Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood's most recent collection of very short fiction is Phantom Energy.


what are you reading now

The Intruders by Michael Marshall


classic you’ve been meaning to read

I always find this an interesting question, because every person has a different idea of what "classic" means. But for me, there are a few "classics" I've been meaning to read: American Pastoral by Philip Roth, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins, The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor (I have read Everything That Rises Must Converge at least) Underworld by Don DeLillo, Blindness by José Saramago, Clockers by Richard Price, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, just to name a few.


last book you finished in a single sitting

I think it was Mad to Live by Randall Brown.


book you borrowed and never returned

I have three books borrowed from an old English teacher that I haven't returned, not because I don't intend to but just because I haven't gotten around to reading them yet: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson, How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn, and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

Kilgore Trout


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I don't have a coffee table, but even if I did I'm not sure I would be inclined to keep a certain book out to impress people. However, years ago I did get a large hardcover copy for cheap of The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953 thinking it would be kind of neat to have. I mean, the title alone is pretty impressive, no?


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

This is the part where everybody always says Tin House, right? Well, I guess I might as well say Tin House, too.


best thing you’ve read online recently

A lot of online stuff I Instapaper on my iPad and come back to months later, and somewhat recently I read and enjoyed "How to Win an Unwinnable War" by Austin Bunn that was in the 2011 fiction issue of The Atlantic. (I know, it was print, too, but I read it via online.)


most anticipated upcoming release

I loved Middlesex, so I was really looking forward to the new one by Jeffrey Eugenides but have heard mixed things, so I'm not really in any hurry to check it out. But the new Stephen King is out, so that will probably be the next book I read.


recommended reading list:


Writers Writing about Writers (the Stephen King Novelist-As-Protagonist Edition, Not Counting Short Stories)

- Salem's Lot

- The Shining

- It

- Misery

- The Dark Half

- Secret Window, Secret Garden

- Desperation

- Bag of Bones

- Cell (protag is graphic novelist)

- Lisey's Story (protag's dead husband was novelist)

(did I miss any?)

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay lives and writes in the Midwest. Her first book, Ayiti (Artistically Declined Press), is out now.


what are you reading now

I read multiple books at the same time. I'm reading Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic, Brand New Cherry Flavor by Todd Grimson, Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron, The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein, Circus in Winter by Cathy Day, Cream City Review 35.1, application letters for a poetry position my department is trying to fill, PANK submissions, Bluestem submissions, etc etc etc.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

So damn many. I feel woefully under read and so many of the classics are just missing from my book vocabulary. At the top of the list, I'd start with the Russians.


last book you finished in a single sitting

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan


book you borrowed and never returned

American Normal by Lawrence Osborne


favorite book from childhood

Little House on the Prairie, all of them, and they remain my favorites.


most treasured book in your collection

Must I choose just one? The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I don't think that far in advance. My coffee table always has a shocking pile of books on it anyway but they're just what I'm currently working through or have received in the mail.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

This is a very difficult question. I want to say the magazine I edit but that would be cheating. I'm going to go with Hobart. I am never disappointed.


best thing you’ve read online recently

"Assault on the Minibar" by Dubravka Ugresic on The Paris Review blog.


most anticipated upcoming release

I'm looking forward to Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Lidia Yuknavitch's new novel, Threats by Amelia Gray, and The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus.


recommended reading list:


Books I Insist You Read Immediately Because They Are Scorchingly Good


- Play As It Lays by Joan Didion

- Green Girl by Kate Zambreno

- The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

- Game of Secrets by Dawn Tripp

- Circling the Drain by Amanda Davis

- Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

- Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

- Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is the author of seven books, most recently the story collection God Bless America.


what are you reading now

White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby. It's a novel about the famous French chef Escoffier, and it includes about a zillion descriptions of drool-inducing meals. Just a total blast of literary food porn.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

My wife read Anna Karenina last year and it's been sitting on our bedstand ever since, staring at me in that guilt-provoking way that classics have. Of course, I'm so poorly read that this feeling -- of being guilt-tripped by a book I should have read -- is perpetual.


last book you finished in a single sitting

Busy Monsters by William Giraldi. I first read it in manuscript three years ago. Turned to my wife. Said, "Jesus. This guy is on fire." The prose is totally electric. I also read most of Mr. Bridge the other day. I was looking for a particular episode and I just got sucked right into the sadness and the beauty.


book you borrowed and never returned

I've "borrowed" a lot of Bibles from various hotels. But I'll go with Birds of America, the Lorrie Moore collection. I cadged it off a friend of mine in grad school and hung on to it just long enough to get out of town. Thanks, John. And sorry.


most treasured book in your collection

Without a doubt, the first edition of the John Williams' novel Stoner, sent to me by John Williams' widow. That's one of my favorite books on earth. I'm not one of those guys who gets all fetishistic over first editions -- it's the story that matters. But with this book, whose first edition was so overlooked, it feels special.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

We don't have a coffee table -- our children would destroy it -- but okay. Lemme think. How about Tantric Sex for Dummies? That would totally impress me. I'm sure I've been guilty of planting fancy books. The problem is I'm always scared someone will ask me about them. Then I have to start lying.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Dude. You're killing me. I've got to choose a favorite? I definitely love the journals that do lots of different genres and weird stuff, such as Tin House and The Normal School. But I also love the more traditional ones like Ploughshares or The Southern Review. Sorry to equivocate.


best thing you’ve read online recently

This: http://therumpus.net/2011/11/the-lonely-voice-13-walser-on-mission-street

Peter Orner is a fantastic writer of stories and novels, and the sort of thoughtful fan who makes me believe in criticism. The Rumpus always has awesome stuff. They manage to write about culture, and literary culture in particular, without dipping into that too-cool-for-school snarkiness.


most anticipated upcoming release

I'm looking forward to the new Vonnegut bio, And So It Goes, by Charles Shields. I'm a huge Vonnegut fan, and there's never been a definitive bio. He had a fascinating life. I can't wait to check this out.


recommended reading list:


Books You've Probably Never Heard Of That Will Blow Your Heart Up


- The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist

- Like Love, But Not Exactly by François Camoin

- The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuściński

- Stoner by John Williams

- Torch by Cheryl Strayed

- My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up by Stephen Elliot

- Lighthouse: A Trifle by William Monahan

- Living Room War by Michael Arlen

Ryan Call

Ryan Call is the author of The Weather Stations (Caketrain). He and his wife live in Houston.


what are you reading now

I'm reading Tongue Party by Sarah Rose Etter.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

I've been meaning to read Crime and Punishment.


last book you finished in a single sitting

I don't think I've finished a book in a single sitting in a very long time, so this might not be an accurate answer; however, the last book I remember reading in a single sitting was Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford. I read it over two years ago, but I still remember what it felt like to encounter it all in one night.


