Tag: writing techniques

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 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 16: Dream Journals, Imaginary Conversations, & Work-Life Balance w/ Fawn Parker

Listen to Craftwork Episode 16: Dream Journals, Imaginary Conversations, & Work-Life Balance w/ Fawn Parker.

In this interview, we chat with Fawn Parker about showing the reader around the room, finding the right tense, protecting your writing time, and so much more.

Fawn Parker is the author of five books including novels What We Both Know (M&S), nominated for the Giller Prize and Hi, It’s Me (M&S), nominated for the Writer’s Trust Atwood Gibson Prize, and the poetry collection Soft Inheritance, which was awarded the JM Abraham Atlantic Book Award and the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Her work has been published in The Walrus, Hazlitt, Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Fawn is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick and the Poet Laureate of Fredericton.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood
  • The Mountain and the Valley – Ernest Buckler
  • Libra – Don DeLillo
  • The Guest – Emma Cline
  • Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
  • “Experience” – Tessa Hadley
  • Ulysses – James Joyce
  • Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte
  • This All Happened – Michael Winter
  • How Fiction Works – James Wood
  • Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
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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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Craftwork S1E8: Obsession, Transgression, & the Library of Gestures w/ Maryse Meijer

Listen to Craftwork S1E8: Obsession, Transgression, & the Library of Gestures w/ Maryse Meijer.

In this interview, we chat with Maryse Meijer about metaphor, quotation marks, the dubious necessity of author photos, and so much more.

Maryse Meijer is the author of Heartbreaker, Rag, Northwood, and The Seventh Mansion. She lives in Chicago.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • Samuel Beckett: A Biography – Deirdre Bair
  • Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
  • About Schmidt – Louis Begley
  • Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson
  • New Grub Street – George Gissing
  • The Children of the Dead; Greed; The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
  • Pet Sematary – Stephen King
  • Bad Brains; The Cipher; Kink; Skin; Strange Angels – Kathe Koja
  • The Communicating Vessels – Friederike Mayröcker 
  • All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
  • Hurricane Season; Paradais – Fernanda Melchor
  • The Defense; Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
  • Black Water; Blonde; Heat; My Sister, My Love; “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”; Zombie – Joyce Carol Oates
  • With the Animals – Noëlle Revaz
  • Snake Eyes – Rosamond Smith
  • The Custom of the Country – Edith Wharton

Author Photo Credit: Lewis McVey

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Craftwork S1E6: False Epiphanies, Productivity, & Existential Dread w/ Niall Howell

Listen to Craftwork Episode 6: False Epiphanies, Productivity, & Existential Dread w/ Niall Howell.

In this interview, Niall Howell talks about crime fiction, creative spontaneity, the magic of public swimming pools (soggy donuts!), and so much more.

Niall Howell lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife, sons, and pets. His debut noir novel Only Pretty Damned was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. His follow-up novel, There Are Wolves Here Too, was shortlisted by the Book Publisher’s Association of Alberta for Mystery and Thriller book of the year. Niall’s short fiction has been featured in The Feathertale Review and FreeFall. He is currently working on his third novel.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • City of Margins; Shoot the Moonlight Out – William Boyle 
  • Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody 
  • Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler – Raymond Chandler; edited by Frank MacShane 
  • The Guest – Emma Cline 
  • Perfidia; This Storm; Widespread Panic – James Ellroy 
  • Our Share of Night – Mariana Enriquez 
  • The Wars – Timothy Findley 
  • The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald 
  • A Rage in Harlem – Chester Himes 
  • It; Night Shift; Salem’s Lot – Stephen King 
  • Burnt Offerings – Robert Marasco 
  • Moby Dick – Herman Melville 
  • Peyton Place – Grace Metalious 
  • Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosley 
  • Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus – James Otis 
  • “The Black Cat” – Edgar Allan Poe 
  • The House Next Door –  Anne Rivers Siddons
  • The Secret History – Donna Tartt
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Craftwork S1E4: Scaffolding, Dionysus, & Mental Bonfires w/ Lindsay Lerman

Listen to Craftwork Episode 4: Scaffolding, Dionysus, & Mental Bonfires w/ Lindsay Lerman.

In this interview, Lindsay Lerman talks about philosophy, procedural knowledge, writing dialogue, and so much more.

Lindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her first book, I’m From Nowhere, was published in 2019. Her second book, What Are You, was published in 2022. Her first translation was published in 2023. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She is working on a novel, a philosophy manuscript, and here and there, some screenplays. She lives in Berlin.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene – Jodey Castricano
  • James and the Giant Peach; The BFG; Matilda – Roald Dahl
  • Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
  • Memories, Dreams, Reflections – C. G. Jung
  • The Cipher – Kathe Koja
  • The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Seventh Mansion – Maryse Meijer
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