J.D. Connor
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Contemporaries Essays

Contemporaries Essays
Interview: Teju Cole
For all the critical acclaim his novels have received—and deserve—I suspect that more readers know Teju Cole through his writing on the Internet than have read Open City or Every…

Contemporaries Essays
Interview: Sofia Samatar
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…

Contemporaries Essays
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,…

Contemporaries Essays
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”…