book you borrowed and never returned

Before I traveled to Russia with my wife and her family, I tried to read as much Russian literature as possible. One of my students at the time lent me We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I still haven't returned this book, and I probably won't ever, as I'm no longer teaching at the University of Houston and I've lost touch with all my students.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I've never done this with a coffee table book, I guess, though I once 'conveniently' left a book in my car on my way to pick up a friend to go play darts. The book was In the Train by Christian Oster, published by Object Press. My friend picked it up and read through it a little, and then asked if he could borrow it. He and I had talked quite a lot about Jean-Philippe Toussaint, so I figured he'd like Oster.


most scribbled-ridden book in your collection

I think White Noise by Don DeLillo has the most scribbles, but I no longer write in my books.


strangest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

This is probably not the strangest dream I've had in this category, but one night earlier this week, I had a dream that I had moved into the garrett in Thomas Bernhard's Correction, and in the dream, I opened a trap door in the floor of this garrett one night, and I fell into the hole, and then zombies appeared from somewhere and attacked me and then the dream turned into a shooting video game and then I woke up.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I have a handful that I love, but if I had to pick one, I would pick Caketrain.


most anticipated upcoming release

Well, it's no longer upcoming, but I remember feeling excited about Nothing by Blake Butler.


recommended reading list:


Weather Passages, A Meteorological Reading List


- The first paragraph of The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

- "Bird to the North, Act of Wind" from The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus

- Any of the intermediary chapters, especially "Flesh," in Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

- The second paragraph from "Cold France and Other Permutations" by Wythe Marschall (published in McSweeney's #12)

- The last thirty sentences of Molloy by Samuel Beckett

- "Crutches Used as Weapon" from Super Flat Times by Matthew Derby

- Any of Shelp's weather reports in Motorman by David Ohle

- Light Boxes by Shane Jones

- Log Of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford

- "The Pedersen Kid" by William Gass

Laura Ellen Scott

Laura Ellen Scott’s debut novel Death Wishing, a comic fantasy set in post-Katrina New Orleans, is presented by Ig Publishing both in print and as an e-book. Her collection of short creepy fiction called Curio, is offered as an online experience from Uncanny Valley Press.


what are you reading now

Aside from 62 online magazines looking for Wigleaf Top 50 contenders, student fiction, Death Valley websites, and The Morgan Messenger? Right now I’m reading Michele Reale’s Lungfish. I bought Kathy Fish’s Wildlife but lost it almost immediately. Until it turns up I’ll adopt my go-to assumption that the ladies who clean my home every two weeks stole it. Along with the second Wii controller and my gray boots.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Very few classics call to me anymore, but perhaps The Woman in White? There are so many classic mysteries I wish I’d read. I’m envious of the fact that Art Taylor has been reading the complete Sherlock Holmes stories aloud to Tara Laskowski. They’re partners so that’s okay, not weird. But wouldn’t that be cool if we all had an assignment to follow around another writer and read at them from time to time from a prescribed set of works? Whatever we needed, cosmically. Like, you could read Nathaniel West novels to Erin Fitzgerald, and Jason Jordan could follow you around and read Jose Saramago or Erma Bombeck. We’d all fight over Ethel Rohan. I’d probably get Sean Lovelace reading The Minister’s Black Veil over and over till he died of dehydration.


last book you finished in a single sitting

I’m a slow and lazy reader, but I read Robert Swartwood’s The Serial Killer’s Wife in two sittings—would have been one, but I like to sleep. The last, actual single sitting read? As a grown-up, only short stuff like Mel Bosworth’s When the Cats Razzed the Chickens and Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom. Haven’t read Freight yet. I used to read Lia Matera’s Laura Di Palma mysteries in one go, but she stopped writing those. I did a lot of one-sit-reads as a kid, and I especially remember reading the last page of Anne of Green Gables just as the sun came up.


book you borrowed and never returned

China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. I got through about half the book and started stealing from it. That happens a lot, the best stuff I don’t finish. I pillage.


most treasured book in your collection

I’m trying hard not to have a collection anymore, but I’m pretty sentimental about my former students who have turned out to be productive little creeps. Genevieve Valentine has published widely and her latest is a steampunk novel called Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti. Jacqueline Bowen is the author of another steampunk effort, Seven Stop Ride Across the Cosmos. And Sarah Boyle’s debut is a vampire novel called Right of Blood. I claim no direct influence on these works.


if you could write yourself into any novel

Any of The Three Investigators books, but preferably The Mystery of The Talking Skull.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

If by impress we can also mean repel, then The God Delusion. We’re in the DC metro area, so we do security clearance interviews once in a while, and on those occasions we make sure The Communist Manifesto is tucked away out of sight.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

BARRELHOUSE, natch!


best thing you’ve read online recently

Steve Himmer’s essay “Making Room for Readers,” on The Millions.


most anticipated upcoming release

Lotsa murder books. If Erin Kelly grows into her own as we all suspect, then her sophomore effort The Dark Rose should be a knockout. I will read anything Kate Atkinson or Tana French put out, and I heard that French is working on a genuine follow-up to In the Woods. Apparently Carol O’Connell’s publishing a new Mallory novel in January, but I’m a bit worried about that. Not really sure what more she can do with Mallory’s high functioning sociopathy.


recommended reading list:


Things I Won’t Read But Wish You Would


Promising cheap/free titles from the Kindle pile:

- Cornstalked by Patricia Bremer. Product description includes the line: “The author does an excellent job of placing the reader in the cornfield ...”

- Love Me if You Must by Nicole Young. My guess is it’s written from a cat’s pov.

- Her Very Special Robot by Ann Jacobs (from the Naughty Nooners series)

- The New Yorker

Jesús Ángel García

Jesús Ángel García is the author of badbadbad—a novel, soundtrack and documentary film. He lives in San Francisco and is currently editing his second novel, Down in a Hole, when not fantasizing about starting a thrash band with an accordionist and a fiddle player.


what are you reading now

The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich. I’m a hipster. I read the books everyone’s talking about a year (or years) after the fact. I’m also dipping in and out of the Noir at the Bar collection, a kind of amazing new (yes, new!) anthology edited by Jed Ayers and Scott Phillips, only available at Subterranean Books. “Pig Helmet and the Wall of Life” by Pinckney Benedict is the must-read hallucinatory tale, where gravity-defying motorbikes meet serpents and the Scriptures.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Crime and Punishment and Gorky’s Mother. There was a time when I overdosed on Russian fiction and had to cut myself off before getting to these two. I know I’ll read Mother eventually, though I may never return to Dostoyevsky. I think I’m done with old-school soap operas.


last book to make you laugh out loud

Emergency Room Wrestling by the Dirty Poet.


book you’d like to see made into a film

Operation Wandering Soul by Richard Powers. A film that manages to translate this prose to the screen would be a heartbreaking epic freakshow.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

Orlando, no question. No limits on time and sex = endless opportunity for trouble-making.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

The Human Pony, though impress probably isn’t the word. Provoke is more to the point. O, the conversations this book started…


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Zoetrope or Tin House - world-class editorial and design standards, ideal combo of smart and fun.


