INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS Archives

IT’S ALL IN THE EDIT: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHELSEA SUTTON by Rebecca Gransden

February 10, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

Chelsea Sutton’s rollicking novella Krackle’s Last Movie (Split/Lip Press, 2026) deals in magic and monsters. The mythology of horror icons meets the world of the film documentarian, in a whimsical ride full of frisky humour and spooky glamour. At its ghoulish heart the tale is a quest—a resolution residing somewhere within old videotapes and archived audio cassettes. I spoke to Chelsea about the book. Rebecca Gransden: Travelling back in time, what is the first monster you remember? When did monsters enter your life? Chelsea Sutton: Monsters very clearly entered during The X-Files era of my life — which was…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

“HONEST BLURBS FOR DAMN GOOD INDIE BOOKS I DID NOT BLURB.” – David Scott Hay Recommends

February 5, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

I read. I write. Sadly, I’ve learned over the years that I am an awful reviewer. I can converse about books, but when I set out to write about them, the critique part of my brain devolves into grunts and hoots. Any intelligible attempt at an academic critique finds my original thoughts replaced by clichés and tropes. The same for my emails (all subject to endless drafts and restructuring). But not today, Satan. Today, I blurb. I can blurb. That I can do. Hence the style of this column. Warning, all books are praised. A few, more than you think…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

IT’S KINDA PUNK ROCK TO WRITE ABOUT JOY: AN INTERVIEW WITH AARON BURCH by Kirsti MacKenzie

February 3, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

Part of the fun of being a writer, and learning from other writers, is seeing what others leave of themselves on the page. To follow their work and discover their signature—the intangible that makes someone’s writing so intensely theirs that there is no mistaking it for being anyone else. There’s no mistaking Aaron Burch on the page. Tacoma (out with Autofocus Books) has all the hallmarks of a Burch book—nostalgia, magic, fun, optimism, friendship, and more heart than almost any other writer doing it today. As writers, we’re often taught that characters should grow through hardship, conflict, and struggle. Tacoma…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

Samuel M. Moss Interviewed by Perry Ruhland

January 22, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

In Samuel M. Moss’ debut novel The Veldt Institute (Double Negative Press, 2025), anonymous patients seek the cure for their own ineffable malady. Their treatment is conducted on the grounds of the titular institute, some strange cross between an abbey and a sanatorium, where their philosopher-doctors prescribe a wide range of strange and specific activities. Reading this great book, and particularly the accounts of these treatments, prompted me to take long walks, sit by the lake, and stare at my ceiling. I asked Samuel M. Moss about some of the practices behind the cures. Perry Ruhland: One of the…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

YOU MAY APPLAUD NOW: JOSEPH COWARD ON ‘JESUS CHRIST KINSKI’ BY BENJAMIN MYERS

January 20, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

Klaus Nakszynski was born in Germany in 1926, and within a few short decades became everything from Nazi conscript, to piss-drinking mental patient, to one of the most prolific and notorious stage-screen presences of the twentieth century. Despite everything he was as an actor, Kinski (excising sections of his name after returning to Germany from a Colchester POW camp) became better known for his psychopathic behaviours both at work and recreationally. He screamed at Werner Herzog for an hour and a half over a cold cup of coffee; he once stalked one of his psychiatric nurses for three days before…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

FOLLOWING THE THREADS: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN HASKELL by Rebecca Gransden

January 14, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

How to move. John Haskell’s Trying to Be (Fiction Collective Two, 2025) plots the potentials in life by means of undefinable and expressively changeable essays. Always shifting, the collection weaves around the central conundrums of existence, and in so doing implicates itself in this unceasing mystery. At once a humane interrogation of headspace and exploration in what it means to pass through the world as a physical being, Haskell’s work teems with the presence of the engaged observer, caught in the maelstrom we sometimes call reality. I spoke with John about this slippery and enigmatic book. Rebecca Gransden: You…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

MEMOIRS IN THE MORAL MUD: DAVID LEBRUN AND JOSHUA MOHR TALK SHOP

December 30, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

My debut memoir, Delirium Vitae (Tortoise Books, 2025), recounts five months of hitchhiking and street busking I did from Costa Rica to Phoenix Arizona, in 2001, when I was broke and struggling with addiction and mental health issues. In 2020, I was halfway through editing my memoir, when the pandemic left me happily unemployed. I read Joshua Mohr’s Sirens and discovered he offered editorial service through his Decant Editorial. We worked hard on my manuscript for three months, but what stuck with me most was his encouragement and certainty that the book would find a publisher. Four years later, when…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

STUFF YOUR FACE WITH SCOTT LAUDATI by Scott Laudati

December 9, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

A special offshoot of our Recommends series, where Scott Laudati enjoys the planet’s best foodstuffs and eateries. The Title Fight: Frank Pepe’s VS. Sally’s. New Haven, CT Once upon a time, back in the closed society that was 1990’s Staten Island, there was a wholesome order. Our fathers grew up in our houses before us and so we ate the same pizza on Friday nights they’d always eaten, because we were still Catholics then, and we didn’t consume meat on Fridays to honor Jesus’ sacrifice of his own flesh. You knew your local pizza guys by name, and if…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR A COGNITIVE EMPATHY BROADCAST: AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL RIEDL FROM BLOOD INCANTATION by Chris Kelso

December 3, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Music is the shorthand of emotion. There is something intrinsic to the structure of it – with its overtures, rising crescendos, and authentic cadences – which seem to mirror our temporal patterns so effectively. Ethnomusicologists have divided the empathic processes of listening to (and creating) music into two categories – low-level emotional contagion (the unconscious mimicry of nonverbal cues that leads to synchronised emotional states) and high-level affective empathy (the ability to share in the emotions of other). Often the former ‘low-level’ state is achieved through listening to catchy pop music, or music which feeds the brain’s natural desire to…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

FAULKNER DIDN’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT TEMPORAL INCONSISTENCIES, SO WHY SHOULD I?: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN WADDY BULLION by Kirsti MacKenzie

November 21, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

John Waddy Bullion is as versatile a writer as they come. His loosely-linked collection This World Will Never Run Out of Strangers follows coming-of-age tales of Midwestern sons and the fraught relationships they have with role models: fathers, grandfathers, uncles, peers, sports heroes. It’s also a showcase of Bullion at his best: forever balancing humor with pathos, mastering pop culture and sports references, commanding attention from first page to last. It’s a collection that’s quick to devour and demands re-reading; Cowboy Jamboree Press was smart to pick it up, and you can grab your copy here. Ahead of its November…

admin7EyZHDb8HNC8btr3

12 3…11 Next »