This week, Alex talks to Myriam Lacroix about her novel, How It Works Out, queer fiction, the Canadian literary landscape, love as hunger, and parallel worlds. About Myriam Lacroix: MYRIAM LACROIX was born in Montreal to a Québécois mother and a Moroccan father, and currently lives in Vancouver. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University…

About Lauren Oyler: Lauren Oyler's essays on books and culture appear regularly in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Harper's, and other publications. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in 2021. She lives in Berlin. About No Judgement: From the national bestselling novelist and essayist, a groundbreaking col…

About Cameron Russell: Cameron Russell has spent the last twenty years working as a model for clients including Prada, Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, H&M, Vogue, and Elle. With over forty million views, her TED talk on the power of image is one of the most popular of all time. She is the co-founder of Model Mafia, a collective of hundreds of fash…

About Alexander Sammartino: Alexander Sammartino lives in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. Last Acts is his first novel. About Last Acts: Following a near-death experience, an entrepreneurial father-and-son duo wreak havoc and fend off bankruptcy in this unflinching portrayal of the absurdities of American life. “Hilarious, e…

About Brontez Purnell: Brontez Purnell is the author of several books, most recently 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors' Choice by the New York Times Book Revie…

About Eliza Barry Callahan: Eliza Barry Callahan is a writer and artist from New York, New York. Shortly after receiving her BA from Columbia, where she studied visual art, art history, and poetry, she returned to the university where she received her MFA in writing (2022). Her writing has been published in frieze, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, …

About Mariah Stovall: Mariah Stovall has written fiction for the anthology Black Punk Now, and for Ninth Letter, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Hobart, the Minola Review, and Joyland; and nonfiction for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop, Hanif Abdurraqib’s 68to05, The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, and LitHub. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is …

About Alexandra Tanner: Alexandra Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel. About Wo…

About Sarah Mintz: Sarah Mintz is a graduate of the English MA program at the University of Regina. Her work has been published with Book*Hug Press, JackPine Press, Radiant Press, Apocalypse Confidential, The Sea & Cedar Literary Magazine, and Agnes and True . Find out more at https://smintz.carrd.co/. About Norma: Widowhood and weirdos, online and…

About Rebecca May Johnson: Rebecca May Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement and Daunt Books Publishing, among others, and is an editor at the trailblazing food publication Vittles. Small Fires is her first book. About Small Fires: Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is t…

About Katya Apekin: Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter, and translator. Her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Lithub, and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German, and Italian. She is the recipient…

About Marie-Helene Bertino: Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and …

About Lexi Freiman: LEXI FREIMAN is an Australian writer and editor who graduated from Columbia's MFA program in 2012. Her first novel, Inappropriation, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. She also writes for television. About The Book of Ayn: An original and hilarious satire of both our polit…

About Anna Biller: Anna Biller is a filmmaker and a writer known for her feminist point of view, and for her meticulously crafted visual design. The New York Times called her cult film The Love Witch “a hothouse filled with deadly and seductive blooms,” and Indiewire called her debut feature Viva “a pitch perfect resurrection of the Valley of the D…

About Melissa Broder: Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Milk Fed, The Pisces, and Death Valley, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. She has written for The New York Times, Elle, and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @SoSadToday and @MelissaBroder an…

About Chris Oliveros: Chris Oliveros was born in 1966 in Montreal and grew up in the nearby suburb of Chomedey, Laval. He founded Drawn & Quarterly in 1989 and was the publisher for the following twenty-five years. Oliveros stepped down from D+Q in 2015 to work on Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? About Are You Willing to Die for the Cause? A d…

About Isle McElroy: Isle McElroy (they/them) is a non-binary author based in New York. Their writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, The Cut, GQ, The Guardian, Vogue, Bon Appétit, and other publications. They have received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop, …

About Paolo Ferrante: Paola Ferrante is a writer living with depression. Her debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving a Lion Attack (2019), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize. She has won Grain Magazine's Short Grain Contest for Poetry, The New Quarterly's Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, Room Magazine's Fiction…

