Tag: Craftwork

Craftwork Episode 25: Braided Essays, Collective Solitude, & the Objective Correlative w/ Kasia Van Schaik

Listen to Craftwork Episode 25: Braided Essays, Collective Solitude, & the Objective Correlative w/ Kasia Van Schaik.

In this interview, we chat with Kasia Van Schaik about reverse outlining, asking “what if”, sublimating emotion through landscape, and so much more.  

Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the Giller Prize-nominated story collection We Have Never Lived on Earth and the forthcoming book of memoir and cultural criticism, Women Among Monuments. With Myra Bloom, she is the co-editor of the essay collection, Shelter in Text: Essays on Dwelling and Refuge. Kasia’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, Room, The Rumpus, the Best Canadian Poetry, and the CBC. Kasia holds a PhD in literature from McGill University and is assistant professor of English and co-director of Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Wolastoqiyik territory. 

Books mentioned in this episode:  

  • Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë 
  • The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett  
  • Autobiography of Red — Anne Carson 
  • Boyhood; Youth; Summertime — J. M. Coetzee 
  • Outline; Transit; Kudos — Rachel Cusk 
  • The Days of Abandonment; the Neapolitan Quartet — Elena Ferrante 
  • “The Robber Bridegroom” — Brothers Grimm 
  • Sweet Days of Discipline — Fleur Jaeggy 
  • Lucy — Jamaica Kincaid 
  • Her Body and Other Parties — Carmen Maria Machado 
  • Housekeeping — Marilynne Robinson 
  • Rings of Saturn — W. G. Sebald 
  • Flights — Olga Tokarczuk 
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Craftwork Episode 24: Building Communities, Finding Guardrails, & Reading the Comments Section w/ Jean Marc Ah-Sen

Listen to Craftwork Episode 24: Building Communities, Finding Guardrails, & Reading the Comments Section w/ Jean Marc Ah-Sen.

In this interview, we chat with Jean Marc Ah-Sen about comic books, literary scenes, flipping the script on what a book can be, and so much more. 

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and elsewhere. 

Books mentioned in this episode: 

  • The Fall – Albert Camus 
  • I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp – Richard Hell 
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith 
  • Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi 
  • Biography of X – Catherine Lacey 
  • Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle – Vladimir Nabokov  
  • Anti-Woo: The Lifeman’s Improved Primer for Non-Lovers; The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating – Stephen Potter 
  • Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones – Dee Dee Ramone 
  • Endling – Maria Reva 
  • The Dying Animal – Philip Roth 
  • Striptease – Georges Simenon 
  • The Handyman Method – Andrew Sullivan 
  • Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Time Machine – H. G. Wells 
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Craftwork Episode 23: Dreaming in Fire, Working in Clay, & Reaching for Awe w/ Ramsey Campbell

Listen to Craftwork Episode 23: Dreaming in Fire, Working in Clay, & Reaching for Awe w/ Ramsey Campbell.

In this interview, we chat with Ramsey Campbell about creative instincts, happy accidents, eerie children’s tales, and so much more.

The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”, and the Washington Post sums up his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction”. His awards include the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His latest novels are Fellstones, The Lonely Lands, The Incubations and An Echo of Children. His Brichester Mythos trilogy consists of The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, Just Behind You, Holes for Faces, By the Light of My Skull, Fearful Implications, and a two-volume retrospective roundup (Phantasmagorical Stories) as well as The Village Killings and Other Novellas. His non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably and Ramsey Campbell, Certainly, while Ramsey’s Rambles collects his video reviews, and Six Stooges and Counting is a book-length study of the Three Stooges. Limericks of the Alarming and Phantasmal is a history of horror fiction in the form of fifty limericks.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • The Atrocity Exhibition – J. G. Ballard 
  • Great Short Stories of the World – Barrett H. Clark and Maxim Lieber, eds. 
  • “A Dark-Brown Dog”; The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane 
  • The Man Within – Graham Greene 
  • “The Residence at Whitminster” – M. R. James 
  • Rosemary’s Baby; The Stepford Wives – Ira Levin 
  • Tales of Mean Streets – Arthur Morrison 
  • Lolita; Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov 
  • “The Telltale Heart” – Edgar Allan Poe 
  • At the Foot of the Story Tree: An Inquiry into the Fiction of Peter Straub – Bill Sheehan
  • Ghost Story – Peter Straub
  • The Rupert Bear series – Herbert Tourtel & Mary Tourtel
  • “Afterward” – Edith Wharton 
  • At Night, White Bracken; To Those from Below – Gareth Wood
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Craftwork Episode 22: Tonal Registers, Byzantine Journeys, & Repurposing Research w/ Michael LaPointe

Listen to Craftwork Episode 22: Tonal Registers, Byzantine Journeys, & Repurposing Research w/ Michael LaPointe.

In this interview, we chat with Michael LaPointe about navigating the pipeline between impulse and expression, breaking the genteel picture of literature, finding liberation in failure, and so much more.

