December 29, 2011
On translation: Anna Moschovakis on the adjective
The end of the year seems a time for note-making: what one had meant to do, what one definitely will do in the new year. In that spirit today I […]
December 15, 2011
“The US war in Iraq declared officially over”
So reads the headlines in today’s New York Times and it’s hard to know how to understand this day, how to overlay its terrible chronology onto the chronology of one’s […]
December 10, 2011
Fiction and the family
The fall 2011 issue of KROnline included Jensen Beach’s review of Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang. In Beach’s words, this is a book that “tells a multifaceted story about family, […]
November 23, 2011
A writer’s dictionary by Anne Germanacos
According to the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Anne Germanacos’s In the Time of the Girls showcases a series of short stories in which the sharp glimmer of each tale’s tiny […]
November 17, 2011
When a village is surrounded on all sides by fire: An interview with Daniel Khalastchi
Daniel Khalastchi is the author of Manoleria (Tupelo Press, 2011), and his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals including MAKE Magazine; 1913: A Journal […]
October 15, 2011
The music precedes the meaning: An interview with Joseph Cardinale
The latest issue of the Kenyon Review Online included my review of Joseph Cardinale’s debut, The Size of the Universe (FC2, 2010). To follow up on everything this book got […]
October 10, 2011
On craft: An interview with Sunetra Gupta
Sunetra Gupta is the author of five novels, most recently So Good in Black. Her novels have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, shortlisted for […]
September 25, 2011
Ripped from the headlines: international fiction and its discontents
In January 2010 the New Yorker published a feature by Claudia Roth Pierpont on contemporary Arabic novels in translation. As a publisher, I welcomed the article, since it mentioned several novels published […]
September 16, 2011
Not where to get an MFA, but what’s for dinner: On Joy Williams’ “Ill Nature”
This past week has brought an extensive conversation on MFA programs and the rankings thereof, with thoughtful, wise contributions from many (including Jake Adam York here on the KR blog). […]
September 8, 2011
“Sentences are not emotional but paragraphs are”: On Mathias Enard’s Zone
I’m going to continue my trend from last week of leading with a quote from Stein (and why not, she is so beautifully quotable). This particular sentence is from her […]
September 3, 2011
“Somebody being dead and how it moves along”
Weston Cutter’s recent interview with George Pelacanos has got me thinking about detective fiction. I recently moved to a new city, and last week went to my new local independent […]
August 23, 2011
“The thing gleams from inside the book”: A conversation/dictionary with Rachel Glaser
One of this summer’s great pleasures was reading Rachel Glaser’s commanding and audacious debut, Pee On Water (from Publishing Genius). Glaser’s stories are bold and wild and singular–in the words […]