Willing Davidson

The podcast investigates the events in Haditha, Iraq, and compiles a database to show the inherent problem of the military judging its own members.

The author discusses his story “Last Coffeehouse on Travis.”

The author discusses his story “Clay.”

Toni is safe; Amalie is safe. Toni is vaguely and broadly attuned to economic inequity, but her primary concern is her own rental status in this part of her town. She likely won’t be able to stay in the neighborhood for much longer. What does it mean for a safe, comfortable person to need more? In a world so compromised and unjust and unfair, how do people justify wanting even greater security and safety? These questions, I hope, are bobbing in the waters. All things considered, Toni’s life is g…

His branch of special consular services typically deals with repatriation of U.S. citizens for whom things have gone awfully wrong abroad. I don’t exactly remember how or why I landed on this line of work—this narrator has been on my mind for so long. A few years ago, I actually wrote a whole novel in his voice. In the novel, he worked in the private sector (he was an insurance guy), but his job was still medical repatriation. The story lines were different, but it was essentially the same man,…

That part of the story takes place in about 2000. The World Wars, the gulags, the camps, the colonies, and so on—these dismal chapters of modernity essentially predate our protagonist’s agreeable personal experience of the political sphere. It seems that he yearns, partly out of his strange enchantment, partly out of curiosity, for the firsthand knowledge possessed by Mr. V. and his ilk, who lived through the bad old days and, our protagonist idealistically presumes, learned something valuable i…

I should mention at the outset that I find a lot of what happens to Fletcher very funny. It’s horrific, too, of course; that tension is at the heart of the story. If there is comedy there, I think it also points to the two modes you identify, and how they relate to each other within the text. However unsettling, icky, or frightening the reader finds Spider, they will, I am sure, recognize it for what it is: a literary device. Fletcher is not so lucky. He is familiar with Spider’s weight and text…

The author discusses “Crown Heights North,” her story from the latest issue of the magazine.

I think every writer is susceptible to the grandiose, urgent, doomy mood of those lines. Is it all over for me? Just when I’m getting started? And writers remain susceptible even when, as with Lowell and the character in my story, it’s been a long time since they were twenty-four. Nobody does grandiose, urgent, and doomy quite as thoroughly as Lowell. I think he puts in the word “journeyman” to offset the grandiosity a little—to remind himself that at any age and whatever her stature, a writer i…

The author discusses “Our Time Is Up,” her story from the latest issue of the magazine.