Interviews & Reviews

ROBERT KLOSS on film with Rebecca Gransden

January 11, 2022

Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing? A lot of my writing is me trying to translate aspects of film to my work. Various shots, sounds, atmosphere. Using film as a basis, rather than say using reality as a basis, or other books as a basis, means starting with another artist’s aestheticized version of the world. What I see in my mind when writing then is framed, lighted, shot, so on, like certain scenes or moments from films I admire. Then I try to translate it. The silences, black and white faces, gusting wind of

SCHOOL OF HARD KNOX: A Conversation with DuVay Knox by Charlene Elsby

December 30, 2021

DuVay Knox is the author of Soul Collector (Creative Onion, 2021) and The Pussy Detective (Clash Books, forthcoming 2022). In his author bio, he writes, “I cum outta The South, by way of Louisiana and Tennessee… RUMOR has it I was born from The last Nut in My Daddys Sack. And came into this world when HE came. Needless to say/My Birth was Traumatic. Thus, I arrived here with an Attitude. The Doctor Slapped Me and I slapped Him Back. And So my Journey began. To Find Myself.” I received an advance copy of The Pussy Detective from Clash Books.

SEAN KILPATRICK on film with Rebecca Gransden

December 28, 2021

What film, or films, made a deep impression on you as a youth? Which films felt transgressive back then? Were you secretive about watching them? Would you say any of these films defined your formative years? Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing? By some superannuated lapse in parental bargaining, a ten-year-old-me was allowed to view Reservoir Dogs and Menace II Society. Using an online source, I’d already printed both scripts on half-pages with a nineties printer. One particularly sadistic week of basketball camp and I felt nowhere ingratiated with the world outside my VHS

Whose Presence Joined With Ours Will Create Something Novel; A Review of Adam Soldofsky’s TELEPAPHONE by Evan Williams

December 23, 2021

Take any version of the movie Freaky Friday. Now imagine it remade as a film noir. Now imagine it was written by Marshall McLuhan. Now imagine it isn’t afraid to lean into the philosophical implications a body swap has on the nature of selfhood. Congratulations, you’ve got Adam Soldofsky’s Telepaphone. My first impulse upon reading the title was to rummage through my shelves for Mag Gabbert’s MINML POEMS, a book taking the torch of condensed wordplay from Aram Saroyan. The word “telepaphone” feels like it might fit in among Gabbert’s poems, sandwiched somewhere between “anammal” and “implocean.” While reading MINML

B.R. YEAGER on film with Rebecca Gransden

December 14, 2021

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you? The first films I truly loved were incredibly basic, because I was a kid. And I was a blockbuster kid. I was obsessed with Aliens, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc. And I still love those movies, even though they’ve long been replaced as my favorites. But I think the biggest mark they left on me was a love of grandiose scope and spectacle. There’s plenty to critique about those films with regard to emotional or intellectual complexity, but in terms of presenting a spectacular, grandiose vision they’re pretty impeccable.

JULIET ESCORIA on film with Rebecca Gransden

November 30, 2021

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you? I remember watching Beetlejuice over and over as a kid. I got nightmares from things that kids aren’t supposed to get nightmares from, like The Care Bears movie, but for some reason this movie didn’t bother me? Explains my goth roots. What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up? I wasn’t allowed to watch rated R movies for a long time (except my parents did let me watch The Shining and The Exorcist in junior high). When Pulp

DERICK DUPRÉ on film with Rebecca Gransden

November 23, 2021

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you? The first movie I bought that didn’t suck was Godard’s Breathless. I was eighteen and deeply into Joan of Arc and other stuff from the Kinsellaverse. I’d read somewhere that they were inspired by his work, so I thought I’d check him out. I went to a nearby Borders and browsed the racks. It was a crappy old edition where the special features were like, “Scene Access” and “Interactive Menus.” I loved it. Then I had the age 18-20 insufferably-into-Godard phase. I remember sort of bragging to my parents’

MICHAEL SEYMOUR BLAKE on film with Rebecca Gransden

November 16, 2021

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you? Hi. I’m overwhelmed with the amount of responses I have to almost all of these questions. I’m terrible with stuff like dates and technical details etc. and I forget important chunks of information all the time, only to blurt things out weeks later during a conversation with an unrelated person who is probably in the middle of talking about their day. In other words, I will forget to mention movies that live in my heart. I will forget super critical moments. I’m gonna answer this stuff with whatever randomly

I WAS SO READY TO BE ENDURED: A REVIEW OF LAURA THEOBALD’S SALAD DAYS by Evan Williams

November 9, 2021

Laura Theobald opens her new collection Salad Days with an epigraph from Antony and Cleopatra. Fitting. This book is an acerbic wedding, rejoicing in the union of our worst impulses and their natural consequences. Everyone is dressed to celebrate, except we’re alone. So, so alone. To be forthright, I had no idea what to make of Salad Days initially. I read the epigraph and thought, “Ah, destructive love, imperial curiosity.” I read the index, where I found the book split into seven spectacularly-titled sections: Waves of Confusion, Art for the Afterlife, Moon Unit, Future Moods, Double Fantasy, Sour Times, and

AUTUMN CHRISTIAN on film with REBECCA GRANSDEN

November 2, 2021

Quiet like a bomb waiting for its lit fuse, Autumn Christian has steadily accrued a series of intrepid releases. Nominally designed to satisfy certain genre cravings, Christian’s writing transcends any label simply by being uncommonly good. Her work is strange and provocative, endlessly imaginative, full-blown addicted to ideas, and fearless. For any insight into a mind this committed to creative freedom, the natural starting point is to visit the environment Christian grew up in. ‘I was born in Oklahoma City, but my parents moved to Fort Worth when I was a toddler so my dad could pursue a career in