Poet, translator, professor, and editor Matthew Zapruder was born in Washington, DC. in 1967. He earned a BA in Russian literature at Amherst College, an MA in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he studied with Dara Wier, James Tate, and Agha Shahid Ali. Zapruder is the author most recently of Sun Bear (Copper Canyon, 2014) and Why Poetry, a book of prose about poetry (Ecco/Harper Collins, 2017). An Associate Professor in the MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California, he is also editor […]
Category: Video Interviews
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Ellen Ullman
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Ellen Ullman wrote her first computer program in 1978. She went on to have a twenty-year career as a programmer and software engineer. Her essays and books have become landmark works describing the social, emotional, and personal effects of technology. She is the author of two novels: By Blood (published by Picador), a New York Times Notable Book; and The Bug (Picador), a runner-up for the Pen/Hemingway Award. Her memoir, Close to the Machine (Picador), about her life as a software engineer during the internet’s first rise, became a cult classic. Her new book, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology (MCD), tells a continuing story of […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Edie Meidav
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Edie Meidav is the author of the novels The Far Field, Crawl Space, and Lola, California (all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and of the story collection Kingdom of the Young (Sarabande), which is her newest book. She is recipient of a Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, the Kafka Prize for Best Fiction by an American Woman, the Bard Fiction Prize and other citations, and her essays were published in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 95 and 100. When Meidav came to the Bay Area earlier this month, ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon talked to her about Kingdom of the Young […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Min Jin Lee
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Min Jin Lee is the author of two novels. Her first one, Free Food for Millionaires, was named a “Top Ten Novel of the Year” by The Times of London, NPR’ “Fresh Air,” and USA Today. Her newest novel, Pachinko, is a national bestseller and has been named a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next Great Read, and has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal. Earlier this year, she spoke about Pachinko—an epic story of the experience of generations of Koreans and Japanese of Korean heritage living in Japan—with ZYZZYVA Managing Editor […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Patrick Hoffman
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Patrick Hoffman was born in San Francisco, where for a decade he worked as both a private investigator and an investigator for the Public Defender’s Office. His first novel, The White Van, was a finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was named a Wall Street Journal best book of the year. His new novel is Every Man a Menace, which Kirkus, in its starred review, called “a nasty tour de force” and a “strong and original addition to the crime fiction genre.” Hoffman spoke to ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon about his new book at the Booksmith […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Vanessa Hua
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Vanessa Hua (whose stories “The Third Daughter” and “River of Stars” appeared in ZYZZYVA No. 91 and No. 98, respectively) is the author of the story collection Deceit and Other Possibilities, named a “searing debut” by O, The Oprah Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in the Atlantic, Guernica, and elsewhere, and for nearly two decades she has been writing about Asia and the diaspora, filing stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Panama, Abu Dhabi, and Ecuador. A Visiting Editor in Creative Nonfiction at Saint Mary’s College this fall, she is also a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Hua spoke to […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Mauro Javier Cardenas
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Mauro Javier Cardenas (whose story “Dora and Her Dog” was published in Issue No. 104) is the author of the new novel The Revolutionaries Try Again (Coffee House Press). Harper’s Magazine has described his first novel as “a high-octane, high-modernist” work “from the gifted, fleet Mauro Javier Cardenas.” And in its starred review, Publishers Weekly said “Cardenas dizzyingly leaps from character to character, from street protests to swanky soirees, and from lengthy uninterrupted interior monologues to rapid-fire dialogues and freewheeling satirical radio programs, resulting in extended passages of brilliance.” Cardenas spoke to ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon about his book at […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Tom Bissell
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Tom Bissell (whose story “Love Story, With Cocaine” appeared in ZYZZYVA No. 92) is the award-winning author of several books, including the story collection God Lives in St. Petersburg, the memoir The Father of All Things, the essay collection Magic Hours, and Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. His newest book is Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve (Pantheon). Kirkus (in a starred review) described Apostle as a “rich, contentious, and challenging book … a deep dive into the heart of the New Testament, crossing continents and cross-referencing texts.” ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon spoke with Bissell about […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: David L. Ulin & Gary Kamiya
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David L. Ulin (whose work has appeared in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 100 and 104) is the author or editor of eight previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and the Library of America’s Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the former book critic of the Los Angeles Times. ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon, along with Gary Kamiya—executive editor of San Francisco Magazine and author of Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco—discussed Ulin’s latest book, Sidewalking: Coming […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Dean Rader
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Dean Rader (whose poetry has been published in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 93 , 98 & 101) is the author of several books, including the poetry collections Works & Days (winner of the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize), Landscape Portrait Figure Form, which was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2013, and the forthcoming Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, to be published in 2016 by Copper Canyon Press. ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon talked to Rader about what makes for a “successful” poem, how his work has come to be shaped, the attraction […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: John Freeman
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John Freeman (whose poems were published in ZYZZYVA No. 95 and No. 101, and who is also a contributing editor) is a long-time book critic, author of How to Read a Novelist, and the former editor of Granta. Last month, he launched a new literary journal, Freeman’s, which will publish themed issues twice a year. The first issue features work from Louise Erdrich, Barry Lopez, Haruki Murakami, Dave Eggers, Alexander Hemon, Anne Carson, Helen Simpson, and many more. Before a packed house at City Lights Bookstore last month, ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon talked to Freeman about the journal, about […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Lori Ostlund
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Lori Ostlund (whose story “Clear as Cake” was published in ZYZZYVA No. 97) is the author of two books—the story collection “The Bigness of the World” (winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Edmund White Award, and a California Book Award), and most recently, “After the Parade,” her first novel. Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, “After the Parade” tells the mostly funny but also unhappy story of Aaron, a man who feels compelled to leave his older partner and stable life in New Mexico for a new start in San Francisco. As he teaches English to […]