best thing you’ve read online recently

3 Poems by Mark Leidner in Action, Yes. I like how Leidner controls the narrative voice in these pieces without making it feel tight. His rhythms are powerful music, too. I like the velocity of the last one, the beauty of the love poem, the love, and the provocative politics of the first.


most anticipated upcoming release

Michael Ondaatje’s new novel, The Cat's Table, which came out last month. I’ll probably read it a year from now, though I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I’ve read most of Ondaatje’s fiction, a lot of his poetry, some of his non-fiction. I feel like he does this thing - I don’t know what it is - that makes his prose lift off the page. There’s a levitating quality to his language. Anil’s Ghost, The English Patient and Coming Through Slaughter are essential. I don’t know what the new book’s about. I don’t need to know.


recommended reading list:


Bent-Beautiful Books Too Little Talked About in 2011 by Authors Not Born in the United States Nor Residing in NYC


- Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson

- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

- The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau

- Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

- A Night of Serious Drinking by Rene Daumal

- Not Always So by Shunryu Suzuki

- The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

- Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

- G. by John Berger

- Destroy, She Said by Marguerite Duras

Kathy Fish

Kathy Fish's flash fiction collection Wild Life is available now from Matter Press. Another collection of short fiction, Together We Can Bury It, is forthcoming later this year from Cow Heavy Books.


what are you reading now

This is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks and it's as great as everyone says it is.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Ulysses by James Joyce (I've tried, many times)


last book you finished in a single sitting

We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry


if you could write yourself into any novel or short story

I'd love to write myself into Anne of Green Gables so I could see Prince Edward Island in the springtime.


most treasured book in your collection

Anna Karenina - I think I've read it four times now. Feels different every time. My copy is a paperback and it's kind of falling apart.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I'm going to cheat a little and say Quick Fiction. I subscribed for years and have kept every issue. I was deeply sad to see it go. One of my current favorites is Ninth Letter.


best thing you’ve read online recently

"Three Apocalypses" by Lucy Corin in Wigleaf


most anticipated upcoming release

Books by friends who are amazing writers. Jeff Landon has two books coming out very soon, Emily Avenue from Fast Forward Press and Truck Dancing from Matter Press. Also, Myfanwy Collins's debut novel Echolocation is coming out early next year from Engine Books.


recommended reading list:


Weird Chicks


Once, a writer/editor I really like and respect responded to one of my stories by saying, "You're a weird chick, Fish." I loved that! I love weirdness in all its varied forms: dark, surreal, funny, edgy, odd. So the theme of my recommended reading list is "Weird Chicks." I have huge admiration and affection for the following books and their writers. I recommend them highly:

- Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray

- Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

- Tongue Party by Sarah Rose Etter

- Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter

- You Must Be This Happy to Enter by Elizabeth Crane

- Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories by Carson McCullers

- The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

- Honored Guest by Joy Williams

Ryan Ridge

Ryan Ridge is the author of the story collection Hunters & Gamblers and the poetry collection Ox. In 2013, Mud Luscious Press will publish his novel(la) American Homes. He lives in Long Beach, California, and is working on the second book of his American trilogy, American Dreams. He can be found online at www.ryanridge.com


what are you reading now

I’m reading Charles Portis’s first novel Norwood. It’s got it all: ex-marines, circus midgets, portly sisters, psychic chickens, etc. Awesome characters all around. Lean prose. Amazing dialogue. Portis gets things moving and keeps them moving. One of the all time great “road novels.”


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, but I’m saving it for my deathbed.


last book to make you laugh out loud

Mike Topp’s Sasquatch Stories made me LOL a lot.


book you borrowed and never returned

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman


strangest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

Recently I dreamed Donald Barthelme and I were coaching a high school cross country team. We just sat in the bleachers the whole time, smoking cigarettes and drinking gin. Telling the kids to run faster at irregular intervals. I think the dream was about teaching pedagogies.


most scribble-ridden book in your collection

My copy of Airships by Barry Hannah has a second book in the margins.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I don’t think I’ve ever done this (consciously at least), but on my coffee table now I have: William Eggleston’s Guide, Three Hundred Years of American Painting by Alexander Eliot, Where Children Sleep by James Mollison, The Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware, as well as a couple old Time Life books (one on mountains and the other is about The Gold Rush). Are you impressed? A little bit?


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Tough question. There are so many good journals. I’d say Artifice if I had to chose just one. Their aesthetic resonates with me. I think they’re my favorite. No one else is doing anything like them. They're originals.


best thing you’ve read online recently

Stoked Volume II is incredible. Every piece is worth reading.


most anticipated upcoming release

Roxane Gay’s Ayiti (Artistically Declined Press)

Michael Bible’s Simple Machines (Awesome Machine Press)

Mel Bosworth’s Freight (Folded Word Press)

Derek White’s Ark Codex 0 (Calamari Press)


recommended reading list:


Titular Characters I’d Invite to a Cookout


- Ray by Barry Hannah

- Fay by Larry Brown

- Motorman by David Ohle

- Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

- Notable American Women by Ben Marcus

- Willard and His Bowling Trophies by Richard Brautigan

- Don Quixote by Cervantes

- Norwood by Charles Portis

- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Brian Oliu

Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His work appears in Hotel Amerika, Puerto del Sol, DIAGRAM, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. His book So You Know It's Me was released in June 2011 by Tiny Hardcore Press.


what are you reading now

I'm halfway through Moonwalking With Einstein, a book about a guy who tries to win the United States Memory Championship. Some fascinating stuff about how our brains retain information--my next project is about that, so it's been a perfect read.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Never read any Umberto Eco. I feel as if I should?


last book you finished in a single sitting

I read The Year of Magical Thinking each year in one sitting, usually while on a plane (for maximum effect). Reading about death and coping while being crammed into a weirdly sterile space 30,000 feet in the air is an otherworldly experience.


book you borrowed and never returned

I borrowed a copy of Very Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark when I was in middle school. I'm usually pretty good about getting books back to people. At least, I think.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

All of the Michael Martones in Michael Martone by Michael Martone.


book you would like to see made into a video game

Jesus, did you ask the right person this question? So many. I mean, The Iliad/The Odyssey/The Aeneid is an obvious choice and I can't believe we haven't done that yet. A very strange action/bend. I think an RPG of Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World would be spectacular--dual worlds, lots of weird creepy things, sewers, etc. All of Murakami's books would be good RPGs/Shadowgate-esque games. A slow-moving Ico-esque 1984 could be terrifying.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

At my old house my roommate had a book of Banksy that I would pretend to know a great deal about when we had company over.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Just one? I'd have to go with Ninth Letter. Gorgeous design and the writing is always innovative and fun, with a lot of great writers; both established and new.


best thing you’ve read online recently

The Masked Man/aka David Shoemaker has a Dead Wrestler of the Week column on Deadspin. It's some of the best nonfiction writing you'll read.


most anticipated upcoming release

Very much looking forward to Michael J. Lee's Something in My Eye.

recommended reading list:

Books You Should Never Read at the Bar While Your Friends Are Dancing But You Refuse to Dance


- Epileptic by David B.

