Alissa Nutting

2012-01-20T09:55:00.002-05:00

Alissa Nutting is author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (Starcherone/Dzanc 2010). Her work can be found in journals such as Tin House, BOMB, Fence, and other anthologies, and will appear in the Norton Introduction to Literature (2013). She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at John Carroll University.

what are you reading now

Heart First Into the Forest by Stacy Gnall (OH SO heartbreakingly delicate and moving; each poem is like the skeleton of a pygmy ghost hamster), Habibi by Craig Thompson (incredible graphic novel), The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson (nonfiction, scary truths about your neighbors), Lint by Chris Ware (Lynda Barry called it a must-read), and Phil Metres' new chapbook Abu Ghraib Arias from Flying Guillotine Press--incredibly important and spectacularly designed (handmade paper from a war veteran, and gauze).

classic you’ve been meaning to read

War and Peace. I might cheat and watch the Hepburn movie version of it to try and get motivated. I have a small crush on Ms. Hepburn, only because the photos I see of her all usually involve her wearing gloves, and I like to pretend she has hideous werewolf hands and is tortured by this secret.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Lie to Lie by Lara Bricker (True crime is irresistible); This Young Girl Passing by Donald Breckenridge (delicious, passionate, appropriately macabre); Grow the Tree You've Got by Tom Sturges, which is advice on how to raise teenagers. I don't have teenagers, but I'm trying to raise myself and found this book very valuable. The book really has great rules for how to interact with and be close to anyone, of any age; and Nine Ways to Disappear by Lilli Carre, which made me weep for the better and the best.

book you borrowed and never returned

Only heathens would do such a thing. But hypothetically, a great book of poetry that my dear friend (a great poet himself, and editor of the fantastic literary magazine The Offending Adam (theoffendingadam.com) lent me... Facts for Visitors by Srikanth Reddy (poems).

favorite book from childhood

The Wartville Wizard by Don Madden. A man in a town fond of littering casts a spell so that the trash thrown into nature comes back and sticks to the litterers' bodies. One person has a discarded toilet seat come back and stick to them. When I was five, that was so funny to me I couldn't even handle it. I think I peed a little every time I read that book. Another top favorite is Brava, Strega Nona!, written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola. Think Hurricane Katrina, but with delicious noodles and no fatalities.

strangest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

The television show Unsolved Mysteries is basically a book, right? When I was really young, after watching a particularly disturbing episode of Unsolved Mysteries, I had a dream that I was attacked by a gigantic (cocker spaniel-sized) beetle while wading in a lake. I didn't die; I picked up the beetle and managed to hurl it away from me. But that dream was an incredible trauma and I still wonder why I had to dream it, but looking back I'm pretty sure it also intersected with my reading of James and the Giant Peach.

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

The exquisite novelist Maile Chapman gave me my favorite coffee-table book ever: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. It's filled with pictures of miniature dollhouse crimescene reproducitons done by Francis Glessner Lee, a wealthy grandmother and founder of Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine. I impress myself with it daily.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I'm sorry but I must trifecta this one, both out of true love and the nepotism of me working/having worked on staff: Witness, Fairy Tale Review, and Black Warrior Review. I adore literary journals though; I have a billion favorites and could talk about them all day. If any fellow journal nerds want to email or Facebook message me I'm happy to do so.

best thing you’ve read online recently

An archived New Yorker article about Lesch-Nyan syndrome, "An Error in the Code" by Richard Preston.

most anticipated upcoming release

Threats: A Novel by Amelia Gray (Feb. 28, 2012 from FS&G), The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (just out! from Knopf), The State of Kansas: Short Fictions by Julianna Spallholz (Genpop Books, Jan. 2012), and A True History of the Captivation, Transport to Strange Lands, & Deliverance of Hannah Guttentag by Josh Russell (Dzanc Books, 2012), Kept Women by Kate Durbin (Inset Press, forthcoming), Manhater by Danielle Pafunda (Dusie Books Press, 2012).

recommended reading list:

Books that Help You Accept Your Freakish Physical Form

- Cruddy by Lynda Barry

- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

- Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body by Rosemarie Thompson

- American Genius: A Comedy by Lynne Tillman

- Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

- Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Robert Swartwood

2011-11-14T09:39:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-08T09:58:00.003-05:00

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

2011-11-01T11:51:00.003-04:00

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

2011-10-19T23:42:00.003-04:00

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

2011-10-12T21:12:00.005-04:00

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

2011-10-03T22:38:00.005-04:00

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

2011-09-12T07:33:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-01T16:01:00.002-04:00

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

2011-08-24T14:46:00.007-04:00

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

2011-06-07T18:54:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-28T09:17:00.005-04:00

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

2011-05-19T09:16:00.004-04:00

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

2011-05-09T10:42:00.004-04:00

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

2011-04-18T13:08:00.003-04:00

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

2011-03-01T10:38:00.002-05:00

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

2011-02-07T09:23:00.002-05:00

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

2011-01-26T17:42:00.003-05:00

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

2011-01-18T11:00:00.005-05:00

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

2011-01-10T19:47:00.008-05:00

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

Anne Germanacos

2010-12-29T10:26:00.003-05:00

Born in San Francisco, Anne Germanacos has lived in Greece for thirty-five years. Her work has been published in over sixty literary journals. Her first book, a collection of short stories, was published by BOA Editions in October 2010. For more info: www.annegermanacos.com.

what are you reading now

The Penguin Freud Reader
Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
Judt, The Memory Chalet
Smith, Just Kids

An enticing combination!

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Tristes Tropiques

last book you finished in a single sitting

Malouf's Ransom

book you borrowed and never returned (not really, but it could have been)

Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress

if you could write yourself into any short story

something by Amy Bloom (she’s kind and generous to her characters)

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone (and to look at—it’s gorgeous and fascinating!)

Abstract Comics by Andre Molotiu

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

AGNI for the beautiful covers as well as what's between them.

most anticipated upcoming release

Under the Sun: The Letter of Bruce Chatwin

recommended reading list:

Books for a Self-Critical Jew

- I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti

- The Accidental Empire by Gershom Gorenberg

- Sleeping on a Wire and The Yellow Wind by David Grossman

- Dancing Arabs and Let It Be Morning by Sayed Kashua

- The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi

- Palestine Inside Out by Saree Makdisi

- Once Upon a Country by Sari Nusseibeh

- A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

- The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

- Palestine by Joe Sacco

- Palestinian Walks and Strangers in the House by Raja Shehadeh

- The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim

- Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar

Paula Bomer

2010-12-08T10:29:00.002-05:00

Paula Bomer is the author of Baby and Other Stories (Word Riot Press, December 2010) and the co-publisher at Artistically Declined Press, where she also serves as the supervising editor at Sententia, a Literary Journal. Find out more about her and her work at www.paulabomer.com.

what are you reading now

I'm reading The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Middlemarch by George Eliot and Moby Dick by Herman Melville

last book you finished in a single sitting

He is Talking to the Fat Lady, a chapbook by xTx . Prior to that, I was reading the excellent Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky. I didn't read it in one sitting, but I read it quite quickly.

book you borrowed and never returned

I can't remember - this may have happened when I was younger. I no longer borrow books, although I give away, rather than lend, many books. I will say the last book someone didn't return to me that I really cared about was a signed copy of a first edition of White Jazz by James Ellroy. I'm still mad at the man who didn't return it. This happened 15 years ago.

favorite book from childhood

Hmm. So many! I think Pickles the Firecat meant so much to me. I was a cat fanatic (still am) and he was so misunderstood because he was in the wrong place. And when he found the right place to be, and the right thing to do - be a firecat - he became happy. It made me think that I too could find the right place to be and do, and that I too could stop being so misunderstood. When my oldest boy was little, I tried reading him The Giving Tree and I started to weep so badly I couldn't finish reading it. I'm never picking that one up again. I think I'd die from grief.

strangest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

Hm. Nothing is coming to me. Sorry. I do often have sexual dreams about professional tennis players that I've written about at my tennis blog, Must Watch Tennis All The Time.

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

Again, I can't think of anything, really. I do try to hide some books from my religious cleaning lady, like Fuck You Too by Glen E. Friedman and Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

The Paris Review. I guess. I buy lots and lots of journal. All sorts.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Roxane Gay's blog comes to mind. I love reading her blog and anything else by her. But there are so many good things online. The essay "The Love of My Life" by Cheryl Strayed is available online. It really really stays with you. It's unbelievable. I read Storyglossia, Night Train, Pank, Dogzplot. Some writers I discovered online are Elizabeth Ellen, Scott Wrobel, Kevin Wilson, T.J. Forrester, Barry Graham... anyway, I could go on here forever.

most anticipated upcoming release

PJ Harvey's new record. Also, at the small press I run with Ryan W. Bradley, we are releasing the novel You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer and Ayiti, a collection, by Roxane Gay. I'm super thrilled to be publishing these two books.

recommended reading list:

Books with Suicide and/or Mental Breakdowns

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

- The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

- Darkness Visible by William Styron

- The Awakening by Kate Chopin

- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

- Last Things by Jenny Offill

- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

- A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke

- The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut

- Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates

Matthew Salesses

2010-12-02T10:37:00.002-05:00

Matthew Salesses is the author of a forthcoming novella, The Last Repatriate (Flatmancrooked), and two chapbooks, Our Island of Epidemics (PANK, 2010) and We Will Take What We Can Get (Publishing Genius, 2009). His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Witness, American Short Fiction, The Literary Review, and others. He writes and edits for The Good Men Project Magazine.

what are you reading now

Korean myths, legends, and folklore, and Great House, by Nicole Krauss.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I've been meaning to finish War and Peace for ages now. I am on Book Fifteen, which is the last book before the epilogues, but have been on Book Fifteen for a couple of years. I don't know why I don't finish it. I loved what I read. Maybe this will make me.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Bad Marie, by Marcy Dermansky

book you borrowed and never returned

Usually this happens to me.

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

I hate writing in books. I hate cracking the spine. I will only occasionally allow myself to dog-ear a page.

strangest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

I'm not sure I've ever had one, not counting writers I know.

