Authors and Editors in Conversation Eric Chinski: In The Fun Parts you're returning to short stories after publishing a novel, The Ask. Do you approach writing stories and novels differently? Sam Lipsyte: Once I know what I’m writing I start to approach them differently, but in the beginning I’m just trying to get something down on the page. As I go I can start to sense whether it’s opening up and might be something longer or if a closing is already in view. Sometimes I know it’s a short story from the start but often it takes a little while. Nathanael West, who wrote rather short novels, said, “You only have time to explode.” I think of that when I write the short pieces. You are creating a new world and new language to navigate it and there will be some nice effects along the way, but you are usually after a single moment for the piece to turn on. You are putting something – characters in the case of some stories, the very mode of utterance in others – under increasing pressure. It’s the same with the novel, in some sense, but you vary the pressure, digress in a controlled way, gather in more stories to feed into a larger narrative. Eric Chinski: I don't think it quite hit me until I heard you read from The Ask a few years ago, but there's clearly a Sam Lipsyte sentence. I heard music at that reading. Your sentences are as much about rhythm and sound as character and plot. How do you think about the sentence in the broader context of a story?

Rahul Bhattacharya, who lives in New Delhi, is the author of Pundits from Pakistan, a book of reportage, and The Sly Company of People Who Care, a first novel to be published by FSG in May. He answers some questions about the desire to escape home, the visceral energy of Creole, and V.S Naipaul. -Eric Chinski, Editor in Chief Chinski: Your first book was a work of reportage on the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry. Why did you decide to turn next to writing your first novel? Rahul Bhattacharya: I didn’t, actually. The form came afterward, at the moment of writing. What I was responding to was the impulse to get away. It’s a terribly seductive impulse: What are the consequences? In part I was getting away from writing about cricket as well. But I’m grateful to cricket-writing, without which I may not ever have had a chance to visit the Caribbean.

Chris Adrian, the author of two novels and a short-story collection, is one of our most interesting young fiction writers—he is also a practicing pediatrician, a fellow in pediatric hematology-oncology, and a student at divinity school. Rivka Galchen, a novelist who also has a background in medicine, talks with Chris about his forthcoming novel, The Great Night, a magical retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in contemporary San Francisco. In the course of their conversation, they discuss talking bagels, the cult sci-fi movie "Soylent Green," and how to write convincingly about fairies. Rivka and Chris were both recently chosen for the New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list. -Eric Chinski, Editor in Chief Galchen: Who and what lives and happens in The Great Night? Adrian: The Great Night is a retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco in the summer of 2008. Three people—two men and a woman—get lost in the park on their way to a party and have a common adventure involving fairies, a monster, and the ghosts of their recently deceased romantic relationships. Around and in between the action of this main story, Titania struggles in the aftermath of the death of her adopted son and the subsequent breakdown of her thousand-year marriage to Oberon, and a group of homeless people stage a musical production of Soylent Green (called Soylent Green!) for the benefit of the evil mayor of San Francisco.