- The Changeling by Joy Williams

- Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities by Olena Kalytiak Davis

- My Happy Life by Lydia Millet

- Ray by Barry Hannah

- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

- Chimera by John Barth

Sarah Rose Etter

Sarah Rose Etter’s chapbook, Tongue Party, is now available from Caketrain Press. You can find out more at: www.sarahroseetter.com.


what are you reading now

There is No Year by Blake Butler


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Everything ever written, honestly. But lately, Infinite Jest.


last book you finished in a single sitting

Us by Michael Kimball


book you borrowed and never returned

The Best of Roald Dahl


most scribble-ridden book in your collection

The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer


if you could write yourself into any short story

A Manual for Sons by Donald Barthelme


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I’m not much of a books on coffee table kind of person, more of a books stacked on the bedside table kind of person. I don’t think I’ve ever planted anything – but if I was going to plant something, I’d probably just put seven copies of Ovid on the table, see where that got the conversation going, you know?


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

AHHH! I’d have to go with Caketrain. And not just because they are my soulmates and publisher. Their issues just consistently blow my face off.


best thing you’ve read online recently

“Me and Gin” by Lindsay Hunter in Barrelhouse.


most anticipated upcoming release

The French translation of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.


recommended reading list:


Break-Up Reading List


- And The Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave

- The Rules of Attraction by Brett Easton Ellis

- Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

- Pimp by Iceberg Slim

- Selected Stories of Robert Walser

- Tough Guys Don’t Dance by Norman Mailer

- Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

- Crimes of Passion by Marquis De Sade

Tom Williams

Tom Williams is the author of The Mimic's Own Voice (Main Street Rag Publishing Co). He has also published numerous stories, reviews, and essays, most recently in RE:AL, The Collagist, Booth and Slab. An associate editor of American Book Review, he will become Chair of English at Morehead State University this summer.


what are you reading now

A whole lot: I finished Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water and found it the bravest memoir I've ever read. Haven't read a whole lot of memoirs, though. But if everyone wrote one like Lidia, there'd be a lot less complaining about the genre. I just finished an ARC of Billy Giraldi's Busy Monsters; it's slated to come out in the summer and it's hilarious and sad and heart warming all at once. I've moved on to JA Tyler's Inconceivable Wilson and Caleb J Ross's Stranger Will. And I try to read one story from Al Heathcock's Volt a week; they're just too bruising to read one after the other. Plus, Phong Nguyen's Memory Sickness and Brian Allen Carr's Short Bus just came in the mail.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

The Education of Henry Adams is one I've opened time and time again and always gotten distracted by something else. It seems one of those books that a writer and an English professor (which I sometimes am) should have completed.


last book you finished in a single sitting

It's fairly recent and it's Ben Tanzer's You Can Make Him Like You--the novel combines both an interesting subject matter/plot and the kind of treatment (short, intense chapters, each almost a story on its own) that kept it in my hands on a fairly long flight from Austin to DC.


book you borrowed and never returned

Call me in a week to see if I got back to the former president of my about to be former university his copy of Peter Hoeg's Tales of the Night.

For sure, I have never returned Paul Churchland's Matter and Consciousness, which is a fascinating book that I borrowed (read "stole") from my best friend, a philosopher of mind. I think the penalty I'm paying is that I can only understand about a tenth of the book, though it has all matter of wonderful phrases in it: my favorite is "my love weighs twenty grams."


strangest book you’ve ever read

Djuna Barnes, Nightwood. It felt like reading another language with a fever.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

I suspect Ray Midge would have the best route, Dean Moriarty would get me there the fastest, and Jay Gatsby would have the coolest car. But I really think the best partner for such an endeavor would have to be, for me, Henry Wiggen, from Mark Harris's Bang the Drum Slowly, because he shares with us the wisest of words at the end of that wonderful novel (and equally good film): "From here on in I rag nobody."


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

Mine: The Mimic's Own Voice. My wife still made me take out the garbage.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Barrelhouse: Because they've had the good sense to publish my work twice (plus mention me and Matt Bell in their power ballad), they've lived up to their promise of supplying free beer for life, and because in each issue Dave, Aaron, Dan, Joe, Matt and Mike have the kind of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and a comic that demonstrates a healthy love affair with letters but also the kind of wiseguy skepticism that keeps things lively and relevant.


best thing you’ve read online recently

Matt Bell's National Short Story Month commentary. I wish I believed that Matt slept. But he can't possibly have the time.


most anticipated upcoming release

See above: Giraldi, William. Busy Monsters. I've already read it, but I'm hopeful that the book breaks out in a big way. Billy deserves it.


recommended reading list:


Multicultural Literature They're Not Reading in Multicultural Literature Courses


The sad thing to me, as an academic, is how quickly canonized and codified the reading list for Multicultural Lit courses have become. Worse, books seem to get selected not for their aesthetic achievement but for how they can spell out clearly for even the dimmest of students clear cut, capital P Problems. I'd want to make things fun, throw in some cool shit, like:


- Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

- Bone by Fae Myenne Ng

- The Magic of Blood by Dagoberto Gilb

- The Fast Red Road by Stephen Graham Jones

- Corregidora by Gayl Jones

- The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas by Reginald McKnight

- Her Wild American Self by M. Evelina Galang

Liven things up a little, you know?

Seth Fried

Seth Fried's short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Tin House, One Story, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and Vice. His debut short story collection, The Great Frustration, was published in May 2011 by Soft Skull Press.


what are you reading now

I am just about to finish The Book of Imaginary Beings by Borges. The last third of my forthcoming collection is a bestiary of fake microscopic organisms, and so someone recommended I check out this Borges book. It would have been an amazing resource while I was writing my book, but unfortunately I came to it a little late.

Even if you're not writing a bestiary, I think it's a phenomenal book. In two or three hundreds words Borges will provide you with amazing insight on really complex and ambiguous creatures.

A favorite passage from the book’s description of the chimera: "[...] all authorities agree that the monster originally came from Lycia, where there is a volcano that bears its name. The base of the volcano is infested with serpents; on its sides there are meadows where goats pasture; and on the top, flames shoot forth and lions have their dens. The Chimera might, then, be a metaphor for that wonderful mountain."


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Every so often I tell myself that I am going to read Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, and then I just straight up don't. On several occasions I have given the first five pages a very close and enthusiastic read. However, I inevitably end up being sidetracked by some other book that isn't a 1400 page prescientific treatise on melancholy.


last book you finished in a single sitting

The Grand Hotels of Joseph Cornell by Robert Coover


book you borrowed and never returned

In undergrad a good friend lent me Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits and I never gave it back. In my defense, it's not like I failed to return it out of laziness. I loved the book and was deliberately trying to steal it.


most treasured book in your collection

My copy of Catch-22 is the first really important book I ever read. I've had it since I was about 14 and it looks like hell.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

Qfwfq from Cosmicomics and t zero. He was around for The Big Bang. He has taken a rowboat to the moon. He was alive when birds were discovered. He was once a dinosaur. Those are all qualities I look for in a traveling companion.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I remember doing a lot of showing off when I first read Foucault’s Madness and Civilization. I haven't picked it up in a while, but back then I remember finding it ridiculously dense and challenging. I might even be trying to show off by mentioning it now.


collected stories of

Kafka


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

One Story


best thing you’ve read online recently

When I was attending undergrad, my friend and I used to go to art museums and base stories on the paintings. The title story of my collection was inspired by a painting called The Garden of Eden at The Toledo Museum of Art. However, probably my favorite story from that series was one my friend wrote called "The Bored Madonna" (Moon Milk Review).


most anticipated upcoming release

Steven Millhauser's We Others is going to be amazing. Also, I'm really looking forward to Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All The Time.


