Rebecca Gransden Archives

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…

Robin Zlotnick

THE SURRENDER OF MAN: A CONVERSATION WITH NAOMI FALK by Rebecca Gransden

October 8, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

With The Surrender of Man (Inside the Castle, 2025), Naomi Falk examines twenty works of art, using each as both touchstone and springboard for scrutiny of modernity. An exhibition of the psychic space inhabited by the intersection of time, memory and art itself, the book unravels as a stream of commingling impulses. Falk’s often febrile interrogations display a hunger to get to grips with the interior world as it probes contemporary existence. At times raw, inspirited, raging, and contemplative, the volume acts as a catalyst for the author’s questioning nature, and stridently asks what the hell is art for anyway?…

Robin Zlotnick

NEAR-MISS IN A STRANGE LAND: A CONVERSATION WITH SIENNA LIU by Rebecca Gransden

September 5, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Sienna Liu’s Specimen (Split/Lip Press, 2025) seeks to articulate the ineffable facets of desire. A fragmentary and lyrical hindsight finds lovers in an entanglement as fragile as it is seemingly unwise. Not only an interrogation of memoir, of the compulsion to write other people onto the page, but a probing commentary on the price and rewards of setting out on such a task. When we look back, what do we ask of those who reach out in memory? I spoke to the author about this plaintive and dissecting book. Rebecca Gransden: When did you set out upon writing Specimen? What…

Robin Zlotnick

HITTING THE BOARDWALK AND THE BEAT: AN INTERVIEW WITH JESSAMYN VIOLET by Rebecca Gransden

June 27, 2025 · Fiction

These actors are cracked. Out from under techno-creep overseers rise the rejects, the dropouts, and the freaks. A counterculture funhouse, home to strung out hedonists, underground musicians, magic practitioners, and those just looking for the next party. With Venice Peach (Maudlin House, 2025), Jessamyn Violet creates an alternate reality that seems too wild a proposition and yet right around an interdimensional corner. Politics and show business intermingle in new and strange ways, as LA’s free spirits are put to the test. I spoke to Jessamyn about this unruly book. Rebecca Gransden: Step right up here, Pop Stars and Punkers……

Robin Zlotnick

NEW WAVES AND NOWHERE ROADS: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRANDON TEIGLAND by Rebecca Gransden

June 20, 2025 · Fiction

With the short fiction collection My Child is a Stranger (AOS, 2025) Brandon Teigland offers a close reading of possible futures. Teigland’s exploratory voracity lays the groundwork for an examination of impulse, whether towards the limits of art or the human. The realm of theory has to live in our very real, fleshy heads, at least for now, but what happens when assumptions break down? I spoke to Brandon about this questing and interrogative collection. Rebecca Gransden: How long has the compilation of My Child is a Stranger taken you? What was the process of choosing the stories for…

Robin Zlotnick

WHISPERING GALLERY: AN INTERVIEW WITH WILL CORDEIRO by Rebecca Gransden

May 28, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Will Cordeiro’s fiction unfurls a kindly finger and beckons you to follow an uncommon path. As you tramp along seldom visited trails, your mind wanders as much as your feet. You arrive at the peculiar, the disquieting and the mysterious, without a clue how you got there or even if you want to leave. With Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024), Cordeiro invites entry to an off-kilter world, where those who disappear into the mist entrust their steps to the uncertain ground beneath them. I spoke to the author about this curious collection. Rebecca Gransden: Some people claim that time isn’t…

Robin Zlotnick

SIGNAL ISSUES AND FUZZY SNIPPETS: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHASE GRIFFIN by Rebecca Gransden

May 13, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Chase Griffin’s alchemical style continues with Peter Zoidoid & the Commonplace (Corona/Samizdat, 2026). At once a fanciful record of an unfathomable mind and experiment in merriment, the book is unabashed with its lingual adventurousness. When life gives you strange frequencies it’s time to whistle your own tune. Griffin is a psychedelic jester, and, as is common to that type, also the smartest guy in the room. I spoke to him about the book. Rebecca Gransden: Where there are gaps in this text, there are gaps in my life. I was only able to write this introductory material after an…

Robin Zlotnick

DREAMS OF EXURBIA: AN INTERVIEW WITH DONOVAN REYES by Rebecca Gransden

May 6, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Donovan Reyes’s domain is that of the illuminated store, the lonely places on the outskirts of town, the back rooms of an America in thrall to the failure of its own myth. With denouement (Anxiety Press, 2025) Reyes envisions a peripatetic slumberland, surroundings subject to abstruse moods. Nowhere addicts succumb to an anaesthetised pulse, ensnared by the numb rhythms of a society gone ill on its symptoms. I spoke to Donovan about the book. Rebecca Gransden: Simple place to start, where did denouement begin? It strikes me as a piece that has a lifetime’s worth of backstory and experience…

Robin Zlotnick

YIELDING AS GLASS YIELDS TO FIRE: AN INTERVIEW WITH MANDIRA PATTNAIK by Rebecca Gransden

February 4, 2025 · Fiction

Shifting states. The novel-in-flash Glass/Fire (Querencia Press, 2024) exhibits the unfolding travails of girlhood, a reality adorned in rich contradiction and symbolism. Mandira Pattnaik’s sumptuous language carries forth a deep and sensuous meditation on life’s volatility. The wildness of nature’s forces at their most capricious lend an elemental intensity to fate. A dynamic and revealing exploration of growth, I talked to the author about the book. Rebecca Gransden: In the mood we were in, fire could be liquid, could be sand, or molten like lava, or flames, licking the last of us. You open the book with the above line….

Robin Zlotnick

THE HAUNTED MEMORY OF A DEAD PLACE: An Interview with Derek Fisher by Rebecca Gransden

January 14, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Is there something up with modern dread? Derek Fisher’s enigmatic collection Container (With an X Books, 2024) strokes the lid of contemporary malaise, and teases the release on stories that simmer like a broiling pressure cooker. This is writing cast adrift on strange currents, Fisher’s domain that of diseased architecture, where dark impulses meet bad vibes. I talked to Derek about this unsettling and dynamic collection. Rebecca Gransden: When did you write your first short story? Has your approach to the short story form evolved over time? Derek Fisher: Yooo. Hi Rebecca, my fellow Lizard Brain! My first short…

Robin Zlotnick

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