“For these books to work, the reader needs to play at least some role in the ‘writing’ of them.”

“A lot of times I end up turning on the camera on my computer and playing something out, and pausing it and seeing what tonal or emotional nuances are there that I can work with.”

“I intended The Fugitives to be as close to a zero-research book as possible. I decided that if I couldn’t find something with Google in ten minutes, then I should forget it, or make it up.”

Tom McCarthy could be considered a conceptual artist whose medium is fiction. His Satin Island is just out. Frederic Tuten, the British novelist’s counterpart on this side of the Atlantic, investigates the novel’s dizzyingly diverse sources.

For Lerner, Reines’s poems are “sites for irrational and transpersonal powers.” Reines, in turn, thinks of Lerner’s new novel, 10:04, as “Time Regained retold as The Odyssey in a best of all possible worlds.” Their banter touches on Whitman, poetic address, and “obliviating.”

“Suspension of disbelief seems more immediate in a drawing, which is a direct portal into another world.”

“Yes, I believe in life online, the way a person in 1910 might believe in aviation, or a person in 1455 might believe in movable type: with excitement and apprehension.”

The Isle of Youth, culpable characters, and rewriting the stories of ourselves.

Lingering with a moment, operating in the dark, and moving through membranes.

Writer Zadie Smith and graphic novelist and illustrator Chris Ware spoke at the New York Public Library on December 11, 2012.

Mark Z. Danielewski on the shapes, colors, music, and musicality of literature.

The authors ponder the implication of immersing fiction in place—Chicago in the case of Orner’s new novel Love and Shame and Love—and non-place, as in the hypertext that accompanies La Farge’s new novel, Luminous Airplanes.

In the ambitious stories in Shepard’s latest collection, You Think That’s Bad, psychological insight is derived from the characters’ exposure to extreme duress. Shepard discusses his short stories with fiction writer Christie Hodgen.

Interventions: The Nexus of Art, Fiction, and Authorship: Part II—Tabitha Piseno interviews Callum Innes and Colm Tóibín taking a look at the interconnection of painting and writing, the basis of their water / colour exhibition at Sean Kelly Gallery.

Pulitzer Prize–winner Rae Armantrout on her new book of poetry, Money Shot, and its dealings with value—in life, porn, and capitalism—through an email exchange with poet Ben Lerner.

Since the mid-’70s, Wesley Brown has produced intensely provocative, well-crafted novels and plays in which the lives and characters of African Americans at different points in history are explored. 

To briefly describe Matthew Buckhingham’s work, one could suggest it’s a cross between the films and exhibition design of Charles and Ray Eames and Bruce Nauman’s sculptural video and performance works. 

The Pale of Settlement was once the swath of land designated by Imperial Russia as the only legitimate home of their Jewish population, one they reluctantly inherited after partitioning the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 

Robert Polito speaks with poet Susan Wheeler as her Ledger and Record Palace were about to be published.

Pierre Huyghe, winner of the 2002 Hugo Boss Award, moves freely among different mediums, staging situations that while visually and conceptually complex, allow room for unexpected collaborations, both with other artists and with the viewer.