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

The Blue Fairy Book

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I tried for a while to answer this, but there are too many.

best thing you’ve read online recently

The first that came into my head was Edan Lepucki's story, "Salt Lick," in Flatmancrooked.

most anticipated upcoming release

Alex Chee's The Queen of the Night

recommended reading list:

5 Recent Books with Good Long Titles

- Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

- Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch

- What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg

- St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

- All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang

Unfortunately, this is off the top of my head, and I have a bad memory. I'm sure there are more.

Tina May Hall

2010-11-26T08:55:00.002-05:00

Tina May Hall writes and teaches in upstate New York. Her collection of stories, The Physics of Imaginary Objects, won the 2010 Drue Heinz Prize for literature and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September.

what are you reading now

How They Were Found by Matt Bell, The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson, Judith Thurman’s biography of Isak Dinesen, instructions on how to cook a turkey without poisoning anyone.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women. It really is short. And very lovely.

book you borrowed and never returned

I adhere to Polonius’s advice and never borrow nor lend books. Though I buy a lot of books as gifts. I am a dog-earer, a spine-cracker, a snacker-while-reading, so I don’t dare borrow anything. I also try to be familiar, but by no means vulgar.

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

All of my books are scribbled-in and post-it-noted. The one most bedecked is probably Dracula, simply because I teach it a lot and I find it inspires confidence in the class if a sheaf of multicolored notes protrudes from the book. I used to keep all of my lecture notes and discussion prompts and historical asides written into the back pages of the book and when they got too long for that, written onto notecards that perpetually drifted out of the book and ended up all over campus. Then I remembered I had a computer.

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

I often load my coffee table with self-help books (What Would Keith Richards Do?: Daily Affirmations from a Rock and Roll Survivor), cleaning manuals (The Pixie Solution: Tips on Relationships, Sex, Death, and Keeping the House Clean), and cookbooks (The Bacon Cookbook: More than 150 Recipes from Around the World for Everyone's Favorite Food) just so people think that at least I am making an effort. Actually, I don’t have a coffee table, but if I did, this would be my strategy.

best thing you’ve read online recently

SYNAPSE: The Weblog of Catherine Bloom by Alex Rose. I’ve been sure for a while that hypertext is dead, but this is reviving my youthful fancies.

most anticipated upcoming release

I just ordered My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer, boasting an amazing line-up of writers. I also can’t wait to read Karen Russell’s first novel Swamplandia! She is doing interesting stuff with absurdity and fable.

recommended reading list:

Books Featuring Sex Scenes between Cyborgs and Humans

- He, She, and It by Marge Piercy—romance meets circuitry and virtual space. Strangely affecting.

- Looking for the Mahdi by N. Lee Wood—a female journalist passes as a man and cozies up to her android companion in the Middle East. What more could you ask for?

- The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson—this is a stretch, but one of the characters does disappear into an organic/electronic tube-womb-tunnel thing that keeps him in state of orgasmic bliss for ten years, so I’m claiming it. Plus, it is one of the most inventive coming-of-age stories out there.

- Neuromancer by William Gibson—of course.

Patrick Somerville

2010-11-17T23:53:00.004-05:00

Patrick Somerville’s third book, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, comes out this November. He lives with his wife in Chicago and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University.

what are you reading now

I’m reading Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. One more step in my lifelong goal of reading every funny thing every British writer ever wrote.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I keep trying to read D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow and for some reason, every time I start I get interrupted with having to read this or that other book or losing the book or something else going wrong. What’s strange is that I love the first 50 pages and always have every intention of finishing it whenever I think about it or see it sitting on my bookshelf. I feel like fate is against me. This has been going on for 6 years.

most treasured book in your collection

I object to the idea of treasuring a particular book, maybe because I so often destroy them as I read or lose them or give them away to people or spill juice on them. Or because whatever is in a book gets into you, and that’s the thing that should be treasured. I don’t really understand book collecting, which seems to emphasize the wrong thing completely? But this is just me being difficult. Okay. If I still had it, I think my copy of Dragons of Spring Dawning, which I got autographed by BOTH Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman when I went to GenCon at age 13, would have been it. But I lost it. See? So I will instead go with my old Penguin edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, which is unfortunately not signed, but which gives me a warm feeling whenever I look at it. There are only a couple books you’ll find that actually change who you are and permanently alter your consciousness. That book did that to me when I was in my early 20s and completely lost. My copy of that book is worth no money and the binding is bent to shit.

if you could write yourself into any short story

I would like to be one of the old-timers hanging out on the pier alongside Farte, Jr. in Barry Hannah’s “Water Liars.”

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

Does my desk in high school count? Because I got The Tropic of Cancer when I was a senior and kept placing it prominently on my desk before the start of every class, hoping it would stir up some kind of censorship controversy with one of my teachers or at the very least get a girl interested. Nobody cared.

collected stories of

Bruce Jay Friedman.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

One Story.

best thing you’ve read online recently

I think Bob McGinn’s recent “Scouting Report on the Vikings” was, as is always the case with McGinn’s Packers coverage, excellent.

most anticipated upcoming release

Hannah Pittard’s The Fates Will Find Their Way, which comes out in January. I know Hannah and think she’s an incredibly talented writer, and there’s something about that book, something about the combination of a terrible event with this unexpectedly bright and fantastical storyline that feels inventive, warm, and unlike anything I’ve really read before. Hannah’s going to be a star.

recommended reading list:

Stories Containing the Most Outrageously Speculative yet Weirdly Exciting Sex Scenes, From Most Outrageous to Least

- Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

- Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan

- The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan

- Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

- The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by A. N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

- The Miller’s Tale by Geoffry Chaucer

Robert Lopez

2010-11-12T13:54:00.003-05:00

Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, and a story collection, Asunder. He has taught and/or teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University, William Paterson University.

what are you reading now

How They Were Found, Matt Bell

From Old Notebooks, Evan Lavender-Smith

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Don Quixote, Miguel De Cervantes

last book you finished in a single sitting

Not sure I've ever done this, but if I have it would've been Reader's Block by David Markson.

book you borrowed and never returned

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Unsaid.

best thing you’ve read online recently

"There Is This Woman Who Gets Me What I Need" by Andrew Richmond in The Collagist.

most anticipated upcoming release

The selected and new Barry Hannah.

recommended reading list:

Books I Might Teach Next Semester

- Kissed By by Alexandra Chasin

- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

- Molloy by Samuel Beckett

- Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

- Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus

- Michael Martone by Michael Martone

- In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William Gass

- Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison

Ben Spivey

2010-10-19T10:28:00.003-04:00

Ben Spivey is the author of a novel, Flowing in the Gossamer Fold (Blue Square Press 2010) and a chapbook The Body Between The Glass (forthcoming from Mud Luscious Press). His work has been published in Abjective and Everyday Genius. He lives in Atlanta and blogs at yourbrainsblackbox.blogspot.com.

what are you reading now

Right now I am reading Child of God by Cormac McCarthy and How They Were Found by Matt Bell.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Lolita

last book you finished in a single sitting

I don't usually read books in a single sitting, maybe ten years ago I finished a D&D book in a single sitting.

book you borrowed and never returned

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

strangest book you’ve ever read

In Candyland It's Cool to Feed on Your Friends by James Chapman

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

Clamence from The Fall by Albert Camus or Marvin K. Mooney from The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, a novel by Christopher Higgs.

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

Infinite Jest

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Annalemma is amazing.

best thing you’ve read online recently

“Phone by Darby Larson” by Darby Larson in the April 2010 issue of The Collagist

most anticipated upcoming release

There Is No Year by Blake Butler and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

recommended reading list:

Books That I’ve Removed from My Bookshelf and Stacked in Piles Because I Associate Them in Some Way, or I Like Looking at Their Spines, Etc.

Stacked Pile #1:

- When All Our Days Are Numbered by Sasha Fletcher

- EVER by Blake Butler

- The Fall by Albert Camus

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

- The Stranger by Albert Camus

- Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca

Stacked Pile #2:

- Prose. Poems. A Novel. By Jamie Iredell

- Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor

- Fugue State by Brian Evenson

- Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg

- Good, Brother by Peter Markus

- The Failure Six by Shane Jones

- Motorman by David Ohle

- Ugly Man: Stories by Dennis Cooper

- Wolf Parts by Matt Bell

Stacked Pile #3:

- Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

- Firework by Eugene Marten

- Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

- Stories In The Worst Way by Gary Lutz

- Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

- Burning Chrome by William Gibson

- The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball

- The Singing Fish by Peter Markus

- South Of The Border, West Of The Sun by Haruki Murakami

- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

Lindsay Hunter

2010-10-02T16:07:00.006-04:00

Lindsay Hunter is a writer living in Chicago. She co-hosts the Quickies! reading series, and her collection of stories, Daddy's, is out now from featherproof books. Find her at lindsayhunter.com.

what are you reading now

Right now I'm reading Hellfire, a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis. Been getting more obsessed with the Killer lately. It heals me to learn about the depths of freak in other artists.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

There are so many! I feel like I read all the time but never get anywhere. I've never read any J.M. Coetzee, for instance. Or Thomas Pynchon. And I'd love to read The Brothers Karamazov. Fucking The Count of Monte Cristo even! I'm truly a sham of a writer.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I think it was Steve Martin's autobio of his comedy life, Born Standing Up. If I saw him on the street I'd probably tongue his ear or something. I think I also read Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever in one sitting - dammit that book is good.

book you borrowed and never returned

My friend just let me borrow Amy Hempel's Reasons to Live, and then she moved to New Orleans. Oops. I've also been lent Slash's biography and Y: The Last Man, Book One, and I have no idea when I'll get to those. Never lend me anything, future friends.

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

I'd love to be in the car with Roberta/Clyde and her father in Cruddy. I'd likely be filled with a resigned kind of dull terror and sitting in a cooling puddle of urine.

most treasured book in your collection

My husband, for my 30th birthday, got me a first edition copy of The Stones of Summer. It's on the shelf above my laptop so I can look up at it and remember to take risks, try to build something in my writing, and to do it for no other reason but for the pleasure of the words. Of getting the story out and just right, even if that means it's a fucking mess. But a good mess.

