I invited Sofia Samatar to come to UT’s “Symposium for African Writers” but I never asked her if she thought of herself as an African writer. In this interview, she…
Archive for 2014
Interview: Tope Folarin
Before Tope Folarin won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing, it might not have been completely clear that he was an African writer. His parents are Nigerian, of course,…
Interview: Miral al-Tahawy
It’s hard to talk about a writer like Miral al-Tahawy without falling into stale clichés. To “read” an Arab writer through how she does or does not cover, to “discover”…
Melancholy Transcendence: Ted Chiang and Asian American Postracial Form
Christopher T. Fan
Interview: Laila Lalami
When I interviewed Laila Lalami a few weeks ago, we talked quite a lot about critics and readers. This was probably my fault. Her new novel, The Moor’s Account, is…
“African Writers in a New World”: An Introduction
Interviews Curated by Aaron Bady
Interview: Maaza Mengiste
In the first interview for this series, the novelist Maaza Mengiste spoke with me from New York City, on the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11. We discussed her acclaimed first novel, Beneath…
“Destroying” the Text to Create the Poem
Genevieve Kaplan
Weepies, Women, and The Fault In Our Stars
Jill Richards