Michael LaPointe is the author of The Creep, a novel published by Random House Canada. He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and he was a columnist with The Paris Review. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Essays, and he lives in Toronto.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Affliction; Continental Drift; Rule of the Bone; The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks 
  • Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs 
  • The Adventures of Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi 
  • Bleak House – Charles Dickens 
  • Play it as it Lays – Joan Didion 
  • The Lover – Marguerite Duras 
  • Middlemarch – George Eliot 
  • American Psycho; Less Than Zero; The Shards – Bret Easton Ellis 
  • Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 
  • Bad Behavior; Two Girls, Fat and Thin – Mary Gaitskill 
  • In a Lonely Place – Dorothy B. Hughes 
  • Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata 
  • Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; Sula – Toni Morrison 
  • The Sorrow of War – Bảo Ninh 
  • Inherent Vice – Thomas Pynchon 
  • All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque 
  • Voyage in the Dark – Jean Rhys 
  • Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger 
  • Last Exit to Brooklyn – Hubert Selby Jr.  
  • Alice James: A Biography – Jean Strouse 
  • The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Nelly Ternan And Charles Dickens – Claire Tomalin 
  • Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte 
  • Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton 
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Craftwork Episode 21: Myth, Fetishism, & the Horror of Living in an Allistic World w/ Gemma Files

Listen to Craftwork Episode 21: Myth, Fetishism, & the Horror of Living in an Allistic World w/ Gemma Files.

In this interview, we chat with Gemma Files about horny monsters, Lovecraftian Airbnbs, the female gaze, and so much more.

Previously a film critic, journalist and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She’s best-known for her novel Experimental Film (Open Road Media) and her collections of short fiction, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning In That Endlessness, Our End and Blood From the Air (both from Grimscribe). Her next book, Little Horn: Stories, will be out in October from Shortwave. She is the autistic mother of an autistic son. For fun she sings, and doodles pretty monsters.

Books mentioned in this episode: 

  • Empire of the Sun – J. G. Ballard 
  • D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths; Norse Gods and Giants – Edgar Parin d’Aulaire and Ingri Parin d’Aulaire 
  • Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin 
  • The Rotting Room – Viggy Parr Hampton 
  • Barrowbeck; The Loney; Starve Acre – Andrew Michael Hurley 
  • Bright Dead Star; Zoetrope Bizarre – Caitlín R. Kiernan 
  • The Jungle Book; The Second Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling 
  • The Magician’s Nephew – C. S. Lewis 
  • The Reddening – Adam Nevill 
  • Metamorphoses – Ovid 
  • Cyrano de Bergerac – Edmond Rostand 
  • Frankenstein – Mary Shelley 
  • Dracula – Bram Stoker 
  • A Dark Matter – Peter Straub 
  • The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole 
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Craftwork Episode 19: Ghost Stories, Market Pressures, & Tapping into the Subconscious w/ Naben Ruthnum

Listen to Craftwork Episode 19: Ghost Stories, Market Pressures, & Tapping into the Subconscious w/ Naben Ruthnum.

In this interview, we chat with Naben Ruthnum about character development, avoiding TV-brained writing, making sense of first-reader notes, and so much more.

Naben Ruthnum is a Toronto-based writer of fiction, cultural criticism, film and TV. His novel A Hero of Our Time was released by Penguin Random House and was optioned for development by The Littlefield Company. His books include the YA novel The Grimmer, the World Fantasy Award-nominated horror novella Helpmeet and two thrillers penned as Nathan Ripley, both of which have been optioned for development and were published internationally. He has written for Canadian television series including Murdoch Mysteries and Cardinal. As a feature screenwriter, he’s collaborated with Kris Bertin for feature and TV projects in development at Oddfellows, BoulderLight Pictures, Automatik, Skybound, and Blink49. Kris and Naben’s script Road Test made the 2024 Black List.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
  • The Sorceress in Stained Glass & Other Ghost Stories – Richard Dalby, ed.
  • The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
  • The Black Dahlia; Killer on the Road; L.A. Confidential; My Dark Places – James Ellroy 
  • Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin
  • The James Bond series – Ian Fleming
  • The Collector; The Magus – John Fowles
  • The Green Carnation – Robert Hichens
  • The Americans; The Tragic Muse; The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
  • Supernatural Horror in Literature – H. P. Lovecraft
  • The Beckoning Fair One – Oliver Onions
  • A Fatal Inversion; Master of the Moor – Ruth Rendell
  • Flicker – Theodore Roszak
  • The Tempest – William Shakespeare
  • Ghost Story; If You Could See Me Now; In the Night Room; Koko; The Throat – Peter Straub
  • The Secret History – Donna Tartt
  • A Dark-Adapted Eye; The House of Stairs – Barbara Vine
  • The October Film Haunt – Michael Wehunt
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Craftwork Episode 18: Ekphrasis, Sinuous Sentences, & the Logic of Sound w/ Sarah Bernstein

Listen to Craftwork Episode 18: Ekphrasis, Sinuous Sentences, & the Logic of Sound w/ Sarah Bernstein.

In this interview, we chat with Sarah Bernstein about contemplation, finding time for writing, capturing the rush of language, and so much more.