Recommended Reading List:


Mega Anthology


There is a mega anthology I am constantly putting together in my head. It changes all the time, but right now it would include the following stories:

- "The Adventure of the Bather" by Italo Calvino (Difficult Loves)

- "The Sandman" by Donald Barthelme (Amateurs)

- "Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses" by Rick Bass (The Watch)

- "The Rememberer" by Aimee Bender (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt)

- "Partisans" by Karl Taro Greenfeld (One Story)

- "Kafka Cooks Dinner" by Lydia Davis (Varieties of Disturbance)

- "Bigfoot Stole My Wife" by Ron Carlson (The News of the World)

- "The Guest" by Stanley Elkin (Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers)

- "Pet Milk" by Stuart Dybek (The Coast of Chicago)

- "The Amazing Drowning Woman" by Brent Van Horne (The Milan Review)

- "Cockroaches in Autumn" by Lydia Davis (Break It Down)

- "Carry Me Home, Sisters of Saint Joseph" by Marie-Helene Bertino (American Short Fiction)

- "Realism" by Charles Yu (Third Class Superhero)

- "Box" by J. David Stevens (The Paris Review)

- "The Dinosaurs" by Italo Calvino (Cosmicomics)

- "The Magic Poker" by Robert Coover (Pricksongs and Descants)

- "Relief" by Peter Ho Davies (The Ugliest House in the World)

- "The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners)

- "This Is a Story About My Friend George, the Toy Inventor" by Grace Paley (Later That Same Day)

- "B Positive" by Michael Czyzniejewski (Elephants in Our Bedroom)

- "Paradise Park" by Steven Millhauser (The Knife Thrower)

- "Ghosting" by John Hodgman (The Paris Review)

- "A Common Misunderstanding" by Franz Kafka (The Complete Stories)

- "Girl and Giraffe" by Lydia Millet (Love in Infant Monkeys)

- "The First Several Hundred Years Following My Death" by Shawn Vestal (Tin House)

- "No Kaddish for Weinstein" by Woody Allen (Without Feathers)

- "Signifying Nothing" by David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)

- "The Joke" by J. David Stevens (Mexico is Missing)

- "The Balloon" by Donald Barthelme (Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts)

- "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Collected Stories)

Brian Allen Carr

Brian Allen Carr is the author of Short Bus (Texas Review Press) and the forthcoming Vampire Conditions (Holler Presents). He edits Dark Sky Press and is assistant editor of Boulevard.


what are you reading now

I just finished Tom Williams's excellent The Mimic’s Own Voice and Scott McClanahan’s Stories V, which is a killer read. I’ve been reading a lot of noir. I’m not sure why. Thompson, Cain, Hammet. I’m always reading some Dickens. I’m fixing to re-read Great Expectations. I really want to get the new Deb Olin Unferth, but I’m so behind in my reading that I’m not sure when I’d get to it.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

I need to read Proust. It’s sitting on my shelf at work. I read more classics than contemporary, but the great books seem to choose their own time to be read--at least in my case. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to In Search of Lost Time, but I hope to. Though, I think the translation I have is Remembrance of Things Past.


last book you finished in a single sitting

I think it was The Postman Always Rings Twice. That’s one of my favorite books. So much happens in those 112 pages. And it’s very precise. I’m becoming a great fan of plot. More and more. Sentence fandom is growing boring. Though I say that and then I’ll read something from Jamie Iredell’s The Book of Freaks, or Blake Butler’s There Is No Year, or Amelia Gray’s Museum of the Weird, and I’ll think language is the real direction of our generation. Daniel Woodrell is pretty much who I want to be when I grow up, but whenever I try to do extreme plot driven narratives my writing crumbles. I’d never be able to write a book like James M. Cain did. Quick jabs of plot and panic. I was chatting with Matt Bell recently and I think we both decided that the best thing to be able to write would be 100 page French novels. Well, he said it, I just agreed. Like, say, The Stranger. A book which was inspired by The Postman. . . Or, what might even be better than that, The Little Prince. I can read that book once a month. There’s another great little book by Mexican/American writer Tomás Rivera called . . . y no se lo trago la tierra. Which, in English, is usually translated as . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. That book is mammoth, though not enough people read it. There was this book that Archipelago released last year (I think) called Plants Don’t Drink Coffee by Unai Elorriaga, that I also read in a single sitting, and which made me cry. But, I think that . . . y no se lo trago la tierra, The Little Prince, and Plants Don’t Drink Coffee could all be considered young adult fiction, or even children’s books. I like emotions, it seems.


book you borrowed and never returned

Mario Vargas Llosa’s Who Killed Palomino Molero? I borrowed it from my brother shortly before he died. I really, really wish I could give it back to him. What’s kind of weird is that the book’s about this really beautiful bolero singer who is murdered. It’s a mystery. My brother was beautiful, and the events surrounding his death are shrouded with uncertainty. To this day we don’t know if he was murdered or committed suicide. I need Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma on the case, because they found Palomino’s killer. And it only took them 150 pages. It’s been 10 years, and I don’t know shit.


most treasured book in your collection

My grandfather gave me a big picture book of Edgar Alan Poe stories and poems when I was six years old. It’s so awesome. There are definitions in the margins, and the poems tell you how to decode them. I love Poe. Recently I realized that he would have had a southern drawl, and that made me love him more. Read “Alone” with a southern drawl. Don’t imagine Poe as an emo kid. Imagine him as a whiskey-drinking redneck.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

Lolita. Who else?


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

Mine?


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Probably Hobart. Aaron Burch knows what’s up. His books are getting progressively more beautiful, as are the issues of the mag. I’ve got a story coming out in issue 13 that I’m very stoked about. I think it was my sixth attempt to place a story with them. It was the most excited I’d been about an acceptance in a bit.


best thing you’ve read online recently

Stephen Graham Jones’s “Modern Love” over at Everyday Genius is insane, but I guess that came out a bit ago, and it’s just that I re-read it often. Jensen Beach had a story at BULL a while back that was also brilliant. Um, I don’t know. Oh, Tim Jones-Yelvington’s “Clean Babies” at HTMLGIANT was very entertaining.


most anticipated upcoming release

I’m really excited about Mel Bosworth’s Freight. I’m also looking forward to the new Patrick deWitt. I want to read Seth Fried’s story collection. I’m really interested to see Amelia Gray’s debut novel, Threats. We had her down for a reading at South Texas College, where I teach, and she gave us a selection of it, and it sounded superb.


recommended reading list:


Post-Modern Mexican-American Titles That More People Should Read


- The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuna by Dagoberto Gilb

- . . . y no se lo trago la tierra by Tomás Rivera

- The Valley by Rolando Hinojosa

- Martin; And, Meditations on the South Valley by Jimmy Santiago Baca

- Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros (a lot of people actually have read this one, but most likely in the wrong way).

