The Paris Review – Love Is Claustrophobic: Mark Mayer Interviewed by Carmen Maria Machado
“Intimacy is more vexed. We’re all carrying around our histories—our bad programming, our genders, our wounded egos, our stink—and then we build little brick houses and try to live in them together. It’s a crazy thing to attempt. So I’m interested in stories that go into that space where we can’t escape each other. Family is claustrophobic, love is claustrophobic, which is what makes it meaningful, too. We can’t help but actually encounter each other.”
BOMB – A Cosmos of Your Own Creation: Mark Mayer Interviewed by Kristen Kubecka
“I am kind of obsessed with obsession, it’s true, or with a certain kind of imagination. Maybe this is just me the fiction writer projecting my own stuff, but I think it’s risky to let yourself imagine anything, because if it becomes real for you, if it starts to matter to you, then you find yourself living in a cosmos of your own.”
Westword – Mark Mayer: From Boulder Book Store Worker to Author of Aerialists
“Literary language is this great conjuring trick: You look at words, and things appear in your mind. If you’re the kind of writer who finds that magical – and I definitely do — then there’s a natural pull toward spectacle, especially when you’re first testing out your powers of description. Can I make them see an elephant? Can I make them see a tower of elephants?”
