Street Talk

Caitlin Horrocks

"Making Sense of the World": An interview with Caitlin Horrocks, author of This is Not Your City

12/05/2012

Braddock Avenue Books: Several of the stories in This is Not Your City have international settings and themes. Some stories, like “The Lion’s Gate” feature Americans abroad, but in others, such as “Going to Estonia” and “This is Not Your City,” the protagonists are citizens of foreign countries. This seems brave! How is it you felt comfortable inhabiting the point of view of characters from so many different cultures?

Caitlin Horrocks: The big cheat in both those stories is that the foreign protagonists are still outsiders, in some way.

Robert Peluso

"Dracula at the Door" Braddock Avenue Books co-founder Robert Peluso considers the case for creative responsibility

11/28/2012

Dracula just rang my doorbell. He wasn’t alone. Two tiny princesses, a vampire, and a pint-sized football player were in tow. It’s November 3rd and it’s Halloween. (That’s not a typo.) And when they grow up, these children will be doing their Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving.

Let me back up a little.

Jennifer E. Smith

"The Light Within": Author and editor Jennifer E. Smith talks with Braddock Avenue Books about the work of the novel.

11/14/2012

Braddock Avenue Books: In Statistical Probability, four chapters are devoted to Hadley and Oliver’s plane ride to London. You would think that there would only be so much possibility for action in a situation like that, with the characters—and the setting—confined to such a small place! Did that section pose any particular challenges for you as a writer?

Jennifer E. Smith: Absolutely. When I set out to write the book, I knew I wanted to

Jac Jemc

"With a Keener Eye": Salvatore Pane interviews Jac Jemc, author of My Only Wife.

11/07/2012

Salvatore Pane: My Only Wife is told through a series of short vignettes doled out to the reader in a non-linear order. How did you settle on this format? In my work, I find myself drifting toward chronological A to B to C construction about 90% of the time, and the idea of structuring a novel in this way not only impresses me but terrifies me as well.

Jac Jemc: I started writing the first draft in a non-linear way, compiling memories the narrator has of his wife.

Alissa Nutting

"The Commandeered Body" by Alissa Nutting

10/31/2012

Writing a novel is kind of like submitting to a surgical procedure every single day, with no sense of what the overall effect of these surgeries will accomplish or when, exactly, they will end. When I’m writing each day, I’m just as inaccessible to others as I’d be if I were laid up on an operating table, which some understand and some do not. The other day someone rang my doorbell while I was writing. I began walking down the stairs and saw him through the front glass—someone from a phone company I don’t use. I was incredulous. I’d left my desk, my train of thought, for this?

Joseph Schuster

"The Temptation of Regret": An interview with novelist Joe Schuster

10/24/2012

BAB: It’s clear from the writing in your new novel, The Might Have Been, that you’re a great fan of baseball. Have you had any other, more direct, connection to the game?

JMS: I never played the game in any organized fashion after little league ball (when I was, frankly, not very good) but I have written a lot about it, for local newspapers and magazines in St. Louis, as well as for the old, now sadly departed Sport magazine, for which I freelanced for a time before it closed in 2000.

Michael Kardos

Mystery in the Making: An interview with Michael Kardos, author of The Three-Day Affair

10/16/2012

BAB: The Three-Day Affair is something of a stylistic departure from your story collection, One Last Good Time. Was this a conscious decision on your part?

B.J. Hollars

Lose the Arm, Save the Body: Revising Revision

10/09/2012

It’s the end of the term and I’m trying to teach my creative writing students about revision.

“It’s sort of like...”I begin, though the metaphor soon eludes me. “Or what I mean is,” I retry, “let’s think of it as a...”

I pause once more, dumbfounded by my own inarticulateness.

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