Steve Himmer

Steve Himmer is the author of the novel The Bee-Loud Glade, and editor of the web journal Necessary Fiction. His website is http://www.stevehimmer.com.


what are you reading now

I read about half of Michael Crummey’s novel Galore on an airplane yesterday, and hope to read the second half on the return flight tomorrow. How can you go wrong with a novel of North Atlantic maritime magic realism, full of dead whales, fishing, shipwrecks, and some of my other favorite things? To read about, I mean. I’m not a big fan of dead whales and shipwrecks in real life.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Isabel Colegate’s The Shooting Party, and Heðin Brú The Old Man and His Sons. And maybe Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion.


last book you finished in a single sitting

It was either Chris Bachelder’s new novel Abbott Awaits, or Tim Horvath’s novella Circulation. Both were terrific.


book you borrowed and never returned

A copy of The Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. A friend’s wife lent me a copy and they moved back to Finland before I returned it. Which I feel terrible about, because I can’t stand when a book I lend isn’t returned. I guess my only choice is to take a Finnish vacation so I can return it, right?


most treasured book in your collection

Brian Kiteley’s Still Life With Insects is definitely one of them, because it’s a book I picked up on a whim toward the end of high school (1992, maybe?) and it marked my “discovery” of contemporary fiction. Joy Williams’ Breaking and Entering and Nicholson Baker’s Mezzanine, for the same reason. And there are others I treasure because the memory of where and when I read them comes back so vividly whenever I pick them up, like George Mackay Brown’s Beside the Ocean of Time.


if you could write yourself into any novel

Probably George Mackay Brown’s Greenvoe, even though it doesn’t end well for most of the people in it. The Orkney of his stories is just about my favorite fictional world to daydream about or escape to, and I reread his books more than any others for sentimental reasons bordering on astral projection.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I don’t think I’ve ever done that. I usually have my feet on the coffee table, so there’s not much room for books. But I have put books on my desk at work hoping someone would ask about them. Most recently, my own book, about which I am only the tiniest bit ashamed.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

A couple of years ago, I might have said Isotope, but they’re sadly defunct. So probably Ecotone, or Hawk & Handsaw. I really like journals with a theme or a driving idea, because of the way the whole issue becomes a sustained inquiry and a conversation develops from one issue to the next and the next. On the other hand, there are some themes that grow stale after a single issue, but I won’t name any of those.

best thing you’ve read online recently

I’ve been enjoying New West’s weekend fiction series, particularly Tamara Linse’s story “How To Be A Man.” And it’s heartbreaking, but The Globe & Mail’s recent long article “The Trials of Nunavut: Lament for an Arctic Nation” was an incredible read.


most anticipated upcoming release

Jim Krusoe is one of my favorite writers, so I’m excited for his new novel Toward You, which is already out, I guess, but hasn’t arrived in my mailbox yet. And Laura Ellen Scott’s novel Death Wishing, which I’ve read and can’t wait for other folks to read, too. Same for Robert Kloss’ book coming up from Mud Luscious’ Nephew imprint.


recommended reading list:


Outdoor Novels


I have a habit in my fiction of not letting characters go indoors very often, or at least not into domestic spaces. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure I want to know, either, but here’s my list of novels in which characters don’t go inside much. Alternately, it might be a list of novels in which it turns out characters go inside more often than I remember. One or the other.

- Wild Harbour by Ian Macpherson

- The Hunter by Julia Leigh

- Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams

- Invisible Islands by Angus Peter Campbell

- Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus

- Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg

- The Year of the Hare by Aarto Paasilina

- With by Donald Harrington

- Godric by Frederick Buechner

- Into the Forest by Jean Hegland

- Quarantine by Jim Crace

- Wild Life by Molly Gloss

Jamie Iredell

Jamie Iredell wrote Prose. Poems. a Novel. and The Book of Freaks. He keeps a blog at jamieiredell.blogspot.com.

what are you reading now

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four for school (I'm teaching it). Mike Young's Look! Look! Feathers for fun, and it's way fun. Book I of Adam Novy's The Avian Gospels. The last is in the bathroom, and I often read in the bathroom, but do not usually finish any book in one "sitting."


classic you’ve been meaning to read

The rest of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I've made it through Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove. It's a trek I'm forcing upon myself, but a pleasurable one once I'm immersed.


last book you finished in a single sitting

For prose: Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I read a lot of poetry, and I can get through a collection in one sitting, but I usually like to read a book of poems more than once. The last book of poems that really knocked me out was Joe Hall's Pigafetta is My Wife.


book you borrowed and never returned

Steinbeck's The Long Valley. Sorry Leverett! I'm not sure if you've ever even missed it. But if you do, email me or something and let's meet and I'll give it back. But I won't meet you at that shitty college where we taught together. God, man, if you're still there, so sorry! I mean, I understand that it's a job, of course. But, fuck. Now that I'm teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four, that place was like Oceania--totally fucked.


strangest book you’ve ever read

Tristram Shandy? Maybe. Evan Dara's The Lost Scrapbook I thought was "difficult" when I first read it. Maybe I wouldn't think that now, since that was about ten years ago. The Old Testament is pretty crazy. My students never seem to realize that, and I'm sure they think I'm blasphemous when I say that it's nuts. I teach in Atlanta, so Bible Belt. But, the narrative voice changes constantly as a result of multiple authors over (likely) thousands of years of oral tradition, and random insane things happen. God's a dick, the antagonist; I'm rooting for the humans and God keeps stepping in and drowning everyone or sending them to slavery in Egypt. The Old Testament is a nonsensical episodic novel, which makes it awesome. It's probably the biggest influence on my own writing.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

When I was younger, Dean Moriarty, the young Dean Moriarty, not old Dean Moriarty, the one they never found. I don't really do drugs anymore, so I'm not sure I could handle a Dean Moriarty in my old age. Huckleberry Finn would be fun to cruise with. Barry Hannah's Ray, well, see what I said about Dean? What about Dean and Ray together? If I could just watch those two and sit in the back seat, that would be something.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I can't say that I've ever done that, I don't think. I didn't own a coffee table until my wife and I moved in together. We're not that much into impressing anyone, since we're kinda slobs. Books end up on the coffee table because we're too lazy to put them back on the shelf.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Everyone here says Hobart, and I can't disagree: Hobart's the shit. So Hobart. That and New York Tyrant. And PANK.


best thing you’ve read online recently

This, by Pauls Toutonghi


most anticipated upcoming release

Man Martin's Paradise Dogs (from Thomas Dunne Books). That's a bit of a cheat, since I've read it already. So, a book I'm excited about but haven't read or have only read excerpts from: Amelia Grey's Threats.


recommended reading list:


Atlanta Authors

(Not every author currently alive and living in Atlanta, but those whose books come to mind that I think are great. Some of these titles are forthcoming; look for them!)

