SELFIE INTERVIEW | Robert W. Henway

Currently 20 years old, Robert W. Henway is studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. During his freshman year he had creative nonfiction pieces published in Cleaver Magazine and 1966. “Postcard” is his first published piece of fiction. 

Eckleburg: What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader of your work?

Robert W. Henway:

When I’m writing I find that I’m constantly reading the piece aloud to see how the words flow, and to find which parts are naturally read with emotion and inflection. The one factor that seems to always make or break a piece for me is sincerity. In my opinion, a calculated piece that is trying to artificially provoke emotion will never beat out a genuine story.

Eckleburg: What are you working on now?

Robert W. Henway:

For now, I’m just trying to get my voice out there as I continue to pursue a degree in English and Creative Writing. I was recently accepted into the Undergraduate Writers’ Workshop for Fiction at the University of Iowa, and I’m beyond excited to be working with Ethan Canin on my craft. Otherwise, besides continuing to write short fiction and creative nonfiction, I’ll be serving as an Honors Writing Fellow during the upcoming Fall Semester.

Eckleburg: Who and what are your artistic influences?

Robert W. Henway:

Thematically speaking, a lot of my writing is inspired by my lonely youth. I often felt lethally alone even when people surrounded me. A lot of my writing is an attempt to capture this feeling, and to examine what goes wrong when two very lonely people try to connect and ultimately cannot.
Without F. Scott Fitzgerald, I would have written only the dullest lines. Without Morrissey, I would have no mood. Without Byron, I would never confess. Without Wilde, I wouldn’t have wit. Whatever your opinion is on my writing, it can be agreed that it would be far worse without them.

Eckleburg thanks Robert W. Henway. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.

SELFIE INTERVIEW | Chin-Sun Lee

Chin-Sun Lee is the author of “The Ravine,” originally published in Eckleburg. Her stories and essays have appeared in Your Impossible Voice, The Believer Logger, SLICE, and Shadowbox Magazine, among other publications. She is a contributor to the anthology Women In Clothes (Blue Rider Press/Penguin 2014), edited by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton. She was interviewed for a feature story on the Playa Artists Residency along with other residents in Oregon Public Broadcasting’s (NPR) podcast State of Wonder; hosted by April Baer, which aired on April 18, 2015. The segment also includes her reading an excerpt from “The Ravine”; written during her 2014 residency and set in Summer Lake. She also collaborated and performed in the video “Spinning World” by the art/literary/rock band The Size Queens (also featured in Medium Cool at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review in November 2012), which premiered on PANK’s blog website on October 3, 2014 http://pankmagazine.com/tag/the-size-queens/.

Eckleburg: What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader?

Chin-Sun Lee: Any passage that evokes a sense of unease or dreamlike blurring between what is imagined and real. I’m a big sucker for disorientation.

Eckleburg: What are you working on now?

Chin-Sun Lee: I’m writing the penultimate chapter of my novel, The Eternals, which will be finished this summer! The title refers to a religious group living in a small rural town in the Catskills that becomes the center of a tragedy which polarizes the surrounding community. The novel is set during the 2008 recession and addresses themes of economic disparity, class warfare, territoriality, cultural resentment, and xenophobia. The first (and title) chapter was published as an excerpt in Your Impossible Voice, in September 2015 http://www.yourimpossiblevoice.com/the-eternals/ 

Eckleburg: Who and what are your artistic influences?

Chin-Sun Lee: Storytellers in print and film, and in no particular order: Henry James, Paul Bowles, Mary Gaitskill, Chris Kraus, Alfred Hitchcock, Vladimir Nabokov, Jean Rhys, Graham Greene, Denis Johnson, W. Somerset Maugham, David Lynch, Jonathan Glazer, Javier Marias, Asghar Farhadi, Haruki Murakami, Peter Weir, Jane Campion, Cormac McCarthy, Patti Smith, Michael Ondaatje, Todd Haynes, Todd Solondz…to list a handful.

Eckleburg thanks Chin-Sun Lee for spending some time with us.

Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.

SELFIE INTERVIEW | Michael Nye

Michael Nye is the author of the story collection STRATEGIES AGAINST EXTINCTION (2012) and the novel ALL THE CASTLES BURNED (2018). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Literary Review, Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review, Epoch, Hobart, Kenyon Review and Normal School, among many others. The former managing editor of the Missouri Review, he currently lives with his family in Washington, D.C. Visit him online at mpnye.com or on Twitter: @mpnye

Eckleburg: What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader of your work?

Michael Nye:

I continue to be fascinated with issues of class and inequality, and how people try to (and often fail) to define who they are through their work. I’m also thinking quite a bit about subtext and resonance, how gestures and images remind a reader of earlier passages in the narrative. This probably sounds incredibly self-indulgent as a writer, but, hey, words matter. As a reader, I’m thinking about novel structure, since I just sent novel revisions to my publisher, and how a book’s scaffolding shapes the experience in conscious and unconscious ways.

Eckleburg: What are you working on now?

Michael Nye:

I just sent the most recent edits on my forthcoming novel back to my editor, so I’m starting the messy first draft of a new novel. I’m about halfway through, but it has a bumpy, recursive, disjointed first draft, so I’ll be working on this one for the foreseeable future.

Eckleburg: Who and what are your artistic influences?

Michael Nye:

Fitzgerald has always been a strong influence for me; I’ve reread all his novels multiple times, his language is precise and gorgeous and insightful, and his themes of class and money continue to matter in American life today. I also feel the heavy influence of Richard Yates, William Maxwell, and Alice Munro in my writing. In addition (to try to sound smarter and more diverse): the paintings of George Bellows, 90’s hip-hop, and movies in which lots of things explode in spectacular fashion.

Eckleburg thanks Michael Nye. Do you have new work published here at Eckleburg or elsewhere? Add your Selfie Interview and share the news with our 10,000+ reading and writing community. If you have a new book out or upcoming, join our Eckleburg Book Club and let our readers know about it.