About Sean Michaels: SEAN MICHAELS is the author of the novels Us Conductors and The Wagers, and his non-fiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Pitchfork and The New Yorker. He is a recipient of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize and the Prix Nouvelles Écritures, and he founded the pioneering mus…

About Jessica Campbell: Jessica Campbell is a Canadian artist originally from Victoria, British Columbia. Her fine art has been exhibited across North America, and in 2019 she had a solo exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. An educator of comics art and history, Campbell has taught at a variety of institutions, including the School…

About Mona Awad: Mona Awad is the author of the novels All’s Well, Bunny, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. Bunny was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and the New England Book Award. It was named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film with Bad Robot Productions. All’s…

About Emerson Whitney: Emerson Whitney is a writer and a professor. Their book Heaven, McSweeney’s 2020, was named a ‘best book’ by the AV Club, PAPER, Literary Hub, Refinery29, Ms. Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, the Observer, and the Seattle Times. Heaven was also awarded a Kirkus star and was written about by nonfiction editor at Kirkus, Eric…

About Hilary Leichter: Hilary Leichter is the author of Temporary, which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. She teaches at Columbia…

About Kyle Dillon Hertz: Kyle Dillon Hertz received an MFA in fiction at NYU, where he was the Writer in Public Schools Fellow. He lives in Brooklyn. About The Lookback Window: Growing up in suburban New York, Dylan lived through the unfathomable: three years as a victim of sex trafficking at the hands of Vincent, a troubled young man who promised …

About Deborah Willis: DEBORAH WILLIS’s last short story collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for fiction. Her work has also appeared in Th…

About Ottessa Moshfegh: Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestse…

About Sarah Blakley-Cartwright: Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She is the editor of Hauser & Wirth’s The Artist's Library for Ursula magazine. She is publishing director of the Chicago Review of Books, and associate editor …

ABOUT ANDREW SULLIVAN: Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of novels The Marigold; The Handyman Method (co-written with Nick Cutter); Waste, a Globe and Mail Best Book; and the story collection All We Want Is Everything, a Globe and Mail Best Book and finalist for the Relit Award. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. ABOUT THE MARIGOLD: In a near-future Tor…

ABOUT MARTA BALCEWICZ: Marta Balcewicz spent her early childhood in Pomerania and Madrid, and now lives in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Tin House online, Vol. 1. Brooklyn, Washington Square Review, The Rumpus, and Passages North, amongst other publications. Her fiction was anthologized in Tiny Crimes(Catapult, 2018). She received a f…

About Dizz Tate: DIZZ TATE grew up in Florida and lives in London, U.K. She has had short stories published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, Dazed, No Tokens Journal, Five Dials, 3:AM Magazine, among other publications. She was long-listed for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2020 and won the Bristol Short Story Prize in 2019. Brutes is he…

About Henry Hoke: Henry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and a writer whose work has appeared in No Tokens, Triangle House, Electric Literature, and the flash noir anthology Tiny Crimes. He co-created the performance series Enter>text in Los Angeles, and has taught at CalArts and the UVA Young Writers Workshop. He lives in New York City. About Open …

About Stephanie LaCava: Stephanie LaCava is a writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Harper's, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Vogue, and Interview. Her debut novel, The Superrationals, was published by Semiotext(e) in 2020. About I Fear My Pain Interests You: Margot is the child of reno…

About Catherine Lacey: Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has been a…

About Lindsay Wong: LINDSAY WONG is the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling memoir The Woo-Woo, which was a finalist for Canada Reads 2019. She has written a YA novel entitled My Summer of Love and Misfortune. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary nonfictio…

About Michael DeForge: Michael DeForge is a cartoonist, an illustrator, and a community organizer who lives Toronto, Ontario. About Birds of Maine: Birds roam freely around the Moon complete with fruitful trees, sophisticated fungal networks, and an enviable socialist order. The universal worm feeds all, there are no weekends, and economics is as f…

