Bookworm

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Wells Tower is the most talked-about new story writer to emerge on the literary scene. This conversation focuses on the weird details he uses to illuminate a mostly conventional narrative arc...

Modern Life (Graywolf Press) Like dangerous toys or perilous amusement park rides, Matthea Harvey's poems careen into the unknown...

While we take a mini-tour of Flannery O'Connor's life and writing, biographer Brad Gooch describes his difficulties in gaining access to the author's inner life.

All-American Poem (American Poetry Review)Kate Tufts Discovery Award-winner Matthew Dickman writes emotional and accessible poetry...

Geoff Dyer on the secrets that structure his new novel (which might, on the surface, seem like two novellas)....

Don’t Cry (Pantheon)The extraordinary levels of empathy and sadness in Mary Gaitskill’s new stories provide the basis for this intense discussion of the emotional subtexts of her fiction.

Jacques Roubaud, Ian Monk, Daniel Levin Becker, Marcel Bénabou, Anne F. Garréta and Hervé Le Tellier      When members of the Oulipo convened in New York, Bookworm was there to record this mini-anthology of the transcendentally witty, sometimes hilarious goings-on.

The Loop (Dalkey Archive) Jacques Roubaud describes the mesh of image and memory that makes up his fascinating, newly translated, unclassifiable book.

...on his translation of Pierre Martory's The Landscapist (The Sheep Meadow Press) As John Ashbery remembers his early years in Paris, he reflects on French poetry and about the very special case of his long-time friend, Pierre Martory.

Out of fantasias of the past (Fu Manchu novels, exotic Hollywood films, documents of "friendly" imperialism from the twenties to the forties), Gary Indiana concocts the nightmare present of The Shanghai Gesture..