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

Oh man. I don't have a coffee table, but I do remember an advisor asking me who I was inspired by, and I'd just read The Sound and the Fury, so I said I liked Faulkner, and the advisor said "Now, did you just say that to impress me?" and I was stunned, and I think probably yeah, I said Faulkner because it sounded better than saying V.C. Andrews or something.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Probably the Ninth Letter. Or Hobart. Or Artifice. There are too many.

best thing you’ve read online recently

I keep telling people about this story in the Somnambulist Quarterly by Athena Nilssen. It's a year old but it's here and it's incredible. "A Flower for You."

most anticipated upcoming release

Patrick Somerville's new collection, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, from featherproof books. It's gonna rule. And earlier this summer I had the privilege of hearing Blake Butler read from his forthcoming book, There Is No Year, and I cannot wait to read the whole thing.

recommended reading list:

Books About Murder For People Who Want to Vomit When Watching NCIS or CSI or Bones, and Hey, These Are All Written by Women

- The Secret History by Donna Tartt

- In the Woods by Tana French

- Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

- The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

- Crime Album Stories: Paris 1886-1902 by Eugenia Parry

Rachel B. Glaser

2010-09-06T08:59:00.000-04:00

Rachel B. Glaser was born in New Jersey. She lives in Western Massachusetts. Her first book, Pee On Water, is available through Publishing Genius Press.

what are you reading now

Rereading Honored Guest by Joy Williams

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Mrs. Dalloway

last book to induce gut-busting laughter

James Purdy's "I Am Elijah Thrush"

book you borrowed and never returned

Flatland (but I still haven't finished it)

favorite book cover design

Maybe Barthelme's Sadness cover, or the original cover (pink pattern that makes it look like a cookbook?) of Jane Bowles's Collected Works

best thing you’ve read online recently

I read this good Christopher Cheney poem today: "Insomnia"

most anticipated upcoming release

Adam Levin's short story collection coming out in 2011 and Emily Petit's Goat in the Snow (first book of poems) also coming out in 2011

recommended reading list:

Books with Wild or Unusual Women Characters Written by Women

- Two Serious Ladies (or the Collected Works) by Jane Bowles

- Honored Guest by Joy Williams

- Nice Big American Baby by Judy Budnitz

- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

- Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

Mary Hamilton

2010-08-21T10:23:00.002-04:00

Mary Hamilton it an optician, teacher, and writer living in Chicago. She is the co-host and co-founder of the QUICKIES! reading series and she blogs about Inspirational Sports Movies at inspirationalsportsmovies.blogspot.com.

what are you reading now

I read Newsweek on the bus. I have a subscription to The New Yorker that I got as my reward for renewing my NPR membership, but those issues are stacking up without being opened. I'm currently carrying The Mezzanine around and, when I get a spare second, I read a page or two of that.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Lolita.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Jesus' Son. It was a long time ago, but I remember not being able to put the book down and then, I was done and it was four or five in the morning and I had to leave for work at nine, so with a few hours to kill I just started reading it again.

most treasured book in your collection

I guess the Collected Poems of Robert Service. I don't remember the last time I've opened the cover and I'm not sure that I'd even still like the poetry. But it reminds me of when I was first, "oooh, words!"

book you borrowed and never returned

The Science of Superheroes because I didn't finish it and I want to and now I don't know where it is. Maybe I did return it? I stole Aesop's Fables from my elementary school library in the 6th grade, but I also don't know where that is. When I was in high school I told the library that I lost my copy of the Collected Poems of Robert Service and I paid a $12 fine, but I hadn't lost it, I just really liked the book and the cool green cover. So, technically, I never "returned" that book to the library. And I do know where that book is because I'm looking at it right now.

last reading you attended

We had my book release for the chapbook the other night and I had the mad pleasure of watching/listening to Caroline Picard, Natalie Edwards, and Jill Summers.

favorite book from childhood

The Monster at the End of This Book. It's amazing. It tells you what's up in the title. The whole book is pretty much setting you up for the end, the most obvious foreshadowing ever. And still, every time, it's a huge surprise that there is, indeed, a monster at the end of the book!

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

I think my huge stack of New Yorkers looks pretty pretentious and I assume a visitor would think I put them there to impress. Really, I worry more about the records and CDs that are on display.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I know this isn't the answer to the question you're asking, but I think it would be great to buy a massive encyclopedia and receive a random volume once a week. What about that Time/Life series about aliens and home improvements?

This is also my way of cheating and not choosing just one.

best thing you’ve read online recently

This

most anticipated upcoming release

Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter and The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville

recommended reading list:

Book/Stories/Poem/Song That I’ve Read/Listened to Several Times, But Am Still Surprised by the Ending

- The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin

- “The Dress” by Dylan Thomas

- “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver

- “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor

- “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service

- “A Good Idea” by Sugar

Jason Jordan

2010-07-23T21:07:00.004-04:00

Jason Jordan holds an MFA from Chatham University. His forthcoming books are Cloud and Other Stories (Six Gallery Press, 2010) and Powering the Devil's Circus: Redux (Six Gallery Press, 2010). His prose has appeared online and in print in over forty literary magazines, including Hobart, Keyhole, Monkeybicycle, Night Train, PANK, Pear Noir!, and Storyglossia. Additionally, he's Editor-in-Chief of decomP, accessible at www.decompmagazine.com. You can visit him at his blog at poweringthedevilscircus.blogspot.com.

what are you reading now

Right now I’m reading The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, a 350-page anthology, which should keep me occupied for a while.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I haven’t read much of the famous Russians: Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Tolstoy. I’d like to, but at the same time, I prefer reading contemporary work.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I think it was Kristina Born’s One Hour of Television. It was pretty good.

book you borrowed and never returned

I never borrow books, because if I end up liking a book, I want to own it and add it to my library, so I always end up buying whatever I read. It’s not the most economical practice, but it usually works out all right.

strangest book you’ve ever read

My gut reaction is Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, because I think its use of strangeness and experimentation is very effective. Plus, I enjoyed it immensely.

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

Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Yeah, he’s a real guy, but he’s also a character in every sense of the word. Him and I have the Louisville connection, so we could talk about that during the drive. I’d be lucky to make it back alive.

most treasured book in your collection

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. This is the book that started it all for me, the book that showed me that reading can be entertaining. Because I went to a Christian high school, we never read anything on the typical high school reading list due to lewd content, so I wasn’t interested in books at all until later. I’ve been meaning to buy a nice copy of it for years, as mine is a small, tattered paperback, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

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

I don’t leave books out. I’m OCD about organization, so my books are either in my shelves (ones I’ve read and like enough to keep), or on my dresser (ones in queue).

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Keyhole, because that’s the only magazine I currently subscribe to. Still, there are tons I buy every issue of, but don’t subscribe to: Barrelhouse, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Electric Literature, Hobart, Juked, MonkeyBicycle, PANK, Pear Noir!, etc. It feels like I spend less money by purchasing single issues, because my wallet doesn’t take a bigger hit at once by subscribing, but I know that’s not true. There are also many that have a sizeable back catalog of which I only own one or two issues but would love to own more: Canteen, New York Tyrant, NOON, Quick Fiction, Unsaid.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Gabe Durham’s “This Doomed Gift Before You” from The Collagist.

most anticipated upcoming release

Lit journals are my favorite things to read, and I’m most looking forward to Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010. I’m glad a press decided to compile a print annual best-of web anthology. For the past two years I’ve been excited to see the selections. I’m hoping something from decomP makes the cut soon.

recommended reading list:

Can't-Miss Collections

- Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme

- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

- The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions by Debra Di Blasi

- Drown by Junot Diaz

- The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel

- Drift and Swerve by Samuel Ligon

- A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean

- Winter of Different Directions by Steven J. McDermott

- Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir by Joe Meno

- Other Electricities by Ander Monson

- Kentucky Straight by Chris Offutt

- CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

- Animal Crackers by Hannah Tinti

- Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich

John Jodzio

2010-06-25T17:34:00.003-04:00

John Jodzio is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. His stories have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Opium, The Florida Review and various other places in print and online. A collection of his short fiction, If You Lived Here, You’d Already Be Home, was recently published by Replacement Press. He lives in Minneapolis. Find out more at www.johnjodzio.net.

what are you reading now

I've just started two new books in the last few weeks -- There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and then The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni. I did a reading with Peter recently and really loved what he read. Next in my stack is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Still wanting to break open Moby Dick. People keep telling me it's hilarious, so my expectations are set pretty high.

last book to induce gut-busting laughter

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris. I read it for the first time about 15 years ago, but laughter-wise nothing has come close since.

book you borrowed and never returned

I used to bartend weddings at this old mansion and they had this fantastic library that was easily broken into with a credit card and a butter knife. I "checked out" an old copy of Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories about five years ago that still hasn't made it back.

collected stories of

Amy Hempel.

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

In college there was this girl named Rachel that I liked a lot. Once at a party I heard her talking to one of my friends about Jim Thompson. I invited her to my next party and prominently placed my copy of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson on the milk crates that were serving as my coffee table. Don't think she ever noticed it -- she was way too busy making out with my friend Jason on my couch.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Can I bring back defunct ones? If so, I am going with Gordon Lish's The Quarterly. If not, I'll go with either Opium or Barrelhouse.

best thing you’ve read online recently

This story is from last October, but I just discovered it the other day rooting around on Hobart. Kevin Wilson's "My Hand, Dead Tissue Severed at the Wrist."

most anticipated upcoming release

Just ordered a copy of Citrus County by John Brandon. Arkansas was so great and I can't wait to get started on his new one.

recommended reading list:

Short Story Collections that I Lent To Girls Who Were Never Going to Love Me To Try And Make Them Love Me (Read and Unread, Returned and Unreturned)

- Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

- Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis

- CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

- Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

- Tabloid Dreams by Robert Olen Butler

- Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler

- The Brutal Language of Love by Alicia Erian

Ben Greenman

2010-06-09T14:40:00.003-04:00

Ben Greenman is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, Please Step Back, and the new What He's Poised to Do (Harper Perennial). He invites readers to write letters to fictional characters at Letters With Character.