- Scorch Atlas and There Is No Year by Blake Butler

- Big in Japan by Christopher Bundy

- The Greek Gods as Telephone Wires and Elapsing Speedway Organism and Ten Pins, Ten Frames and Glass Is Really a Liquid by Bruce Covey

- Slouching in the Path of a Comet and Letter to So and So from Wherever by Mike Dockins

- Days of the Endless Corvette and Paradise Dogs by Man Martin

- Selected Adult Lessons by Amy McDaniel (unfortunately sold out, but more will be coming from Amy for sure)

- Land O'Goshen by Charles McNair

- Weed Over Flower by Jenny Sadre-Orafai

- Flowing in the Gossamer Fold by Ben Spivey

By Atlantans-for-the-moment:

- The Difficult Farm and The Trees, The Trees by Heather Christle

- Fireproof Swan (also sold out, I think) and The Black Forest by Christopher DeWeese

Roy Kesey

Roy Kesey is the author of the short story collection All Over, the novella Nothing in the World, a historical guide to the city of Nanjing, and a new novel called Pacazo. His work has appeared in more than eighty magazines, and in several anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. He has been awarded two Pushcart Prize Special Mentions, the 2008 Missouri Review Editors’ Prize, and a 2010 NEA fellowship. He currently lives in Peru with his wife and children.


what are you reading now

Mario Vargas Llosa's El sueño del celta, which has the amazing real life of Roger Casement at its core, but the writing is lazy, lazy, lazy. It's kind of hard to believe MVLL himself wrote it, as opposed to maybe his intern's assistant's intern. I'd have quit reading days ago, but my kids gave it to me for Christmas, so...

Also reading George Steiner's After Babel, which is extraordinary, and I'm just now starting Hamsun's Hunger, which otherwise would have been the answer to the next question.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I want to, I really want to, but that's got to be most of a million words. Dang, man!


last book you finished in a single sitting

Pola Oloixarac's Las teorías salvajes. A fun, smart, strange book. The first of a good many from her, I'm guessing.


book you borrowed and never returned

Do I do that? I don't think I do that. But as long as we're on the topic, Hey, dude-I-met-in-Guatemala-in-1994-who-promised-to-mail-me-back-my-copy-of-Concluding-Unscientific-Postscript-to-the-Philosophical-Fragments, hie thee to a damn post office already.


most treasured book in your collection

I also don't do that, at least not usually. I was deeply bummed, though, to see that my copy of the Lane translation of One Thousand and One Nights was in the only box of books that got ruined in the course of our move from China back to Peru via the States. My grandma gave me that book. Damn.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

A third thing I don't do. My wife would so kick my ass.


if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

It would have to be someone I could trust, someone who'd have my back if we got into trouble, someone with strong language skills and wide-ranging scientific knowledge, because I just decided that this road trip is going to be from Shishmaref to Ushuaia. Also it would be awesome if they had a plane, in case the car breaks down.

Even better: an invisible plane.

And a golden lasso.

And that leaves just one person.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Oh man. Hard. But okay: Hobart. It's just never not great.

No, hold on. You know what? I reject the premise. Thus: Ninth Letter and McSweeney's and The Paris Review and Tin House and Subtropics and Southern Review and Quarterly West too, and that's just for starters.


best thing you’ve read online recently

In the midst of a serial link chase I came across this (http://handmaps.org/recent.php?ID=121) maplike object of someone's wedding set-up, and I was just sitting there being quietly charmed by it when my daughter came up behind me and said, “Look at the mermaids!” And that sealed the deal.


most anticipated upcoming release

The first one that comes to mind is David Vann's Caribou Island—Vann's got every bit of Franzen's insight at half the length, plus wolves. And then also, when I heard the rumor that there will be a new Steven Millhauser collection coming out in August, I got a little short of breath.


recommended reading list:


Your Randomly Ordered English-Language Mixed-Genre Peru Shelf Starter Kit


- The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming

- Conversation in the Cathedral and The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa

- The First New Chronicle and Good Government by Felipe Guaman Poma De Ayala

- The Black Heralds by César Vallejo

- Chronicle of San Gabriel by Julio Ramón Ribeyro

- A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique

- The Discovery and Conquest of Peru by Pedro Cieza de León

- Deep Rivers by Jose María Arguedas

- Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

- 5 Meters of Poems by Carlos Oquendo de Amat

- The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega

- The Shining Path by Gustavo Gorriti

- Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality by José Carlos Mariátegui

- The Cardboard House by Martín Adán

- History of the Inca Realm by María Rostworowski

- Broad and Alien is the World by Ciro Alegría

Mike Young

Mike Young is the author of Look! Look! Feathers (Word Riot Press), a story collection, and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (Publishing Genius Press), a poetry collection. He co-edits NOÖ Journal and runs Magic Helicopter Press. Find him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com and outside in Northampton, MA.


what are you reading now

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, though I'm almost done. It's a romp of a book, with well written forays into several genres, and a sort of gleeful relish of each of those genres' cliches that I can really get behind. I think for some reason it's the book I "needed" to read right now: its antic world-building and its forthrightness about "having ideas" reminds me of what's earnest and entertaining about fiction.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Well, for the last two years or so, everybody and their uncle in Western Mass (where I live) has been having a go at Moby Dick, so I guess I should probably get on that mofo.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Motorman by David Ohle, on a bus from Western Mass to NYC. It's as good as everybody says. It reminded me of graffiti on still box cars, and maybe you look into one of the box cars and think you see some kind of weird spaceship, but you're already down the road, and everything in the past is retreating into your imagination.

book you borrowed and never returned

Recently it's Mark Anthony Jarman's Nineteen Knives, which my buddy Gene Kwak lent me in Boston and which he's not getting back anytime soon. This story collection is so good I want to start using the Anthony in the middle of my name too. Stories of woods and hockey and self-destruction and rhapsodic wheeze. All the nouns and verbs have an urge about them. There's a concern for the word that names rather than refers. And the word that nicknames rather than names, which is even better. Even better—to step away from the clinic of language—I feel in the presence of a great bamboozler, one who dazzles while reaching for pretzels.

if you could take a cross-country road trip with any literary character

Charles Portis's character Norwood from the novel of the same name. I think Norwood has the perfect combo of how-to and don't-care.

last reading you attended

Well, it's probably kind of gauche for my answer to be "my own reading har har," but I just read in Boston with Carolyn Zaikowski. She read about the Boston Molasses Disaster on the anniversary of the Molasses Disaster, which we didn't even realize. To celebrate, the world snowed huge heaps of brown sugar. Other than that, I'm going to see Betsy Wheeler and Lisa Olstein read "tonight" (I have no idea when this post will be up, but think of me, dear blog viewer, shivering in my kitchen and staring outside and convincing myself that yes, I am going to walk through all this sleet to a poetry reading, of course I am, no doubt about it, absolutely, yeah, sure, you betcha, come on Mike, it's important, I know it's cold, but you should go, it will be fun, you will see your friends, come on, if you don't go you're a bad person, you're a terrible person, you're a selfish sluice-dipper, what?, no I don't know what that means, I just mean you suck if you don't go to this, go to it, go to it, go to it, okay, good, I'm glad you're going, wasn't that easy).

book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

Can't think of one, but one time I borrowed Sadie Plant's Zeros and Ones to impress a girl and ended up liking the book more than the girl!

