INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS Archives

KYLE SEIBEL’S ‘HEY, YOU ASSHOLES’ IS NOT NEAT, BUT IT’S PERFECT: A CONVERSATION by Naya Clark

March 26, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Kyle Seibel is not a veteran writer or a magical realism writer, but he is a veteran and his writing has magical and realistic attributes. He is still breaking into the literary world even though he seems to have a hang of it. He’s witty on a website we used to call Twitter, and can write a hell of a short story. Rarely does he add quotes when his characters are speaking and he doesn’t capitalize his story titles. Seibel is based in Santa Monica and lives with his wife and dog named Snacks—who also has an established internet presence…

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ROSE BOOKS READER VOL 1: GROUP INTERVIEW

March 19, 2025 · Fiction

The Rose Books Reader Vol 1, “Primal Scream,” publishes March 20th, full of “prose that explores characters or narrators somehow on the edge or on the brink, in chrysalis or transition, in various states of emergency or desire, struggling to cope with the realities of our contemporary world in real or surreal ways, with some success or no success at all…” that is “an engagement with emotional extremes or environmental collapse or feelings of bodily entrapment…that is desperate, unhinged, hallucinatory, hormonal. In keeping with Rose Books’ mission—“we believe in taking risks for the sake of beauty[.]’” I asked the contributors…

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STUFF YOUR FACE WITH SCOTT LAUDATI by Scott Laudati

March 11, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

A special offshoot of our Recommends series, where Scott Laudati enjoys the planet’s best foodstuffs and eateries. New York City, 2010. It’s a 24-hour city. Budweisers are $3. We complain about the rent but a one bedroom is $950. Something big is happening every night in Brooklyn. The So So Glos are playing in a loft and our friend Dasha knows the door code. The garment building hasn’t been annexed by Netflix yet, its basement is rented by an old Marxist who calls it “The CCCP Gallery” and Drew is having his art show there tomorrow. And most importantly, pizza,…

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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….

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An Interview with Jeffery Renard Allen by Kenny Meyer

January 23, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

I was introduced to Jeffery Renard Allen’s brilliant short story collection, Fat Time (Greywolf Press, 2023), by Chaya Bhuvaneswar (prize winning author of Dancing Elephants). At the time I was a participant in her short story class. She made a habit of urging me to get out of my reading rut and explore the work of writers from divergent cultural backgrounds. Chaya had plenty of good things to say about Allen’s Fat Time, so I bought a copy. I should explain that I come from the opposite end of the cultural universe from Mr. Allen and the characters he portrays….

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CHARLENE ELSBY RECOMMENDS: Books from the Void

January 21, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Since I went to VoidCon 2023, I’ve pretty much been catching up on the books I acquired there. And the problem only got worse after VoidCon 2024. Organized by Evan Dean Shelton and Edwin Callihan, VoidCon is a curated convention for weird fiction and weird horror, including literature, art and music. Art’s that, like, “wouldn’t it be nice if it found commercial success” but nobody’s expecting it to. The void aesthetic is irreverent and fun while dark and existentially horrid, and militantly encourages the participation of diverse voices on their own terms. So as an artificial way of imposing order…

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AUG STONE RECOMMENDS: Steve Aylett, Kevin Maloney, Madeline Cash, John Patrick Higgins

January 16, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Steve Aylett, The Book Lovers (Snowbooks, 2024) Steve Aylett is back with a new novel that could very well be his best work yet. In The Book Lovers, Aylett’s fireworks are at maximum intensity – dazzling, dizzying, and coming straight at you. Launched from one of the all-time great opening lines – ‘A book is like you and me – glued to a spine and doing its best’ – the text is hilarious, profound, and just a delight to engage with. Almost every sentence is rich, full of meaning, and contains enough avenues of thought to construct a city…

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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…

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David Simmons Recommends: Brian Evenson, Charlene Elsby, Kelby Losack & J David Osborne

January 9, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Brian Evenson, Good Night, Sleep Tight (Coffee House Press, 2024) Brian Evenson is my favorite author of all time so I make it a policy to read whatever he writes. Some of you may already know Evenson as the innovator and pioneer of the this-house-we-just-moved-into-has-more-windows-on-the-outside-than-on-the-inside-so-now-I’m-going-to-burn-it-down-with-my-family-still-inside horror genre. Whether it’s the crime noir-religious cult-horror-mystery Last Days or the schizophrenic-Mormon-fever dream of The Open Curtain, all he drops are bangers. His short story collections are my favorite though. Fugue State and Windeye are two of the best collections I have ever read. So you already know I was too hype to get…

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THE TERROR IS THERE: AN INTERVIEW WITH EMILY COSTA by Kevin M. Kearney

January 7, 2025 · Interviews & Reviews

Emily Costa’s debut story collection GIRL ON GIRL (Rejection Letters, 2024) isn’t a book of horror, at least not in the traditional sense. These stories can be horrifying, sure, and there’s a palpable uneasiness in nearly every chapter, but Costa’s premises are notably banal: girls at an ice cream shop deal with their shitty boss, two moms take their children on a playdate, high schoolers drink warm High Life in a half-empty basement. That’s not to say they’re boring. Costa’s fiction interrogates how those seemingly innocuous interactions are so often charged with aggression and violence—how quickly a welcoming smile can…

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