what are you reading now

Raymond Chandler. Whenever I finish a book or have a book published, I go back and reread Chandler, because it's so good. It's problematic in some ways -- the depiction of race in Farewell, My Lovely, which is what I'm reading now, doesn't really harmonize with the modern brain -- but the language is nearly perfect. At one point Marlowe says "the more I know the fewer cups I break." Great. And at another point he is looking at some fancy piece of modern sculpture, and the guy who owns it says to him, "I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial's Spirit of Dawn." Marlowe says, "I thought it was Klopstein's Two Warts On a Fanny." I wasn't drinking milk when I read that, but if I had been, I would have spit it all over the page.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Well, my new book, What He's Poised to Do, is a set of linked short stories all about letters and letter-writing, so I tried to read a number of epistolary novels so that I wasn't completely stupid on the topic. Young Werther, of course, and John Berger's From A to X, and John Barth's Letters. The one I have always wanted to read, though, is Richardson's Pamela. I have started it a bunch of times but never gotten more than 200 pages into it before I began skipping around, and it's about six hundred. It is sleazy and claustrophobic and beautifully moralistic, and I want to finish it off.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I found Tom Robbins's Still Life with Woodpecker in the street. Someone had thrown it out. I remember reading it when I was fourteen or so and loving it, so I sat down and read it straight through. It was a strange experience, because it's dated on its own in a sense -- very much a book about culture and counter-culture and the end of the seventies -- but also dated in my mind. I did recover one of my favorite one-liners, which is that sharks are the criminals of the sea, and dolphins are the outlaws.

most treasured book in your collection

In my whole collection? So many for so many different reasons. I have a beat-up paperback of Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. I have galleys of books by friends that I treasure because I treasure the people. I have a first-edition Lolita whose value I am scared to research. I have the Grove Beckett box. My son made a book about sea life in elementary school. That book is great. I am finding this question impossible to answer.

book you borrowed and never returned

Oh, I know the answer to this one! A few years after college, I ran into a girl who was in my class in high school. She gave me her copy of Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe. I didn't return it. In fact, she made a point of contacting me and asking for it, and I think it just slipped my mind. At this point, the crime is nearly twenty years old.

strangest book you’ve ever read

Pierre Guyotat's Eden Eden Eden, from 1971, which is set in Algeria and in theory about civil war but really an inquiry into all matters of atrocity and obscenity -- violence, sex, the limits of language. It's a trip, and not a pleasant one. It was published, but then banned for sale to readers under 18, and a number of European intellectuals, including Italo Calvino, Jean Genet, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Boulez, and Maurice Blanchot tried unsuccessfully to get the ban lifted.

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

Ha ha. I try to go in reverse. I have so many friends who are writers or who work in publishing that I try to stay fairly honest about what I'm reading, which is to say that I don't clean up when they're coming over, which means that they see that I am usually reading both "good" books and collections of old comic strips and record guides and all other kinds of nonsense.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Probably it would be the New York Review of Books. I like the feel of it. I was at dinner with some people recently and they were saying that they love the experience of it, and I agreed, but I didn't want to jump in and say "I agree" like some kind of idiot. But I agree.

best thing you’ve read online recently

There is one article I reread and reread and reread, because it's a supremely wonderful piece of bad/weird writing. It's called "Ride the Sales Tornado: Become the Wizard of 'Awes'," and it's from Furniture World magazine.

most anticipated upcoming release

I am eager to read Keith Richards' memoir, even though I have modest expectations for it.

recommended reading list:

Epistolary or at Least Pseudo-Epistolary Fiction I Have Read and Liked

- Letters by John Barth

- Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky

- Ada by Vladimir Nabokov

- The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

- Dracula by Bram Stoker

- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

- Black Box by Amos Oz

- We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

- Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee

- Summertime by J.M. Coetzee [interviews, not letters, but brilliant]

Chad Simpson

2010-04-29T08:40:00.002-04:00

Chad Simpson is the author of the chapbook Phantoms, available now from Origami Zoo Press. He lives in Monmouth, Illinois, and teaches fiction writing at Knox College. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in several magazines, including McSweeney’s Quarterly, Barrelhouse, Orion, and The Sun.

what are you reading now

Last night I devoured Matt Bell’s Wolf Parts, and it blew me away. I’ve also been working through two short story collections—American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell and Venus Drive by Sam Lipsyte—and Jean Harvey Baker’s Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. This last one is research for a longish project I’ve just begun working on.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Anna Karenina. And The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve been meaning to read these two books pretty much forever.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Besides that little book by Matt Bell that I mentioned above… I’d say it was probably Stephen Elliott’s The Adderall Diaries. I think I’ve read each of the last three or four books by Elliott in a single sitting.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

I don’t know about the “most” challenging, but I’ve read Ben Marcus’s The Age of Wire and String all the way through at least three times—and I’ve taught sections from it a couple times as well—and I still don’t know what all’s going on between those covers. Still, I’ll probably keep picking it up every couple years.

book you borrowed and never returned

John D’Agata’s About a Mountain. I only borrowed it about a month and a half ago, though. I’m pretty sure I’ll return it soon, even though I’d like to keep it next to my bed for the next half year or so.

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

Probably Junot Diaz’s Drown. I keep teaching it in an intro to lit class and seem to always be making marks in it. I also re-read Deb Olin Unferth’s Minor Robberies recently and left behind a lot of scribbles.

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

I don’t think I’ve done this. Maybe it’s because we never have people over.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Tin House.

best thing you’ve read online recently

“A Mess of Pork” by Harriette Simpson Arnow. I haven’t actually read the whole thing yet, just the opening, but still, it qualifies.

There was also this: http://firmuhment.tumblr.com/post/397658485. It might be the longest thing I’ve read all the way through online without printing it out. Justin Wolfe’s tumblr, in general, is full of amazing.

most anticipated upcoming release

I’m really excited about Willy Vlautin’s Lean on Pete, which I think was just released in the past few weeks. I wanted to hate his fiction because he’s in a band that plays pretty cool alt-country music, and I mean, isn’t that enough? you have to write, too? In the end, though, Vlautin’s first two novels killed me, and I’ve been anticipating this one ever since.

And another book that just came out: The Book of Right and Wrong by Matt Debenham. I’ve been reading Matt’s killer stories for the past three years, and now there’s a whole book of them out from Ohio State University Press.

Embracing Sadness

Books that you should read while working as a juvenile probation officer during the six or so months before you quit and then go off to grad school for an MFA in fiction.

- Among the Missing by Dan Chaon

- Break it Down by Lydia Davis

- The Esther Stories by Peter Orner

- Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

- everything you can get your hands on by Amy Hempel

- everything you can get your hands on by Stuart Dybek

- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

- everything you can get your hands on by Joy Willliams

- The Point and Other Stories by Charles D’Ambrosio

Darlin' Neal

2010-04-17T21:50:00.004-04:00

Darlin’ Neal’s story collection, Rattlesnakes & The Moon (Press 53), was just released this year. She is an assistant professor in the MFA and undergraduate Creative Writing Programs at the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando and Jensen Beach, Florida, along with Maggie the cat, Brian the human, and Catfish the dog.

what are you reading now

MFA student theses have been keeping me busy. Up next Reality Hunger, which I was supposed to read and discuss with some friends, I’m behind, and then I can’t wait to read fiction all summer long. I don’t really care about reality hunger.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Well, how about that I’m wanting to revisit and read more thoroughly? The Collected Essays and also The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf.

last book to make you laugh out loud

Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method. Read it and marvel at his range.

book you borrowed and never returned

Days by Mary Robison. It’s her early story collection and she was amazing from the start.

most devastating book you’ve ever read

Almost anything by Cormac McCarthy. I love him. Blood Meridian. The Road. No Country for Old Men.

if you could write yourself into any novel or short story

Maybe it would be Mrs. Dalloway so I could go back and take that walk again in London.

collected stories of

Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Edgar Allan Poe, William Trevor, John Updike.

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

Rattlesnakes & The Moon. I know that’s terrible.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Oxford American, it’s by far my favorite mag.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Fictionaut has got some great stuff. Go make your way around if you haven’t already. Everyone.

most anticipated upcoming release

Up From The Blue by Susan Henderson. We’ve critiqued each others’ work and supported each other for years. She’s a beautiful writer and person. I can’t wait to see what she has given us now. Also Kim Chinquee’s new flash collection, Pretty.

recommended reading list:

If You Dig, Then Fill Your Wig With

A few of the fiction writers who have lived in a few of the places I have lived: Mississippi, New Mexico, Florida, Arizona, Tennessee, and Louisiana.

- Barry Hannah

- Larry Brown

- Frederick Barthelme

- Rosellen Brown

- Steve Yarborough

- Mary Robison

- Denis Johnson

- Joy Williams

- Kevin Canty

- Harry Crews

- Susan Hubbard

- Robley Wilson

- Antonya Nelson

- Robert Boswell

- N. Scott Momaday

- Leslie Marmon Silko

- Cormac McCarthy

- Kevin McIlvoy

- Tim Gautreaux

- William Gay

- Pia Z. Ehrhardt

Evan Lavender-Smith

2010-04-01T08:56:00.003-04:00

Evan Lavender-Smith is the author of From Old Notebooks (BlazeVOX, 2010) and Avatar (Six Gallery Press, forthcoming 2010). His fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama and criticism appears in many journals and magazines, including Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Glimmer Train, The Modern Review, No Colony and Post Road. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Noemi Press and the Prose and Drama Editor of Puerto del Sol.

what are you reading now

I am currently reading (an advance review copy!) of The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, trans. Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive Press). It's marvelous. I've enjoyed most everything I've read put out by Dalkey in the past few years.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

War and Peace. Russian literature was my minor field of study in college; I believe I read every "major" Russian novel from the 19th century except for W&P. Never been able to muster the courage/stamina (or the French).

last book you finished in a single sitting

Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies by Danielle Pafunda. Twice in a single sitting, actually … we're publishing it at Noemi.

favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer

Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel by Evan S. Connell

most challenging book you’ve ever read

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is probably the most challenging book I've finished. Joyce's Finnegans Wake is the most challenging book I haven't finished, yet I've spent way more time reading the latter than I have the former, which I've read and finished twice.

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

From Old Notebooks by Evan Lavender-Smith

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

As an editor at Puerto del Sol, I don't have to subscribe because I can pretty much steal as many copies as I want. So I can't say that one.

