Interview: Sarah Yahm
There are few subjects that demand more courage like illness does; not just to endure it, but to write about it with clarity and truth. To write on illnesses is therefore to not only capture the slow, intimate undoing…
Tag: Debut Novel
Hybrid Interview: Afabwaje Kurian
Essay by Anna Polonyi • What does it mean to revise a novel? I’ve been doggedly asking this question ever since attending workshop beside Afabwaje Kurian, whose stunningly written debut novel, Before the Mango Ripens, was released on September…
Interview: Janet Goldberg
At her Berkeley kitchen table, Janet Goldberg runs her finger over mapped roads in the Sierras that lead to a region she has hiked for decades, terrain that forms the backdrop of her debut novel, The Proprietor’s Song. The…
Conversations Between Friends: Kate Brody and Nishita Parekh
Kate Brody and Nishita Parekh are debut authors who met on Instagram. They both released their first thrillers in January 2024 and have crossed paths in virtual events like the Penguin Random House Debut Mystery Panel. In the months…
Interview: Nick Fuller Googins
Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novel The Great Transition. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine and works…
Interview: Nancy Agabian
Set alternately in Yerevan, Armenia, and Queens, New York, Nancy Agabian’s novel The Fear of Large and Small Nations is a beautifully crafted interweaving of third-person storytelling with first-person metawriting and journaling. The main character is Na, a young…
Interview: Brittany Ackerman
I found Brittany Ackerman’s piece “Mia’s Birthday” in Forever Magazine in the summer of 2021, in the midst of an intolerably painful breakup for which I was wholly to blame. Asked to write an introduction for our conversation, I…
Interview: Maisy Card
CRAFT is ever grateful to award-winning debut novelist Maisy Card, who served as this year’s guest judge for our 2022 First Chapters Contest. Maisy has chosen the three winning excerpts, which will be featured this month, starting tomorrow. To…
Conversations Between Friends: Coco Picard and Sue Mell
Consider the personal effects one leaves behind, the way those objects, once laid out, recall the idiosyncratic logic of a life—is there more compelling inspiration for a novel? Authors Coco Picard and Sue Mell met through the BookEnds SUNY…
Conversations Between Friends: Suzanne Roberts and Al Landwehr
In 1992, when I was twenty-two and nearing graduation with a degree in biology, I somehow talked my advisor into letting me replace technical writing with a course in fiction to fulfill my requirements. That’s how I met Al…