January 18, 2018
My interview with my friend former grad school teacher Tayari Jones is online at Tin House. “I started thinking about other novels by women that questioned the idea that women’s first (and only) priority is to be a good wife and mother. These novels were primarily by white women. They just get tired of being domesticated and […]
May 9, 2017
I only took one creative writing class as an undergrad, but it was with the excellent Madison Smartt Bell and it helped to shape my entire writing life. The Paris Review has posted our recent conversation about his new novel Behind the Moon. I hope you enjoy it.
October 17, 2016
I first encountered Nicholas Mainieri’s fiction in those great baseball issues that Hobart used to put out every spring. His first published story “The Tools of Ignorance,” which appeared in the spring of 2008 and was titled after an old nickname for a catcher’s gear, carried itself with such authority and deep-in-the-grain understanding of our […]
June 22, 2015
Over at The Rumpus, James Tate Hill asked me a few tough questions. Here’s an excerpt: On a basic level, living without power for a few days helped rid me of any romantic notions about the serenity of life off the grid. It definitely made me reconsider some of my own first-world assumptions. The idea […]
June 3, 2015
Owen King interviewed me for the Brooklyn Rail. Here’s an excerpt: Rail: Late in the novel, Ray has the misfortune to find himself dragged into a werewolf hunt. How do you feel about werewolf hunting? Is it wrong? Ervin: On one hand, it’s very important to maintain these traditions while we can, right? There are certainly […]