This special issue of the Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Interview with Larry Niven features an interview with the best-selling science fiction author, Larry Niven, in which he discusses the writing craft, the life of a professional writer, and his unique science fiction style. Niven's Ringworld has won many prestigious international awards, and his newly released collection of short stories, The Draco Tavern is one of the best recent examples of structured, literary science fiction. The issue also includes a short story from the editor, Anna Faktorovich, "Coal and Rice" about a struggling Chinese rice farmer and a wealthy, corrupt Chinese businessman. In addition, the first scholarly essay in the volume is from an NPR employee, who's finishing his PhD at Brown. Byrd McDaniel critically evaluates the modern paintings of Kehinde Wiley, a Yale MFA graduate painter whose work has been displayed at some of the top museums around the world. Wiley's painting is also on this issue's cover.

Author Biography

Anna Faktorovich is the Director of the Anaphora Literary Press. Faktorovich has over three years of full-time English college teaching experience. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism and an M.A. in Comparative Literature. Her Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson critical book has been published with McFarland in February, 2013. Her new book, Formulaic Writing within the Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Religious and Mystery Genres, will be released with McFarland in April, 2014. She published two poetry collections Improvisational Arguments (Fomite Press, 2011) and Battle for Athens (Anaphora, 2012). She illustrated, designed and wrote the poetry for an illustrated children's book, The Sloths and I (Anaphora, 2013). She won the MLA Bibliography and the Brown University Military Collection fellowships.