A conversation with:  Matt Bell, John Madera, Jeff Parker and Amber Sparks

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, forthcoming from Keyhole Press in October 2010. His fiction appears in literary magazines such as Conjunctions, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Willow Springs, Unsaid, and American Short Fiction, and has been selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. He is also the editor of The Collagist. For more information, click here.

John Madera’s work is forthcoming in Conjunctions, The Believer, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Corduroy Mountain. His fiction has appeared in Opium Magazine, Featherproof Press, elimae, Everyday Genius, ArtVoice, Underground Voices, and Little White Poetry Journal #7. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, his reviews have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Bookslut, The Collagist, DIAGRAM, Fiction Writers Review, Flatmancrooked, The Millions, The Prairie Journal: A Magazine of Canadian Literature, The Quarterly Conversation, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, New Pages, Open Letters Monthly, The Rumpus, Tarpaulin Sky, Word Riot, and in 3:AM Magazine. He is editing a collection of essays on the craft of writing (Publishing Genius Press). He edits the forum Big Other and journal The Chapbook Review. Former fiction editor at Identity Theory, he is senior flash fiction editor at jmww. His monthly column, “A Reader’s Log(orrhea),” may be found at The Nervous Breakdown.

Jeff Parker is the author of the story collection The Taste of Penny (Dzanc) and the novel Ovenman (Tin House). His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Walrus, and others. He co-edited Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin House) and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto.

Amber Sparks’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a bunch of places, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, PANK, Wigleaf, The Collagist, Artvoice, and Everyday Genius. She also is the fiction editor at Emprise Review. She has a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and a cool job doing new media stuff for an international labor union. She lives in Washington, DC and can be found on the intertubes at www.ambernoellesparks.com.

A conversation with:

Dawn Raffel, David Peak, Ana Božičević, and Edward Mullany

Dawn Raffel’s newest book is Further Adventures in the Restless Universe. She is also the author of a novel, Carrying the Body and a previous collection, In the Year of Long Division. Her stories have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Conjunctions, Black Book, Fence, Open City, The Mississippi Review Prize Anthology, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, Arts & Letters, The Quarterly, NOON and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. She was a fiction editor for many years, followed by a seven-year stint as Executive Articles Editor at O, The Oprah Magazine and three years as Editor-at-Large at More magazine; she has also taught in the MFA program at Columbia University. She now works part time at Readers Digest as Editor at Large, Books, and is completing a memoir. She lives outside New York City with her husband and sons and can be reached at Dawn@Raffel.name

Ana Božičević was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1977. She emigrated to NYC in 1997. Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, November 2009) is her first book of poems. Her fifth chapbook, Depth Hoar, will be published by Cinematheque Press in 2010. With Amy King, Ana co-curates The Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn, and is co-editing an anthology, The Urban Poetic, forthcoming from Factory School. She works at the Center for the Humanities of The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Edward Mullany’s work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Tampa Review, Short FICTION, Keyhole Magazine, and other journals. He’s the recipient of a Barthelme Fellowship in Poetry, and is an editor at the online journal matchbook. He grew up in Australia.

David Peak is the author of Surface Tension, published by BlazeVOX in 2009, as well as a novel and two chapbooks. Other writing has appeared in Annalemma, elimae, and Monkeybicycle. He lives a double life.