Our Winter issue takes you north, to an unusual conference in Oslo with John Jeremiah Sullivan, Elif Batuman, Donald Antrim, and filmmaker Joachim Trier. In addition to the proceedings of the first Norwegian-American Literary Festival, this December we bring you new fiction from James Salter, Tim Parks, and Rachel Kushner, poems by Linda Pastan, Ben Lerner, and Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), an interview with Susan Howe, and much more.

Here’s Joachim Trier on literature and film:

In Norway we have a great tradition of writing literature, whereas cinema … historically this is not our strength. A Norwegian friend of mine interviewed Don DeLillo and asked him, “What do American writers talk about, when they hang out casually?” DeLillo said, “We talk about movies.” I felt so proud!

… and Donald Antrim on the fantastical:

When I began writing in earnest, I wrote stories that were modeled on the stories I thought I shouldwrite. The stories were about my family, mainly, about my alcoholic mother and about being her son, but they weren’t successful. They were dutifully written and they failed … I went into a depression over this. I didn’t know what to do. I got out of the funk eventually, through the fantastic, through making up other worlds.

… and Elif Batuman and John Jeremiah Sullivan on false starts:

BATUMANMy editor at The New Yorkerwas like, Why don’t you just skip the whole part where you do all the wrong things and just do the right thing.

SULLIVANThank you. Thank you, editor.

BATUMANAnd then he was like, Of course I’m just joking. He wasn’t joking!

Neither are we. Subscribe now.