A Conversation with John Keene

We spoke for an hour or so on Friday, October 26, during Keene’s time as a Rea Visiting Writer at the University of Virginia. Three weeks earlier, Keene had been awarded a 2018 MacArthur “genius” grant, the latest in a long list of awards he has received. In 2016, Counternarratives won the American Book Award and Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and earned the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses for the book’s UK publisher.