This volume explores storytelling in all its power and contradictions. With an introduction by Johanna Zwirner, it brings together longform interviews with Mary Gaitskill, Olivia Laing, Ben Lerner, Doreen St. Félix, Lynne Tillman, Brandon Taylor, Samuel R. Delany, Vivian Gornick, Lorrie Moore, Dennis Cooper, Garrett Bradley, and Rachel Kushner—writers and artists who have shaped how we read, see, and think.
The collection moves between form and feeling, structure and spontaneity. Through reflections on feminist achievement, the novelist’s double life, and the evolving role of narrative, these conversations reveal how storytelling, whether precise or porous, controlled or unwieldy, continues to unsettle, provoke, and endure.