X. Gaspar tells Millicent Borges Accardi.
“My son’s mind had turned against him but the need for process moved him through a different portal,” Miriam Feldman tells Tanya Ward Goodman.
“I overcome the tension of trying to write by cooking. Next to smell, taste is the strongest sense in terms of conveying emotions,” Maggie Kast tells Jan English Leary.
“I did not live any of my life in a literary community. Holding an array of different jobs for almost thirty years, I used to think I could publish my resume as a novel,” Sari Rosenblatt tells Avani Kalra.
I’ve chosen to work with concrete to speak about the impulse to create permanent structures, but also to speak about impermanence, change, and loss, Ledelle Moe tells Helena Feder.
Humanizing the effects of Chicago gun violence, editor Chris Green chose a form for his latest anthology that mirrors the way a semi-automatic weapon fires. Interviewed by Donald G. Evans.
“If countries were people, we wouldn’t invite them to our parties because they are too monstrous,” Robin Hemley tells Julia Lieblich.
Donald Ray Pollock’s Hillbilly Gothic peels back the sanitized “heartland” image of the Midwest, revealing the often-overlooked rural people. An interview by Jarrett Kaufman.
Lexie Pitter is a newfound activist, bringing police brutality protests to Chicago’s North Side, where residents perceive police as benign protectors, as opposed to threats to the innocent. An interview by Avani Kalra.
“Stories of immigration, grieving, displacement, disaster, and language itself explode in this debut by Chicago-based writer Michael Zapata.” An interview by Samuel Schwindt.
Although Donald Trump is never mentioned in his new book, “King of Confidence,” Miles Harvey admits the current president “hangs over every sentence in the book.” An interview by Donald G. Evans
“I was in the convent at the time. I knew that I was lesbian. I was twenty-six. I was in a new program that allowed us more latitude than your ordinary canonical novice has. I had heard about, probably read an article in the newspaper, about this uprising, and it’s as if it drew me – not the riot, but the act of rebelling,” Ginny Apuzzo tells Tamika Thompson.
I should note, as a white person among the white majority of Americans, that white people need to be more reminded of this history because it’s easier for white people to ignore that history.
“People have certain views even about building walls, etc., but that doesn’t mean they’re racist, it means they’re genuinely afraid. Of course there were the weird, psychotic people but the majority of people it seemed to me were reasonable and kind, even the ones who hold certain views,” Tarek Mounib tells ACM.
“Black people often comment on the fact that when you see some person’s name trending on Twitter among your circles, someone Black who you’ve never heard of, your first thought is, ‘My God, someone has been murdered again,'” Eve Ewing tells ACM poetry editor Tara Betts.
“When I was young I really thought if you just wrote the right book, you could stop evil in its tracks.” An interview by Cara Suglich.
The author of “Tales of Falling and Flying” talks humor in fiction, Kafka, and whether humans are doomed. An interview by Matt Rowan.
Another Chicago Magazine 