It would be the journal Unsaid, without question.

most anticipated upcoming release

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

recommended reading list:

Books the Pages of Which I Can Still Smell in My Mind's Nose

- V. by Thomas Pynchon

- Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

- Tranquility by Atilla Bartis

- Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

- Correction by Thomas Bernhard

- A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari

- Travesty by John Hawkes

- Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

- YOU-The City by Fiona Templeton

- The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector

- Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline by John Mullarkey

- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

- The Crab Nebula by Eric Chevillard

- Being and Event by Alain Badiou

- You Bright and Risen Angels by William T. Vollmann

- The Mirror in the Well by Micheline Aharonian Marcom

- Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

- The Trilogy by Samuel Beckett

- The Assignment; or, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers: A Novella in Twenty-Four Sentences by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

- The Dream Songs by John Berryman

Dawn Raffel

2010-03-19T09:21:00.003-04:00

Dawn Raffel’s new collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe comes out in March from Dzanc Books. She is also the author of a novel, Carrying the Body, and a previous collection, In the Year of Long Division.

what are you reading now

Jane Eyre, because I am re-reading the classics with a group of writers. Actually, I’m getting annoyed; I’ve never developed much of an affection for classic British lit. Can I also confess to not liking Jane Austen?

classic you’ve been meaning to read

The remaining volumes of Remembrance of Things Past, after Swann’s Way.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I don’t finish anything in a single sitting. I am the world’s slowest reader. If I really like something, I might need to read a single page multiple times before going forward.

book you borrowed and never returned

Petersburg by Andrei Bely

most treasured book in your collection

The “autobiography” my father wrote when he was 16 and that I discovered only after his death.

favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer

I can’t really call Blood Meridian and Suttree neglected, but these two should have gotten the accolades Cormac McCarthy got for his later books. Blood Meridian is a masterpiece. Suttree is sprawling but has some of the most gorgeous writing I’ve ever read, as well as a salacious passage involving melons that made me laugh so hard I thought I’d be ill. Also, The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor. Everyone (rightly) cites her stories but this novella is worth revisiting.

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

Books written by friends when I know they’re coming over. I guess I have to stop that now.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Sorry but I need to pick three: NOON comes out only once a year and Unsaid even less frequently. There’s also The Collagist.

best thing you’ve read online recently

“Vernal,” a poem on The Collagist by a poet I hadn’t read before, Henry Kearney, IV.

most anticipated upcoming release

You mean besides my own collection, which took more than seven years and often seemed as if it would never come together? I’m looking forward to reading Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask. I also need to get my hands on Justin Taylor’s new collection, which just came out.

recommended reading list:

Books Worth Reading Three or Four Times

- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I am a fanatic about this, which surprises people)

- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (a brilliant collection not only about war but also about the act of storytelling and remembering)

- Fairy Tales, any and all (while you’re at it, check out The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim)

- Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley (she gets better with every reading)

- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (this is what power looks like)

- The Half-Inch Himalayas by Agha Shahid Ali (I encountered him when he was selling chapbooks out of his trunk at Bread Loaf; he was eventually published by Norton and died way too young)

- Warrenpoint by Denis Donoghue (a deceptively lean memoir )

- Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen (especially “I Stand Here Ironing”)

Ken Sparling

2010-03-06T08:40:00.007-05:00

Ken Sparling’s books are: Book (forthcoming in May from Pedlar Press); Hush up and listen stinky poo butt; For those whom god has blessed with fingers (Pedlar Press); untitled book (Pedlar Press); Dad says he saw you at the mall (Knopf). Contact Ken at kensparling@live.ca.

what are you reading now

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! by Jonathan Goldstein. I bought it a few months ago, and read the first chapter right away. It seemed silly, so I didn’t read any more. I loved Goldstein’s first book, Lenny Bruce is Dead, so I was disappointed when I read the first chapter of the new book. I wanted to love what Goldstein was writing. I’ve sort of known Jonathan for a long time and I really like him. I wanted to be able to tell him I liked what he’d written. The book sat beside my bed for a long time. Then I put it on one of the bookshelves downstairs. A few weeks ago, when I found out Jonathan was coming to Toronto and I would be seeing him, I went and got the book from the bookshelf and read the second chapter. The second chapter was silly, too, but there was something else going on. It was only silly on the surface. I mean, the stuff that was going on in the book looked like it should be silly; but it didn’t feel silly. Goldstein was sneaking something in, something that was sometimes really funny, sometimes really sad, sometimes a little of both – or a lot of both. It was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Whatever it was he was sneaking in there, it kept me reading, and somewhere along the way, I came to understood that Goldstein's silliness was somehow approaching the poetic. It's very beautiful, what Goldstein does. Don’t ask me how he does it, but there were places where I felt like laughing and crying at the same time.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Ulysses and some of those other fat ones – Gravity's Rainbow, that sort of thing – not because I think I'll enjoy the experience, or it will be an inherently good thing for me, or anything like that, but because I want to know just what the hell is inside those giant books that make people talk about them all the time.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I don’t think I’d ever be able to do this. The books that pull me into their story, and are at the same time well enough written to keep me reading, eventually become exhausting for me and I can only go on reading them for so long before I feel like I’m sinking into a place I don’t want to be. And the books that have really lifted me up and inspired and surprised and excited me – usually these are books that don’t rely on story, but on language – are ones I have had to constantly put down and stop reading to catch my breath and sit and quietly be amazed. I have to stop reading these books not so much so that I can contemplate what I’ve just read or anything like that; I don’t contemplate anything at all in those moments, it's more like I’m emptied, cleared out, stopped in time. It’s like the writing is so powerful that I just have to put the book down and wait a bit before I take on any more of it or it will overwhelm me.

book you borrowed and never returned

I work at the library, which is where I borrow my books, and I always return them, if not always on time. When I borrow a book from a friend, I always return that too, because I’m afraid if I don’t, that person will stop being my friend.

strangest book you’ve ever read

I think every book I've totally fallen in love with has seemed strange to start with. When I read Céline's Death on the Installment Plan and Journey to the End of Night they seemed pretty bizarre at the outset, but it didn't take long for me to feel quite comfortable amid all those ellipses... and to find myself laughing out loud – belly laughs. (Actually, Céline’s The Paris Review interview seemed strange from start to finish, I never really got over how strange it felt as I read it – by far the best interview I've ever read.)

Maybe it's that I feel uncomfortable with what I'm encountering, maybe that's what I think of when I think of a book seeming strange. The writers I most love give me something I start off thinking is strange and before too long I'm totally in love. Lish did it with Peru and Krupp's Lulu. Jonathan Goldstein did it with Lenny Bruce is Dead and Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! Derek McCormack keeps doing it every time he gives me something of his to read – recently it was a short article about the Flintstones and an artist he knows and admires. And the preface Derek wrote for Hush up and listen stinky poo butt is pretty strange. That one totally freaked me out, because, when he sent it to me to look over before the book came out, I thought he'd sent the wrong file for the first two or three paragraphs. I closed the file so I could check the file name on the email attachment. Finally it became clear what Derek was doing, and I laughed in utter joy, because what he’d managed was so beautiful.

The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills seemed bizarre when I started it. The Man Who Loved Children was another strange one. Like I said, they seem strange when I start out, but it doesn’t take long till I feel like I’m in exactly the right place as I read and it doesn’t seem strange anymore, only wonderful.

Blood Meridian had me flummoxed for the first maybe fifty pages, I didn’t even want to keep reading, but somewhere along the way I lost track of who or where I was and I was just on some kind of high from what McCarthy was doing. I remember riding the bus to work one day and reading a passage where the riders were encountering shadows on a ridge (big surprise) and suddenly I couldn't catch my breath from how unbelievably beautiful the writing was. I looked out the window of the bus, and everything out there in the real world looked strange. I wanted to stop after every sentence and die from how wonderful that book was.

last reading you attended

Linh Dinh at This Ain't the Rosedale Library bookstore in Toronto. Linh and I read together in Buffalo a few days earlier and he totally blew my mind, so when I saw he was going to be in Toronto a few days later, I went. Also reading that night was Angela Rawlings, who is a friend and worked with me on some projects at the library, but I’d never heard her read. She spends a lot of time in Iceland. That’s where she met Linh Dinh, which seems pretty weird, since neither of them is from there. They were both just there at the same time, doing poetry things. There must be a lot of amazing literary activity in Iceland. Angela’s reading at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library was awesome. I had no idea what to expect from her. Talk about strange and beautiful.

most treasured book in your collection

The Bicycle Rider in Beverley Hills because I read the library copy and decided I needed to own a copy of the book. It was out of print, so I went looking online and found a listing for it at a bookseller in Toronto who also ran a bookstore. So I went to that bookstore, thinking I could find it and buy it and save on shipping, and the bookstore was a mess. Everything was piled in no order. The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills wasn’t shelved with the fiction in alphabetical order by author, or even by title. It wasn’t shelved in any order in any section of the store, as far as I could see. I wandered around the store for a while, thinking how hopeless this was. I don’t know why I didn’t just ask the guy who was working in the store. I guess I felt sort of stupid, or cheap for not ordering it online and paying the shipping. I was going to give up when I saw a shelf labelled: First Editions. None of the books on this shelf were in any order, either. The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills was in a stack on the floor in front of the First Editions shelf. That’s my most treasured book, not so much because I loved reading it (I did), but because I found it in that disaster of a bookstore. Don’t get me wrong. I loved that bookstore. It’s exciting to find something beautiful in the middle of chaos – maybe the middle of chaos is the only place to find something beautiful.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

New York Tyrant, because its attitude makes it the most out-there representative I've encountered of an attitude that I’m sure lots of journals have (Blake Butler’s No Colony comes to mind; or Gigantic magazine). But New York Tyrant is like a magnet for adventurous literary exploration. I love what it stands for just as much as I love what it publishes.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Molly Gaudry, a bunch of her stuff – a great piece at Titular most recently. After I read her novella, We Take Me Apart, I wanted more, but this was her first book, so I went looking online. Also, those transcripts of the Gordon Lish class somebody posted, I haven't read more than a few lines, but I feel happy knowing they’re there.

recommended reading list:

Great Books by Canadians I Have Met

- The Show That Smells by Derek McCormack

- The Haunted Hillbilly by Derek McCormack

- Dark Rides by Derek McCormack

- Darkness Then a Blown Kiss by Golda Fried

- Lenny Bruce is Dead by Jonathan Goldstein

- Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! by Jonathan Goldstein

- Kiss Painting by Sandra Jeppesen

- Burnt Orange Lipstick by Lydia Eugene

- by Julian Zardonovsky (this guy hasn’t actually had his book published yet, but when he does, you should read it)