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

This is a hard question, but maybe American Short Fiction. They always seem to really nail it. The other problem with this question is there are so many good online journals, which I don't need to subscribe to, but if I were someone forced to pay money for online journals, I would probably pay for elimae or Juked.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Lydia Davis's story "The Professor" about wanting to marry a cowboy. Here it is: http://www.salon.com/june97/mothers/short970620.html. It's from 1997, but I only read it yesterday.

most anticipated upcoming release

Ryan Call's The Weather Stations!

recommended reading list:

Five Books Whose Titles Only Have Three Letters That Would Probably Not Belong Together Anywhere Else Besides Inside This Cheesy List Concept, Which Is a Concept I Came Up With Only After Rejecting the Concept "Books That Have the Word Cheese in the Title" Because I Could Only Think of Linh Dinh's Some Kind of Cheese Orgy

- Bop by Maxine Chernoff

- Ray by Barry Hannah

- U.S.A. by John Dos Passos

- Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer

- Ark by Ronald Johnson

Ethel Rohan

I read and write and live. I get better and better at all three, mostly.

what are you reading now

Brian Evenson’s story collection, The Wavering Knife. It’s haunting, and horrific in parts, and I feel in the weathered hands of a master storyteller.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

It’s a long list. Near the top of that long list is definitely Crime and Punishment. It seems the Russian writers are to me what the Irish writers are to Yiyun Li.


last book you finished in a single sitting

I’m not sure I’ve ever done that, but the most recent book I feel I devoured more than read is a tie between Alissa Nutting’s Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls and Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s.

book you borrowed and never returned

Do not lend books to me. Do not lend anything to me. I am terrible at returning things. It’s not intentional, it’s just not a priority and I’m forgetful. Let’s see, I think the last book I borrowed and never returned would be Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent.


most treasured book in your collection

That’s like asking me which of my two daughters I favor. For the record, the answer to the latter is neither. They’re both fabulous. Back to books. Jesus what a question. Okay, if forced to answer on the threat of death, it’s a tie (don’t laugh) between John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany and Emily Brönte’s Wuthering Heights. Both books had a profound effect on me as a teenager. The passion, compassion, and imagination in these two books filled, flattened, and filled, and filled, flattened, and filled, my heart again and again.

favorite book from childhood

Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other [Fairy] Tales. If you don’t know these stories, read them. “The Happy Prince” still slices at me. Now you all know way too much about me.

book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

No book comes to mind. Fadó, fadó, I did plant myself on a coffee table to impress someone.


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Christ, stand me against a tree and throw knives. It’d be easier. I won’t name one. I will say that every writer should subscribe to at least one lit mag every year. They need us. We need them. In 2010, I subscribed to Ploughshares and I loved every issue. This year I hope to enter the Crazyhorse fiction contest and that includes a year’s subscription.


best thing you’ve read online recently

This is starting to feel painful. Roxane Gay’s blog, I Have Become Accustomed to Rejection, is always a fine read, not to mention her fiction. I just read Andy Roe’s “Where Shall We Meet?” over at Used Furniture Review and loved it. There’s a wealth of excellent writing online. I love that abundance and its accessibility. To hell with the naysayers, as writers and readers, we live in a great time.


most anticipated upcoming release

I recently read Bonnie Jo Campbell has another book forthcoming. I don’t have any details, but I look forward to that. I loved American Salvage.

recommended reading list:

From Some of the Most Recent Titles I've Read, My ALL SHOOK UP Recommended Reading List

- How They Were Found by Matt Bell

- Baby and Other Stories by Paula Bomer

- The Wavering Knife by Brian Evenson (currently reading)

- Words for Empty and Words for Full by Bob Hicok

- Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter

- Venus Drive by Sam Lipsyte

- Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting

Heather Fowler

Heather Fowler received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University. Short fiction is her love letter to the world. She has taught composition, literature, and writing-related courses at UCSD, California State University at Stanislaus, and Modesto Junior College. Her stories have been published online and in print in the US, England, Australia, and India, as well as recently nominated for both the storySouth Million Writers Award and Sundress Publications Best of the Net. She was Guest Editor for Zoetrope All-Story Extra in March and April of 2000. Fowler's story, "Slut," won third prize at the 2000 California Writer's Conference in Monterey. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was recently featured at The Nervous Breakdown, poeticdiversity, and The Medulla Review, and elsewhere. She is Poetry Editor at Corium Magazine. Her debut collection Suspended Heart is now available from Aqueous Books. Please visit her website at www.heatherfowlerwrites.com.

what are you reading now

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God by Etgar Keret

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Metamorphoses by Ovid

last book you finished in a single sitting

The Cat in the Hat—hey, I have kids. Single sitting readings are hard. And yes, I read this to them, for them. I do get rather dramatic in my reading though and both expressed fear I would damage the spine. Otherwise, in adult titles, The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca.

book you borrowed and never returned

Only one? I’m notoriously bad about returns.

if you could write yourself into any short story

Nabokov’s “Sounds.”

favorite book from childhood

Where the Sidewalk Ends—also, a beautifully written and illustrated version of Beauty and the Beast, which I still have and have taped the spine of, sharing it with both my step-daughter and my younger daughter, since it is so beautiful and I will not be parted from this, though cannot locate a newer copy.

book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I don’t do that. If they didn’t like me, they wouldn’t be in my house. :)


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I read many online that don’t require subscriptions, mainly those where I see the work of talented friends appearing, since I don’t want to miss their work. I once subscribed to The New Yorker for a long, long time, but felt guilty that all I ever read was the short fiction and then promptly recycled. Now, I’m signed up for podcasts.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Far too much to quantify here. Lately, I’ve been loving the selections by Necessary Fiction. Night Train is always a good read. So many excellent journals—it’s hard to pinpoint one or two.


most anticipated upcoming release

I’ve been dying to read Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley. It has been released already, but my copy should be coming in the mail any day now—and I’ve been avidly harassing the mailman. He likes me. I think.


recommended reading list:


Timeless Books That Surprise and Quietly Astound

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

- The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

- The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov

- A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes

- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

- Erotic Love Poems from India: Selections from the Amarushataka edited by Andrew Schelling

- The House of Breath by William Goyen

- Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

- Villette by Charlotte Bronte

- The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca by Federico Garcia Lorca