Interview

I was getting older and my father got sick from something that he later recovered from, but I realized my father was not going to live forever. And so I felt a kind of urgency to fill in the gaps.

What if apes were living side-by-side the human species, wearing Urban Outfitters, taking public transportation and even talking? What would they talk about? That’s the question author Walt Maguire seeks to answer in his new novel Monkey See (ENC Press, Summer 2009).

In a phone interview about his first book, Dope Thief, Philadelphia author Dennis Tafoya marveled at his “incredible luck” at being published by Minotaur Books.

Local author Marc Schuster sat down with us to discuss his upcoming novel The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl (PS Books May 2009). The tale centers on Audrey, a woman who struggles with issues of addiction and romance. The novel offers a darkly comic look at consumerism and the ideal of perfection.

Some say that the Internet will destroy the written novel as we know it today. However, after hearing the story of N. Frank Daniels' futureproof, an argument can be made in support of the World Wide Web as a source for finding the best in new literature.

Josh Emmons Few writers walk the line between the real and the fantastic quite like Josh Emmons.

His first novel, The Loss of Leon Meed (Scribner 2005), reads like a cross between the works of Philip K. Dick and Jonathan Franzen. His second novel, Prescription for a Superior Existence (Scribner 2008), has been described as “a wicked skewering of religious cults and a finely wrought testament to their power.” Fresh off a stint at Yaddo, the renowned artists’ community, Josh sat down with us to discuss writing, faith, and inventing one’s own religion.

Broad Street is set in Philadelphia during the height of the grunge-rock scene of the early-nineties. Why did you choose this setting, and how does it factor into the story?

I was in a Philadelphia band called Mae Pang, which was mainly a chick rock garage band that started in the mid-90s. It was a great time for

Adam Rex understands children. As both a writer and illustrator of children’s books, his work captures the imaginative world children love to inhabit. His characters are heroic kids in cowboy boots who face the world fearlessly, taking on aliens and rambunctious zoo animals. His characters also include a lumbering, strangely human Frankenstein and assorted other monsters who somehow don’t seem so scary in the pages of his books.

Like most writers, novelist Kelly Simmons admits to having some anxieties. But instead of letting them get the better of her, she has found a way to translate them into a haunting and compelling novel of tension and self-discovery. Standing Still, Simmons debut novel, describes the ordeal of journalist Claire Cooper, who suddenly finds that her anxieties have a real world focus. When an intruder breaks into her home and attempts to kidnap her sleeping daughter, Claire immediately offers herself instead. For the next several days, she will face the terror of living with her unknown captor, trying to uncover the reason for the crime and, perhaps most significantly, struggling to make sense of her own life, her anxieties, and her identity as a wife and a mother.

Barbara BerotWhat began as a fictional rendering of Barbara Bérot’s five month European journey in 1972 has developed into a book series that spans across Scotland and into the French Pyrénées Mountains. Bérot’s self-published and critically-acclaimed debut novel, When Europa Rode the Bull, is a novel about love, commitment, and passion that traverses two continents. Its success inspired Bérot to embark on the sequel, the recently published Lies & Liberation: The Rape of Europa. And she is not finished with her characters yet. Already in the works is a third book in Bérot’s intriguing and complicated series.