- The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler (okay, I never met this guy, and he’s dead, so I won’t meet him, but what a great book)

- Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill (technically, we’ve only met by email)

- Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel

- Testament by Nino Ricci

- Tell It Slant by Beth Follett

- The Drowned Lands by Stan Dragland

- Found by Souvankham Thammavongsa (okay, another one I’ve only emailed with, but I’m going to meet her at the end of March, and her poetry is sublime)

- Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards

- The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla (I might meet him soon)

Justin Taylor

2010-02-22T10:58:00.005-05:00

Justin Taylor is the author of Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, a collection of stories out now from Harper Perennial. He is a contributor to HTMLGiant.com and his personal website is http://www.justindtaylor.net/.

what are you reading now

Rain by Jon Woodward. My copy of this book is actually a galley that Wave Books sent me a few years ago, to consider for review. Wave publishes some of my favorite poets—Joshua Beckman, Noelle Kocot, Matthew Rohrer, Anthony McCann, &c.—so I love to write about them, but Rain, for whatever reason, failed to register when it was new. I have this kind of hazy memory of not really giving it a close look. But a few weeks ago I ran into Rohrer at an NYU reading, and Woodward came up in conversation. He was emphatic about his love for Rain, so when I got home I scoured my shelves (they’re not organized at all) and was lucky enough to actually find this tiny yellow paperback with a red spine. Better late than never, right? It’s wonderful and vivid and intense.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I want to read In Search of Lost Time, but I want to do it right, and I don’t think I’m capable right now of giving it the attention it deserves/demands. One day… I also bought a copy of Fitzgerald’s The Odyssey a while back (this edition is Pound's preferred) and it’s been sitting on my shelf, tempting or taunting me—I can’t quite tell. And then there’s Emma, which is almost certainly going to get read before either Proust or Homer. I’m a huge admirer of Austen’s, and Emma is one of the few left I haven’t read. My friend Amy sent it to me over the holidays. This is the one I’m actually going to read. Very soon.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I’m not sure, honestly. My Loose Thread by Dennis Cooper is one I’ve re-read many times, and it usually goes down in one clean shot. Ray by Barry Hannah—that’s a great way to spend an afternoon. The first time I read Jernigan, my teacher David Gates’s first novel, it was in one approximately seven hour marathon session. But I also like to savor books I’m enjoying, so sometimes I’ll force myself to stop and sleep on it, just so I can spend a second day in its company. That’s how I read Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel. And A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell. And Jernigan, all the times after that first one.

book you borrowed and never returned

Actual Air by David Berman. I stole this from a college roommate and never gave it back. It’s become one of my favorite books in the world, and I wrote an essay about it for The Believer where I went into this whole thing about all the notes that Peter and I had each written in it at different times, and going back over those notes now. On his most recent visit to New York, over New Year’s 2009-->2010, Peter finally succeeded in stealing it back from me, but I guess that’s not the same as me “returning” it, so the answer stands.

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

It would either be the Berman book that I just talked about (which, face it, Peter, is only temporarily on leave from my collection) or else my copy of Donald Barthelme’s Sixty Stories.

collected stories of

Flannery O’Connor. Donald Barthelme, even though they’re spread over three volumes (Sixty Stories, Forty Stories, Flying to America). Amy Hempel. Jim Shepard, though Love and Hydrogen is actually a “new and selected.” Raymond Carver. H.P. Lovecraft. Also, Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, which is this great old Harper Perennial edition of eight or nine of his novellas plus “Alyosha the Pot.” If it had “Three Hermits” in it, it’d be perfect. Hemingway. Faulkner. Diane Williams. Gary Lutz, when the day comes.

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

I started bringing a copy of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer around to the coffee shop by my house because the barista quoted him on her Facebook page. I ended up trading it to her (temporarily) for a collection of Punk Planet interviews, which probably seems like it tells you everything you need to know about us both, and our little friendship. Maybe it does. Anyway, that’s not a story about a coffee table, but I don’t have a coffee table, so it’s kind of the best I can do, and anyway, she was impressed enough that she went out with me—once. (She lives with a guy now; they seem very happy.) The alternate answer—-much simpler, but infinitely more obnoxious—is Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

The New York Tyrant

best thing you’ve read online recently

The New Republic’s The Book is just fantastic. I’ve been on it almost daily since it launched. They’ve really set a new bar, I think, for what a serious online book review can (and should) be. I link to their stuff all the time on HTMLGiant.

Speaking of which, one of the most recent additions to HTMLGiant is one of my favorite people to read online. She’s also the friend who sent me my about-to-be-read-I-swear-it copy of Emma. Hear that sound? It’s a baseball bouncing off the dining room light fixture and landing on the dinner table—but I don’t care.

Here is everything Amy McDaniel has authored to date for HTMLGiant. I would point readers in particular toward “Some Notes on Affect,” “Is Masocriticism the only way?” “Elitism: An Encomium,” and more recently: “Source Material.” It’s also worth mentioning that her two “Grammar Challenge” posts (on 12/2 and 12/3), which concerned her experience as a student of David Foster Wallace, and included the questions (and on day two, the answers) from a grammar quiz he gave, are the most popular posts in the history of the blog, by a factor of at least ten.

most anticipated upcoming release

Sam Lipsyte - The Ask, a novel (FSG, March). Dawn Raffel - Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, stories (Dzanc, March). Dennis Cooper - Smothered in Hugs, nonfiction (Harper Perennial, June). Dennis Cooper - The Weaklings, poems (Alyson Books, exact date TBA). Have you figured out yet that I’m not good at making choices? More is more is more. Joshua Cohen - Witz, a novel (Dalkey Archive, May). Tao Lin - Richard Yates, a novel (Melville House, fall 2010).

recommended reading list:

The Unclassifiable

Some of my favorite stories exist—in my mind, anyway—in a kind of interstitial zone between the categories novel, novella, and very long short story. In some cases, the author or the publisher specified how the work was to be classified, in other instances that choice was made later by somebody else. Sometimes several somebody elses have made different choices at different times over the years. But what all these works have in common is that each one boasts a marvelous and fruitful tension between the vast vision of the story and the masterful, sometimes ferocious economy with which that vision is rendered. Here then are twenty-two stories – roughly chronological but no promises – which will withstand and transcend any label you give them.

- The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

- Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

- At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

- "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

- In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

- “An Education” (in Bloodshed and Three Novellas) by Cynthia Ozick

- Ray by Barry Hannah

- Travesty by John Hawkes

- Edisto and Edisto Revisited by Padgett Powell

- “Heaven” (in Bad Behavior) by Mary Gaitskill

- “Orbit” (in The Spectacle of the Body) by Noy Holland

- The Name of the World by Denis Johnson

- “The Term Paper Artist” (in Arkansas: Three Novellas) by David Leavitt

- “Bounty” (in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline) by George Saunders

- My Loose Thread and “The Ash Gray Proclamation” (the latter in Ugly Man) by Dennis Cooper

- Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

- Milk by Darcey Steinke

- Project X by Jim Shepard

- Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin

Aaron Burch

2010-01-14T08:47:00.003-05:00

Aaron Burch’s How To Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew, won PANK’s chapbook contest and is due out any day now, or may even already be out, depending on when this interview goes up. His How To Predict the Weather is due out from Keyhole Books later this year, and stories are in the current or out-very-soon issues of New York Tyrant, Barrelhouse, Quick Fiction, and PANK. He is the editor of Hobart.

what are you reading now

I started answering these questions a few weeks ago, then got overwhelmed with the holidays and whatnot and so am now finally getting back to it. Then, I’d just finished Victor LaValle’s Big Machine, which I loved, and was starting Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist. I’ve now moved on to Robert Lopez’s Kamby Bolongo Mean River and, as always, I’m reading stories here and there in literary journals, and lots of submissions. I’m also kind of dipping my toes, for “research” on a story I’m working on right now, into the Bible and a book about Paul Bunyan.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Oh, all of them. I’m super underread. I know it’s not a “classic” in the traditional sense of the word, but I’ve been meaning to read McCarthy’s Blood Meridian forever. The only other “classics”/older books that look to be in my current “to-read” pile are some Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Mikhail Bulgakov, West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, and Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Though I don’t actually foresee getting to any of those anytime soon.

book you borrowed and never returned

Well, it’s possible both Miss Lonelyhearts and Thursday are in the above mentioned “to-read” pile because both are borrowed. I’ve had Barry Graham’s The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing forever. I’m sure there are a few others that snuck onto the bookshelf.

last book to induce gut-busting laughter

I want to say I read a small excerpt of Lipsyte’s The Ask somewhere, and I don’t often push into “gut-busting” but it made me laugh. The two writers who immediately come to mind are Lipsyte and Bachelder, who is always making me laugh with his stories and novels and who I just generally love.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

Hm. I’m lazy. I don’t think I’ve read very many (read: any) challenging books. Maybe Lutz and Marcus challenge me the most, at times trying to figure out basically anything about the story at all, all the while still enjoying the language.

weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

I had a great dream about Dave Housley, one of the Barrelhouse editors the other night. Here’s how I just described it on Facebook:

"... had a dream about AWP. I went to the Barrelhouse table to pick up the new issue, but it was just Dave Housley sitting there by himself, looking like he was at a craft fair. "You didn't bring any issues?" I asked. "Nah," he said. "We never sell any, so I thought I'd try to sell some of my homemade crafts."

I seriously wish I could draw or something so I could fully represent the beauty of this booth from my dream. Like... think of the busiest, gaudiest craft booth you've ever seen at a county fair. Then go from there. It was AMAZING. And Dave looked pretty much like regular ol' Housley, except he had this look on his face, both optimistic, like he was sure he'd sell more goods than they had issues previously, but also a little saddened, like he didn't understand why I was the only one at the table and his amazing crafts weren't just flying off the table. But, still with the glimmer of optimism, like he knew: they'd come. It was slow now, but it was all only a matter of time.

last reading you attended

I just a couple of days ago drove a couple of hours with a couple of friends/fellow UIUC MFA student to Knox College to see Laura van den Berg read. She rocks.

