Author | Critic
What do you desire from the natural world? For millions of years, we’ve been shaped and reshaped by the environment around us. If technology has the power to mimic lush lands and blue waters, how do we bond if we can’t tell what is real or not—or worse, does it even matter? In this issue, we journey through galaxies where love knows no bounds, nature that heals, wild hearts to be untamed, plants that lust.
Read Augur 8.3.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Listen to Craftwork Episode 20: Girlhood, Defamiliarization, & Poetic Excavation w/ Emily Banks.
In this interview, we chat with Emily Banks about posthumous publications, linguistic allergies, the atomic nuts and bolts of imagery, and so much more.
Emily Banks is the author of Mother Water (Lynx House Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Plume, Copper Nickel, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, CutBank, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She publishes scholarship on American gothic literature, runs The Shirley Jackson Society, and is currently editing The Oxford Handbook of Shirley Jackson. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from Emory University. She lives in Indianapolis and teaches at Franklin College.
Books, poems, and stories mentioned in this episode:
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:
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:
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:
Mike Thorn 