“I don’t think that the decisions we make when we are not under any pressure, when our lives are going well, really say very much about us.”
“I think everyone should sort of have that branded on their arm: that you don’t know what’s happening, you don’t know what’s happening.”
Edan Lepucki in conversation with Alex Shephard If Edan Lepucki wrote an essay about the phone book, I would probably read it. Her work for The Millions is warm, engaging, and incredibly sharp, and her essays have helped make that site one of the best places to find quality long-form literary criticism on the web.
“Other People We Married, Straub’s debut story collection, is one of the funniest and saddest books I’ve read in some time. It’s also one of the best.”
Jessica Francis Kane in conversation with Alex Shephard What is there to say about a massacre? This is the question that Kurt Vonnegut poses at the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five. It’s also a question that we, as a nation, have been asking ourselves since the tragic shooting in Tucson which left six dead, including a […]
Joanna Smith Rakoff in conversation with Alex Shephard Joanna Smith Rakoff’s 2009 debut A Fortunate Age is one of the best novels about being in your twenties in New York City in recent memory. Perhaps more importantly, the novel, which follows five graduates of my and Rakoff’s alma mater, Oberlin College, is about trying to […]
Dan Chaon in conversation with Max Rivlin-Nadler Dan Chaon is the author of two novels and two short-story collections. A National Book Award finalist, his most recent novel, Await Your Reply, was described as “ambitious, gripping and unrelentingly bleak.” Sometimes, Chaon writes about men who like to drink beer and look at fires. Sometimes, Chaon […]
Leslie Jamison in conversation with Max Rivlin-Nadler Leslie Jamison has an MFA from Iowa, is working on a PhD from Yale, and has published a sensitive and complicated novel called The Gin Closet. Her writing has appeared (or shortly will) in The Believer, Vice Magazine, A Public Space, and Black Warrior Review. The paperback version […]
Daniel Radosh in conversation with Alex Shephard While visiting his wife’s family in Kansas in 2005, Daniel Radosh accompanied his sister-in-law to an evangelical Christian rock festival. At one point, one of his sister-in-law’s friends ran up to him and exclaimed, “That was awesome! They prayed like three times in a 20-minute set!” From that […]