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

I don’t know if I’ve ever had a coffee table. I’ve maybe conspicuously left Hobart out, hoping they might ask me about it.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I don’t know if I could limit it to just one. Why do I have to? I think I currently subscribe to, and/or buy every issue of: Annalemma, Barrelhouse, Quick Fiction, NOON, New York Tyrant, Keyhole, A Public Space, Conjunctions, and American Short Fiction. And then there are at least that many more that I buy almost every issue of…

best thing you’ve read online recently

Russ Evatt’s poem “Poem Ending With A Fragment From A Theory of Truth” on PANK (which you can also listen to!) and Dave Housley’s essay “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke” on The Collagist.

most anticipated upcoming release

In full disclosure: mine. I’m kind of geekily anticipating it. I can’t wait to see it, hold it, put it on my coffee table to impress others, even though I don’t have a coffee table and no one ever comes to my apartment.

The less self-centric answer would probably be Lipsyte’s The Ask, although I’m also really looking forward to Matt Bell’s collection.

recommended reading list:

Short Books That Can Fit in Your Pocket and Can Possibly be Read in One Sitting but You May Want to Stretch Out to Prolong Your Enjoyment

The requirements for this are basically evident from the above but otherwise not very strict. I’ve realized recently that I really like novellas. However, when they are included in a longer collection (“a novella and stories”) I rarely read them because they seem daunting, compared to the stories, and yet when published on their own, they are like a short treat and seem so easy when compared to a longer novel.

- A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons

- The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas by Davy Rothbart (I have the smaller, self-published version of this book which, at about 5” x 7” and only 124 pages, is perfect for the above description)

- all the books by Clear Cut Press

- all the books in the 33-1/3 series of books on classic albums

- all the books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint (released by Dalkey Archive, a couple are bigger, but most are small enough to be pocketable, and all are great)

- Tales of Woodsman Pete by Lilli Carré (comic)

- Incredible Change-Bots by Jeffrey Brown (also a comic; probably about half of Brown's books are small and great enough to be included here)

- And, finally, despite being published through Hobart and so possibly exempt from inclusion, I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention both Michelle Orange’s The Sicily Papers and Mary Miller’s Big World. We basically started Short Flight / Long Drive Books with the desire to publish books that fit this reading list description.

Andrew Porter

2010-01-05T08:11:00.002-05:00

Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was recently republished in paperback by Vintage/Knopf. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Epoch, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and on NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” He currently teaches creative writing at Trinity University in San Antonio.

what are you reading now

Right now, I’m reading a few books: Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs, The Best American Short Stories 2009, and What I Can’t Bear Losing, a collection of essays by Gerald Stern.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

A Sentimental Education by Flaubert. I’ve read a lot of Flaubert, and many of my friends have recommended this book to me, but for some reason I’ve never gotten around to reading it.

most treasured book in your collection

There are a few books in my collection that even my closest friends aren’t allowed to borrow. One of these books is my paperback edition of Stephanie Vaughn’s Sweet Talk, which is one of my very favorite short story collections and which is also currently “unavailable” (at least in paperback) on Amazon. How a collection this good could ever go out of print is beyond me.

book you borrowed and never returned

I’m very good about returning books to friends, but I believe my copy of Nabokov’s The Eye might still have a very old library card in it.

weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

I tend to forget my dreams as soon as I wake up, so it’s hard for me to say. I’ve probably had a few anxiety dreams about my own book, if that counts.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

At the end of my last semester of college, my creative writing professor decided on a whim that we should spend the last three weeks of the semester reading Ulysses. At the time, it seemed like a cruel joke. I mean, it was May, the flowers were blooming, most of us were about to graduate in less than a month; but still, I remember sitting in the library stacks and trudging through it, using whatever supplemental materials I could find to make sense of what I was reading. In retrospect, I don’t know how I made it through the entire book, but I did, and I can honestly say it was probably, in the end, one of the most rewarding reading experiences of my life.

collected stories of

Flannery O’Connor.

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

I can’t remember ever doing this, but I have definitely hidden some of my Entertainment Weeklys under copies of The New Yorker.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

That’s easy. One Story. I don’t know of another magazine out there that’s publishing more interesting fiction these days.

best thing you’ve read online recently

“The Witches” by Rebecca Curtis over at Five Chapters.

most anticipated upcoming release

I’m very excited to read my friend Doug Dorst’s short story collection The Surf Guru, which should be coming out this spring.

recommended reading list:

The Big Taboo: Writers Writing about Writers

One thing every creative writing professor will tell you is that you should never write a short story about a writer. If you want to make the main character a writer, they’ll say, then make him or her something else: a musician, a painter, a filmmaker, even an actor. And yet, over the years I’ve read some incredibly good short stories about writers, and these are just a few of them:

- “Cats and Students, Bubbles and Abysses” by Rick Bass

- “92 Days” by Larry Brown

- “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” by Nam Le

- “A Conversation with My Father” by Grace Paley

- “Life Story” by John Barth

- “The Office” by Alice Munro

- “How to Tell a Story” by Margo Rabb

- “Put Yourself in My Shoes” by Raymond Carver

- “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta” by Kate Braverman

- “How to Become A Writer” by Lorrie Moore

Shellie Zacharia

2009-12-21T11:21:00.002-05:00

Shellie Zacharia lives in Gainesville, Florida. Her debut story collection, Now Playing, was recently published by Keyhole Press.

what are you reading now

Argh! I’m always reading several books at once. Too many. I’m reading a few short story anthologies slowly, a story or two here and there: The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction and My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro and the O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 volume. I’m also reading The Party Train, a Collection of North American Prose Poetry. And Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

last book to make you laugh out loud

Not sure, but maybe Elizabeth Crane. I read her When the Messenger is Hot and then I went and got You Must Be This Happy to Enter because I thought, yeah, these are fun stories.

strangest book you've ever read

Joyce’s Ulysses. I read it in grad school and I remember thinking, what?! I remember loving the Molly Bloom yes and yes and yes soliloquy, and I remember the professor saying, “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan” a bunch of times and not making much sense. But I know I was blown away that writing could be so wild.

book you borrowed and never returned

I’m embarrassed to say, but a vegetarian cookbook. It’s got good easy recipes, simple ones where I don’t have to run to the store for extra ingredients. But now I’m thinking I better return it and get my own copy.

collected stories of

Lydia Davis. Her collection just came out. I think I’ll buy it. Today. Okay.

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

Ha! I don’t think I’ve planted books, but I’ve hidden books. Don’t need people knowing I’m reading that!

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Oxford American. And they include the Southern Music CD. Very cool. Literature and music – two of my favorite things.

most anticipated upcoming release

Well, I love the Sudden Fiction anthologies edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas – I have them all (and the Flash Fiction ones) and go back to them again and again. I don’t know when they’ll put another one out, but I’m waiting . . .

recommended reading list:

Some Books That Made Me Say “Wow”

- The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender

- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

- The Family Orchard by Nomi Eve

- Big Fish by Daniel Wallace

- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Emma Straub

2009-12-17T09:30:00.002-05:00

Emma Straub is the author of Fly-Over State, a novella published by FlatmanCrooked. Her short stories have appeared in Five Chapters, Barrelhouse, The Saint Ann's Review, Juked, and many other publications. She is the co-editor of Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction, as well as the co-editor of the Read page of the Dossier Journal website. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and cats and is currently trying not to kill a number of plants. More information can be found at www.emmastraub.net.

what are you reading now

Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer by Steven Millhauser. I read his story collection Dangerous Laughter on my honeymoon in March and have been wanting to read his novels ever since. This book, as far as I can tell so far, is about a very average boy and his psychotically obsessed best friend. It's sort of like what I imagine Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca would have been like as a child.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I've picked up and put down Updike's Rabbit trilogy in every bookstore I've ever been in, but have somehow never bought the thing. Does that count as a classic?

last book to make you laugh out loud

I recently finished Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, which I wouldn't classify as a 'funny' book, but it certainly made me laugh out loud. The Millhauser book is also hilarious. I'm an easy laugh, should I mention that? Other things that make me laugh: pictures of kittens on the internet.

most treasured book in your collection

There are of course many many books that mean a great deal to me as a collection of sentences (Middlemarch, etc), but there are only two books on my shelf that actually mean something as objects. In high school, when I was a poet, I stole my parents' ancient and gorgeous copies of Frank O'Hara's The Collected Poems and e. e. cummings’s Poems, 1923-1954. I folded down pages and underlined and stuck post-its on almost every page. I don't think my parents are ever getting those books back.

book you borrowed and never returned

I don't borrow very often, but I do have a copy of Cold Comfort Farm that was loaned to me many years ago, as well as a copy of Charles Baxter's Feast of Love that a friend left at my house by accident in college. Is it awful to admit I haven't read either one?

if you could write yourself into any story

Probably one where I could go into another world, a la Narnia or Hogwarts, though people are always trying to kill you in places like that. Maybe just a Jhumpa Lahiri story, where my thoughts would be much more nicely worded.

last reading you attended

I had a reading two days ago, but it seems weird to pick my own. I will say this, however, in my own defense. It was the Largehearted Lit series, where musical accompaniment is expected, and I had my friends sing Billy Joel and the New Kids on the Block. A crowning achievement. Before that, the last reading I went to was the finale of Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City Marathon. He read until 4am, though I pooped out at 1:30. There were cookies, and prizes. Every reading should have cookies and prizes.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I love One Story. Does anyone not say One Story? I also love the The Paris Review, and my dear FlatmanCrooked.

best thing you’ve read online recently

I read The Rumpus every day. Also, The Nervous Breakdown and The Millions.

most anticipated upcoming release

My father, Peter Straub, has a really amazing novel coming out in February. It's called A Dark Matter and it will make you see stars.

recommended reading list:

Novels by Really Smart Ladies Who I Would Be Afraid to Approach at a Cocktail Party

- The Secret History by Donna Tartt

- The Great Man by Kate Christensen

- The Wife by Meg Wolitzer

- Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy

- The Keep by Jennifer Egan

- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Claudia Smith

2009-12-13T09:57:00.003-05:00

Claudia Smith lives and writes in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Her collections are The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts and Put Your Head In My Lap. Her site is www.claudiaweb.net.

what are you reading now

The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I don't know. Something big, fat, and Russian. I've read the abridged translation of War and Peace; I should pick up the unabridged, someday. No, I've changed my mind. Someday I really will read all of Remembrance of Things Past.

last book you finished in a single sitting

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys

most treasured book in your collection

It's funny, I feel more attached to the words than the books themselves. It sounds arrogant but it is probably my first chapbook, The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts. It was beautifully made, hand sewn, and it has an introduction Ron Carlson wrote. And it was a limited printing, so there aren't any more of them.

book you borrowed and never returned

Oh, I hate to admit I do this. I'm not going to say.

favorite book from childhood

Well, I still love Charlotte's Web.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

I read Ulysses from cover to cover when I was 18. That was challenging.

