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Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue: Going Astray

Paige Cohen
Features
5 min read
" I like the oddness of historical events; they're messier and therefore more startling than whatever I would invent." Celebrated author Emma Donoghue spoke with the Lambda Literary Review about her new collection, Astray, her personal writing process, and how her own travel experiences have affected her most recent work. Read More

Chris Kraus: Summer of Hate

Bradford Nordeen
FeaturesInterviews
16 min read
"I was writing art essays, doing my job, but the concerns of high culture in circulation then had nothing to do with what was going on in the world. And this was very disturbing to me. To just continue what I was doing felt very collusive and weird." The spirited iconoclast, novelist, art critic, and publisher Chris Kraus talked with Lambda Literary about her new novel, Summer of Hate, her involvement with publishing imprint Semiotext(e), and a recent foray into curatorial practice. Read More

Dale Peck: Lost and Found

Dan Lopez
FeaturesInterviews
10 min read
With the publication of The Garden of Lost & Found, Dale Peck comes one step closer to completing the five-novel cycle he conceived of in the mid-90s. Drawing inspiration from a familiar cast of characters as well as his adopted home town of New York City, Peck delivers a novel that explores family, sexuality, AIDS, and the resiliency of the city. The prolific novelist and sometimes critic chatted with Lambda Literary about his career, his latest novel's long road to publication, and the evolving face of publishing in the twenty-first century. Read More

From Figs to Oranges: Madeline Miller on ‘The Song of Achilles’

Heather Seggel
FeaturesInterviews
6 min read
Madeline Miller immersed herself in the world and words of Homer's Iliad for ten years, finding a love story nested among the gods and monsters in the Trojan War. The Song of Achilles garnered fabulous reviews and went on to win England's prestigious Orange Prize. Miller took time to answer a few burning questions on the eve of the book's paperback release. Read More

Lisa Cohen: Style, History, and Sexuality

Courtney Gillette
FeaturesInterviews
11 min read
Sometimes a writer does not choose their subject--their subject chooses them. Such could be said about Lisa Cohen’s stunning biography All We Know, a triptych portrait of three women, all part of a lively sapphic social circle in the early 20th century. Cohen took time to talk to with Lambda about the path of her research, the negotiation between fact and fantasy, and the great Sybille Bedford, who provided both invaluable stories and friendship. Read More

Chana Wilson: The Power and Fury of the Past

Karen Schechner
FeaturesInterviews
8 min read
"...In Greenwich Village, we’d go dancing in lesbian bars, to raucous dyke parties heavy with pot smoke, and to poetry and music events at the women’s coffee house." Chana Wilson and her mother were both rescued from the claustrophobic 50s by the Second-wave feminist movement of the 70s. In Wilson’s Riding Fury Home (Seal Press), she writes an inspired account of how the burgeoning revolution directly and radically changed her and her mother’s lives. Read More

Carter Sickels: Honesty, Compassion, and Grace

Cooper Lee Bombardier
FeaturesInterviews
13 min read
"You rarely see gay characters who are living in rural areas in contemporary fiction. Not all queers want to live in cities. People stay in small towns for different reasons, but sometimes they stay because this is home, because they love the land, they feel this deep connection." Author Carter Sickels took some time to talk with Lambda about his debut novel, The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), his writing process, tenderness between men, and coming out as trans. Read More

John Irving: Sexuality, Empathy, and Humanity

Frederick McKindra
FeaturesInterviews
21 min read
"There’s no question that I’ve always identified with a wide range of sexual desires." By now, John Irving trusts his audience to suspend its recognition of his set pieces—something like a regional stage director presenting a re-purposed backdrop. In his latest novel, In One Person, those mainstays —an absentee father, wrestling mats, “sexual outsiders”— are transformed through a shift in point of view and tone (less darkly comic, more serious). Moreover, this time out, someone in Irving’s world fesses up to harboring bisexual desires. Read More