By Pia Z. Ehrhardt Dean Paschal grew up in a small town in southwest Georgia called Albany. Upon sensing the twilight of his official childhood in the seventh grade, he began to read every children’s book he could get his hands on while they were still, by society’s regard, age-appropriate. He was an indiscriminate reader, … Beyond the light of the jukebox: An interview with Dean Paschal
By Nathan C. Martin Michael J. Lee denies any connection between his work and the Southern Gothic tradition, despite characteristics in his stories that might suggest one. This is not only because he’s originally from California—which disqualifies him in the first place—but because he feels too perpetually unmoored to align with any regionalism. “My time … Michael Jeffrey Lee’s Uncomfortable Gothic: An interview
By Michael Allen Zell Bill Zavatsky is a New York poet who has had two of his own books published since 1975. Why so few? He’s been busy running SUN press and magazine for fifteen years, translating Surrealist poets, teaching, and playing jazz piano. Zavatsky graciously took time to answer a few questions last week … “You publish too much!” An interview with Bill Zavatsky
By Nathan C. Martin Just as Room 220 was getting on its feet about a year ago, another breathtaking development of historical significance was taking place—the Egyptian revolution. One of the very first Room 220 posts was an interview I conducted with Andy Young and Khaled Hegazzi, co-editors of Meena Magazine, a bi-lingual literary journal … I Can’t Discount the Factor of Helplessness: Andy Young’s New Book on Watching the Egyptian Revolution
By Nathan C. Martin Mutual obsession can make strange bedfellows. For Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich, it made a multimedia publishing project. The two professors of English at Loyola University New Orleans share a common infatuation with flight and its cultural and psychological accoutrements. Yakich, an accomplished poet (and previous Room 220 interviewee), possesses a … Travel, security, death, the mundane, strangers, boredom, home, geography: A talk about airports and air travel with Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich
John Jeremiah Sullivan read as part of the final installment of the fall season of the Room 220 Live Prose at the Antenna Gallery reading series on Monday, November 21, 2011. He was joined by author Nathaniel Rich. Sullivan and Rich also read the following evening at Octavia Books. By Nathan C. Martin John Jeremiah … The South Worries About Itself: An interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan
By Taylor Murrow In A Meaning for Wife (Ig Publishing), a man’s wife has died from an allergic reaction to cashews. Coping with her loss and his newfound role as a single dad, he travels to his childhood home to attend his twenty-year high school reunion. While there, he stays with his parents and is … The “Youness” of It: An Interview with Mark Yakich
By Aubrey Edwards Over 90 percent of the roughly 5,000 inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola will die on its grounds, their sentences too long to live out. Warden Burl Cain and prison administrators have responded to the graying population by implementing a hospice program, through which inmates care for those who are … Gravity and Grace: An interview with Lori Waselchuk
Short story aficionado Amy Hempel will judge the 2012 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Fiction Contest (entries due Nov. 15!) and will appear as a participant in the festival, which takes place March 21 – 25. I had the pleasure of interviewing Hempel last year about her editorship of the 2010 New Stories from the South … From the archives: An interview with Amy Hempel, on the occasion of her judging the 2012 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Fiction Contest
By Nathan C. Martin A few weeks ago I posted a flippant comment on Room 220 about how the narrative in Robert Olen Butler’s new novel, A Small Hotel, might in some ways resemble a real-life divorce he had gone through not long ago. Butler called me out on my erroneous post, saying I should … To Learn the Language of Feeling: An Interview with Robert Olen Butler