Sarah Bernstein is the author of two novels, The Coming Bad Days and Study for Obedience, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is from Montreal and lives in the Scottish Highlands.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • Hysteric; Whore – Nelly Arcan
  • Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
  • The Moonstone; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
  • “A Mown Lawn” – Lydia Davis
  • Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
  • The Book of Questions – Edmond Jabès
  • The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery”; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
  • The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
  • The Place of Shells – Mai Ishizawa
  • In the Wake: On Blackness and Being – Christina Sharpe
  • The House Next Door – Anne Rivers Siddons
  • The Door – Magda Szabó
  • Clean – Alia Trabucco Zerán
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Craftwork Episode 17: Worldbuilding, Aha Moments, & Writing for the Stage w/ S. P. Miskowski

Listen to Craftwork Episode 17: Worldbuilding, Aha Moments, & Writing for the Stage w/ S. P. Miskowski.

In this interview, we chat with S. P. Miskowski about Asian horror cinema, the power of grief, the relentless desire to shape the self, and so much more.

S. P. Miskowski is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, for literature and for drama. Her books have been recognized with four Shirley Jackson Award nominations and two Bram Stoker Award nominations. Her stories have appeared in many anthologies including Haunted Nights, Human Monsters, Looming Low I and II, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Uncertainties III, October Dreams 2, The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 10, and Darker Companions: 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, and in magazines including Identity Theory, Black Static, Vastarien, Supernatural Tales, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. Her grunge noir novel I Wish I Was Like You was named This Is Horror Novel of the Year 2017 and is available via Audible. An omnibus of her books set in the weird fictional town of Skillute, WA is forthcoming from Broken Eye Books in 2025.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales – Alfred A. Knopf, pub.
  • The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 – S. A. Cosby, ed.
  • D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths – Ingrid & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
  • Go, Dog. Go! – P. D. Eastman
  • Rock Paper Scissors – Alice Feeney
  • The Haunting of Hill House; “Maybe it Was the Car”; “The Summer People”; We Have Always Lived in the Castle; “The Witch” – Shirley Jackson
  • None of This is True – Lisa Jewell
  • Audition – Ryū Murakami
  • “Bluebeard”; “Cinderella” – Charles Perrault
  • “The Black Cat”; “The Cask of Amontillado” – Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Last Party – A. R. Torre
  • The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 – Lisa Unger, ed.
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Craftwork Episode 15: Character Case Files, Consecution, & the Acoustics of Language w/ Rod Moody-Corbett

Listen to Craftwork Episode 15: Character Case Files, Consecution, & the Acoustics of Language w/ Rod Moody-Corbett.

In this interview, we chat with Rod Moody-Corbett about tonal dissonance, sponging up influences, writing from memory, and so much more.

Rod Moody-Corbett is an award-winning writer from Newfoundland. His writing has appeared in Socrates on the Beach, The Drift, The Paris Review Daily, and Fiddlehead, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2022 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Short Fiction, the University of Calgary’s Kaleidoscope Prize, and the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize (People’s Choice Award). He serves as a contributing editor for Canadian Notes and Queries.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Experience – Martin Amis
  • Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World; The Hundred Brothers; The Verificationist – Donald Antrim
  • Last Evenings on Earth – Roberto Bolaño
  • Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
  • My Education – Susan Choi
  • Underworld – Don DeLillo
  • Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
  • Erasure – Percival Everett
  • Bad Behavior; Because They Wanted To; Don’t Cry – Mary Gaitskill
  • A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me; Jernigan – David Gates
  • Airships – Barry Hannah
  • The Road Through the Wall – Shirley Jackson
  • Get Shorty; Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
  • Last Resort – Andrew Lipstein
  • The Sentence is a Lonely Place – Garielle Lutz
  • Moby Dick – Herman Melville
  • The Ice Storm – Rick Moody
  • Lectures on Literature – Vladimir Nabokov
  • A House for Mr. Biswas – V. S. Naipaul
  • Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas; Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family – Nicholas Pileggi
  • Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson
  • The Life of the Mind – Christine Smallwood
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
  • The Visiting Privilege – Joy Williams
  • To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
  • Sour Heart – Jenny Zhang
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Craftwork Episode 14: Debauchery, Plotless Fiction, & the Paranoiac-Critical Method w/ Nour Abi-Nakhoul

Listen to Craftwork Episode 14: Debauchery, Plotless Fiction, & the Paranoiac-Critical Method w/ Nour Abi-Nakhoul.

In this interview, we chat with Nour Abi-Nakhoul about copy editing, creative nonfiction, feverish creations, and so much more.

Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a writer and editor based in Montreal. She is the editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly Maisonneuve Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt and The Walrus. Her debut novel, Supplication, was released by Penguin Random House in 2024.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Kilworthy Tanner – Jean Marc Ah-Sen
  • We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe
  • Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
  • The Guest – Emma Cline
  • The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Autobiography of X; Pew – Catherine Lacey
  • The Apple in the Dark – Clarice Lispector
  • Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
  • The Adventures of Ratman – Ellen Weiss
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