Interview

The author of Eat Your Mind, the first full-scale authorized biography of Kathy Acker, on renewed relevance and creative capaciousness.

John Irving on trans heroes, the nature of ghosts, and a career as a worst-case scenario guy.

The author of The Tiger and the Cage on writing about her hysterectomy, the absurdities of medical metaphor, and the illness narratives that liberate and limit us.

The author of I Fear My Pain Interests You on inevitable doom, writing through absence, and cows. 

The author of Making Love with the Land on transforming pain into love, entering as a guest into the recesses of literature, and birthing a body of text from a body of experience.

The author of The School of Mirrors on sexual violence, the history of midwifery, and opening up archival silences. 

Talking to the author of Pure Life about brand names as verbal death, distrusting omniscience in fiction, and elite semicolon use.

The author of What We Both Know on literary scenes, abusive relationships, and weary characters. 

The author of How the Word is Passed on writing through the lens of fatherhood, reckoning with the past and confronting difficult histories, and the beauty that can rise from pain.