About Colin Winnette: COLIN WINNETTE’s books include Coyote, Haints Stay, and The Job of the Wasp, which was an American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next Pick. Winnette’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Playboy, McSweeney’s, The Believer, and The Paris Review Daily. A former bookseller in Texas, Vermont, New York, and C…

About Sean Thor Conroe: Sean Thor Conroe is a Japanese-American writer. He was born in Tokyo in 1991 and was raised in Scotland, upstate New York, and the greater Bay Area. He studied literature and philosophy at Swarthmore College, and attended the Columbia University School of the Arts. He has guest edited New York Tyrant Magazine and hosts the b…

About Justin Ling: JUSTIN LING is an investigative journalist whose reporting has focused on stories and issues undercovered and misunderstood. His writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. In 2019 he hosted "The Village," the award-winning third season of the CBC podcast Uncover, wh…

About Joshua Whitehead: Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-nêhiyaw, Two-Spirit member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is author of the award-winning novel Jonny Appleseed and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer, and he is editor of Love after the End. He is assistant professor in the departments of English and international Indigenous studie…

About Elif Batuman: Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in the UK. She is also the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She has been…

Jackson Howard is an editor and writer from Los Angeles who lives in Brooklyn. He’s an Editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and its imprint MCD, where he acquires and edits a broad range of fiction and nonfiction. Writers he publishes include Judith Butler, Brontez Purnell, Sarah Schulman, Catherine Lacey, Fernando A. Flores, Susan Straight, Venita …

About Lillian Fishman: Lillian Fishman was born in 1994 and lives in New York. She received her MFA from NYU, where she was a Jill Davis Fellow. Acts of Service is her first novel. About Acts of Service: A “bold and unflinchingly sexy” (Vogue) debut novel about a young woman who follows her desires into a world of pleasure, decadence, and privilege…

ABOUT NABEN RUTHNUM: Naben Ruthnum lives in Toronto, and is the author of Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. As Nathan Ripley, he is the author of two thrillers, Find You In the Dark and Your Life is Mine. He also writes for film and television. ABOUT A HERO OF OUR TIME A wry comic novel with an acerbic wit, A Hero of Our Time is a vicious takedown …

About Heather O'Neill HEATHER O’NEILL is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent bestselling novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads. Her previous work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl …

ABOUT ROLLIE PEMBERTON: He is a writer, rapper, producer, poet and activist who performs under the name Cadence Weapon. He won the 2021 Polaris Music Prize for his album Parallel World. His writing has been published in Pitchfork, The Guardian, Wired and Hazlitt. Currently based in Toronto, Pemberton was a former Poet Laureate in his hometown of Ed…

ABOUT BUD SMITH: Bud Smith works heavy construction in New Jersey. His story "Violets" appeared in The Paris Review. He released his debut novel this year, titled: Teenager. ABOUT TEENAGER: Kody Rawlee Green is stuck in juvie. Tella “Teal Cartwheels” Carticelli is packing her bags for Rome--on the orders of her parents, who want her as far from Kod…

Mayukh Sen is a James Beard and IACP Award–winning writer based in Brooklyn. His work has been anthologized in two editions of The Best American Food Writing. He teaches food journalism at New York University. About Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America Who’s really behind America’s appetite for foods from around th…

JO HAMYA was born in London in 1997. After living in Miami for a few years, she completed an English degree at King’s College London and a MSt in contemporary literature and culture at Oxford University. There, she divided her research between updating twentieth-century cultural theory into twenty-first-century digital contexts, and the impact of s…

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of the short story collection Battleborn and the novel Gold Fame Citrus. She has received the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 h…

TODD BABIAK's most recent novels are The Empress of Idaho, Son of France, and Come Barbarians, which was a Globe and Mail Book of the Year and a number one bestseller. His earlier work includes The Garneau Block, which was a national bestseller, a longlisted title for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the winner of the City of Edmonton Book Prize; T…