Maxine Helfman‘s series of photographs challenge our fashion and gender role assumptions in a candid talk with Darren Ching and Debra Klomp Ching.

Manuel Cosentino talks with Darren Ching and Debra Klomp Ching about the big skies in his Behind a Little House series of photographs, which has captured the imagination of audiences across the globe.

Thorpe Moeckel records “the way the udder / shrinks slow to shrivel after being so full” and hundreds of other entailing details that compose, in his intricate telling, the many lives that make up life on a farm.

“in the book as I remember it is surrounded by / parentheses / The illustrator / keeps him moving 



black / Parentheses like as if his brown skin struck / black / Sparks on the air with every step.” Shane McCrae‘s recollection of a 1940s children’s book reanimates the terrible power of its depictions and their violent persistence in memory and beyond.

“Your pupils widen on all / Adra prison will swallow. / Wives rock, fingering their beads.” While her husband observes political trials in Syria, V. Penelope Pelizzon wanders “the republic of poetry,” seeking language to account for their encounters there.

“How to cull the fuckery that follows a woman who does as she wants?” Michael Luis Dauro‘s female gunslinger chases the fantasy of violence and revels in the history-heavy liberty of words.

“She felt an inkling—just the faintest tingle—then, of something gone wrong inside her; a small, vile thing, just beginning to grow.” A mother travels to Vietnam for a favorite son’s wedding in a story by Meaghan Mulholland.

“Whenever I peeked into his room at night, there he lay, open-mouthed, those frightening white feet kicked free of sheets.” Inspired by Joe Brainard, Jeff Oaks invents a form for generating truths.

“Before Liberation, emperors had idled there, among pleasure grounds of lakes and pavilions, and it was said you couldn’t look directly into its gates or your vision would blur.” Third Daughter is recruited for a ballroom dance troupe at the home of the Chairman in this excerpt from Vanessa Hua’s novel-in-progress.

“Their affection, any love—good or bad—had me. I was the fool for love.” Ben Miller remembers his induction into an exclusive, eccentric group of writers in the prologue to his forthcoming book, River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa.

Seattle bassist and composer Jherek Bischoff talks about how his life growing up on the high seas prepared him for the extremely DIY recording process for his new art-pop album Composed.

Saxophonist Colin Stetson combines jazz musicianship, rock songcraft and the physicality of a grand slam final to create a truly unique and atavistically compelling sound. Stetson took a rare moment of mid-winter’s rest to talk to At Length about his breakout year, his physical limits and his rather daunting New Year’s resolution.

Tindersticks have scored six of Claire Denis’ films, a collaboration unique on the indie side of the rock and film world. Stuart Staples talks about the origin and effect of a long partnership and explains why you won’t see the band in the credits of the Avatar sequel.

Mary Halvorson may be the future of jazz guitar, but her future might not be in jazz. She talks about Electric Fruit–her newest trio release with Weasel Walter and Peter Evans–crossing musical boundaries, and how planets can really mess up your life.