Description: A cross-genre discussion about the interview as a means for deepening the national literary conversation featuring five acclaimed critics discussing the elements of what makes a good interview, favorite interviews, overcoming difficulties, and the future of book criticism. Featuring: Charlie Jane Anders Mandana Chaffa Jane Ciabattari Deborah D. Douglas Gary M. Kramer. Moderator: May-lee Chai.

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Panelists:
Charlie Jane Anders is the award-winning, nationally bestselling author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster. Her other books include All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night, and the young adult Unstoppable trilogy. She published a book about how to use creative writing to get through tough times called Never Say You Can’t Survive. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, ZYZZYVA, the Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Esquire and the Catamaran Literary Reader. She’s currently writing the comic book Star Trek: Zero Point for IDW. She also served as the monthly science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post.

Mandana Chaffa is a writer, editor and critic whose work has appeared in a variety of publications and venues. She is an editor-at-large at Chicago Review of Books and founder and editor of Nowruz Journal. She serves on the boards of Brooklyn Poets; the National Book Critics Circle where she is chair of the Barrios Book in Translation Prize and co-vice president of Membership; and is the president of the board of The Flow Chart Foundation, celebrating the work and legacy of John Ashbery. Born in Tehran, Iran, she lives in New York.

Jane Ciabattari is a critic, journalist, and author of Stealing the Fire, an Iowa Short Fiction finalist selected for the Dzanc rEprint series. Her short stories have been awarded three Pushcart Prize special mentions, an East Hampton Shorts award for originality, widely published and anthologized. A former president of the National Book Critics Circle, she is a longtime board member currently on the advisory board. Her criticism has been published in the New York Times Book Review, NPR, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Paris Review, among others. She is a columnist for Literary Hub, a contributor to BBC Culture, on the advisory boards of The Story Prize, the Bay Area Book Festival, Lit Camp, and a Pushcart Prize contributing editor.

Deborah D. Douglas is the award-winning author of Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement, the first-ever travel guide to follow the official civil rights trail in the South, now in its second edition. Deb is also one of 90 contributors to the New York Times bestselling Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019 and founding director of the Medill Solutions Journalism Hub and a clinical associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Deb served as founding co-editor-in-chief of The Emancipator. Her reporting and commentary have appeared in The Guardian, Time, ProPublica, The Boston Globe, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her other honors include an Edward R. Murrow Award, Society for News Design, the Tellys, and Chicago’s Studs Terkel Award. A product of the Great Migration, she is Northern- born and Southern-rooted. Find Deb @debofficially on most social platforms.

Gary M. Kramer has contributed reviews and interviews for books and film for Cineaste, Gay City News, Philadelphia Gay News, and other publications, His film writing also appears in Senses of Cinema, Slant, The San Francisco Bay Times, MovieJawn, as well as Salon, BOMB, and Indiewire, among other publications. He is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and the co-editor of Directory of World Cinema Argentina, Volumes 1 & 2. Kramer is on the advisory board of and contributor to the journal Short Film Studies. He is the moderator of the weekly film discussion group Cinema Salon and teaches Short Attention Span Cinema at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.

Moderator:
May-lee Chai is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, where she serves as co-chair of grants and fundraising. She is an educator, critic, and the award-winning author of twelve books including My Hungry Ghosts: Essays & Incantations and Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories, winner of a 2019 American Book Award. Her writing has been awarded an American Book Award, National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and named a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, among other honors. She is the book review editor of Asian Affairs: An American Review. Currently, she is a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.