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

I think this has always been something to do with art. I would pick someone who wasn't terribly famous, or at least, what I thought of as not being a household name. You know, I think I'm lying. I'm not sure I've ever done this. I have a memory of putting on Charles Ives and placing a Chinese art book on the table once to impress somebody, but I'm not sure that really happened.

Nowadays, nobody is really impressed by my coffee table. It's got permanent marker scribbles on it. It's an art table, dinner table, and homework table, but not really a prop for books.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Does The Sun count? I don't subscribe to any, honestly. We're on a budget right now.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Well, I read this again recently because of the time of year.

"Bing Crosby Dreaming at The Lamp Post Inn" by Elizabeth Ellen

most anticipated upcoming release

I'm looking forward to Joe Young's Easter Rabbit. Oh, I have to order that...

recommended reading list:

Campus Novels

Well, because I'm trying to write a paper about Mary McCarthy, and I'm back at school, how about the campus novel? I haven't read most of these books – can I still recommend books I haven't read? Most of these are books I want to read someday.

- The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy

- Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

- The Secret History by Donna Tartt

- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

- The Professor's House by Willa Cather

- Eating People Is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury

- Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed

J. A. Tyler

2009-12-10T09:09:00.003-05:00

J. A. Tyler is the author of INCONCEIVABLE WILSON (scrambler books, 2009), SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press, 2010), IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press, 2010), A MAN OF GLASS AND ALL THE WAYS WE HAVE FAILED (fugue state press, 2011), & THE ZOO, A GOING (dzanc books, 2013). His work has appeared recently with Diagram, Sleepingfish, Caketrain, Hotel St. George, elimae, & Action, Yes, among others, and he is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. Visit: www.aboutjatyler.com.

what are you reading now

How To Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew by Aaron Burch (forthcoming from PANK)

Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt by Ken Sparling (reissue forthcoming from Artistically Declined Press)

Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young (Publishing Genius Press)

In Candyland It’s Cool to Feed on Your Friends by James Chapman (Fugue State Press)

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I think I’ve read all the classics I was meaning to, and though it is perhaps not a ‘classic,’ I have been meaning to get to The Tunnel by William Gass.

last book you finished in a single sitting

both Peter Markus’s Good, Brother and The Singing Fish

also Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg

book you borrowed and never returned

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

most challenging book you’ve ever read

The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford

perfect literary gift for a loved one

Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler (love as decay)

The Failure Six by Shane Jones (love as unfinished)

Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball (love as suicide)

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

Poetry volume whatever (it didn’t do shit to impress anyone)

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Caketrain (their lit is always ripe always good always beautiful)

best thing you’ve read online recently

Ryan Call’s “How to Use This Guide” at Everyday Genius

most anticipated upcoming release

James Chapman’s The Rat Veda (Fugue State Press)

Shane Jones’s A Cake Appeared (Scrambler Books)

Peter Markus’s We Make Mud (Dzanc Books)

Roy Kesey’s Pacazo (Dzanc Books)

recommended reading list:

Books I Have Told My Wife to Read Because I Think She Might Like Them but She Hasn’t Yet and Probably Won’t

- Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus

- Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

- Light Boxes by Shane Jones

- Here They Come by Yannick Murphy

- Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey

- The Long Rowing Unto Morning by Norman Lock

- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

Timothy Gager

2009-12-05T11:14:00.003-05:00

Timothy Gager is the author of eight books of short fiction and poetry. His latest (November 2009) Treating a Sick Animal: Flash and Micro Fictions (Cervena Barva Press) features over forty stories, many previously published in various literary magazines. He hosts the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival. Timothy is the current Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review and has edited the book, Out of the Blue Writers Unite: A Book of Poetry and Prose from the Out of the Blue Art Gallery. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts and is employed as a social worker.

what are you reading now

I’m reading Steve Almond’s This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey which is actually two books, one front to back of flash fiction and the other a guide to writing. It has no ISBN number which I find fascinating, that someone as widely published as Steve is self-publishing.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I’ve read so many of the classics, I’d probably re-read Hemingway. I own his complete short story collection.

most treasured book in your collection

I have a few broadsides that I cherish. I have two limited edition Bukowski holiday poems that Black Sparrow used to put out and a signed chapter bound with a few staples of Billy Ray’s Farm.

book you borrowed and never returned

I always return books. I’d like some of the ones I’ve loaned back though.

last reading you attended

I hosted the Somerville News Writers Festival and I got to hear Rick Moody, Margot Livesey, Steve Almond, Frank Bidart, Lise Haines, Susan Tepper, Elizabeth Searle, Doug Holder, Sam Cornish, Tino Villanueva, Tam Neville and Richard Hoffman all read. It was like an All-Star Game.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I’d keep it local if that’s all I could support, so, Ploughshares. Why would I only be allowed to subscribe to one? That’s some cruel and unusual Nazi-journal banning. What kind of game is that?

best thing you’ve read online recently

The last issue of Night Train was fantastic—that’s always a must read.

most anticipated upcoming release

It’s out already but I haven’t bought it yet… The Best American Sports Writing 2010. I love that series.

recommended reading list:

All-Time Favorites

- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

- Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

- The World According to Garp by John Irving

- Ball Four by Jim Bouton

- Big Bad Love by Larry Brown

- The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore

- Small Town Punk by John Sheppard

- Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien

- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

- Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

- Ask the Dust by John Fante

- The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe

- Apt Pupil: A Novella in Different Seasons by Stephen King

Patrick Wensink

2009-12-01T23:42:00.002-05:00

Patrick Wensink is the author of the story collection, Sex Dungeon for Sale! He is currently working on his first novel. He lives in Louisville, KY. No, not in a sex dungeon.

(A coloring contest is currently being held to celebrate the release of his new book. The contest will run until December 14th and the winning artist will receive an autographed stack of Patrick's favorite books from 2009. More information can be found at his website.)

what are you reading now

The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim.

I'm slowly getting into this one. The impossible feat of one hundred men having the same parents is less important than their shared paranoia and quirks. At least I think so. I'm only about 50 pages in. Oddly, Antrim doesn't divide his story into chapters or acts, so it's basically a single 200 page chapter.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

This has been staring me down from the bookcase for at least three years now. It's not so long that it is intimidating. And the subject matter sounds really enjoyable. But for some reason I keep chickening out and moving on to something else.

last book to make you laugh out loud

Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman

I'm not a huge comics or graphic novel reader. But this collection of comics was by far the funniest thing I've read in several years. Each one is a short burst of absurdity. The first comic is a fake advertisement featuring Mickey Rourke selling pubic hair stencils. It was so funny I closed the book, tracked Kupperman down online and sent him an email to thank him.

strangest book you’ve ever read

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.

Somehow it moves from 1930s Ireland to an alternate reality full of one-legged men, cops obsessed with bicycles, a theory that the universe is sausage-shaped and a secret underground layer called "Eternity" where time stands still. It’s actually much weirder than it sounds, but is still fun to read.

In the nonfiction category I have to mention The Walrus Was Paul by R. Gary Patterson. I was obsessed with this book during college. It's a very detailed account of how Paul McCartney was accidentally decapitated in the 60s and a lookalike named Billy Shears took over for him. There are websites that break all the songs and visual clues down now, but I read this book right before the internet really exploded, so I had to spin my Beatles records backwards and stare at the album covers in the mirror for clues. I have never been that fascinated with a single topic since.

book you borrowed and never returned

Triumph of the Underdog by Charles Mingus

I used to live in Portland, OR and my buddy loaned this to me, knowing I really love Mingus's music. It sat around for years and I never touched it. It's a shame, because Mingus had a crazy life and was supposedly a good writer. I actually gave it back to him before I moved to Louisville, KY. So, I guess I lied about the never returned part of the question.

favorite book from childhood

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

I couldn't name you a single story or poem from this book now, but I remember it was a hot item in grade school. I would eagerly wait for the book to be back on the shelves so I could check it out again. My mom was the librarian, so I probably got to hang on to the book a little longer than the other kids.

Fun fact: Shel Silverstein was also a highly respected songwriter in Nashville. He penned "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash.

last reading you attended

BizarroCon in Portland, OR.

My publisher, Eraserhead Press, prides itself on its bizarre catalog. They also pride themselves on readings that are an extension of this. Eraserhead put on BizarroCon and the readings were part literary event, part performance art. Some of the highlights included one story being reenacted by sock puppets, one featuring a William Shatner impersonator and one guy throwing raw meat at the audience.

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

Movie Stars in Bathtubs (see Recommended Reading List)

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

MonkeyBicycle

I'm partial to this journal because they took a chance on me and published my story "Sex Dungeon for Sale." But I can consistently go there and find something funny, which is pretty rare.

most anticipated upcoming release

Probably Don DeLillo's new book. He is one of those authors who make you feel like you suck as a writer after reading their work. I mean that as a compliment, because it’s always good to have a boot in the butt.

recommended reading list:

Coffee Table Books That Will Get a Reaction

My wife and I have a rotating crop of coffee table books. We don't leave them out to make ourselves look smarter, but they are instant conversation pieces.

- Movie Stars in Bathtubs

This is a very G-rated book, probably made in the 60s. It features a ton of still shots from black and white movies where people are in the tub. I have no clue why something like this was published, but it never fails to get cracked open when guests are over.

- How to Form a Rock Band

This was also made in the 60s. My mom's library was throwing it out about 15 years ago and I've held onto it tightly since then. It shows budding musicians how to buy their gear at the mall and wear matching suits, because that's what talent agents like to see. It's hilarious and about the most un-rock 'n' roll thing I can think of.

- Cleveland, the Disco King

Another book I rescued from my mom's library. This is an illustrated children's book from the 70s, featuring a little boy trying to impress the prettiest girl in school with his disco dancing.

- Scoundrels & Scalawags

This is a Reader's Digest book I picked up at a yard sale. It's as thick as the Bible, but features stories about the world's most famous grifters and con artists. My favorites are Charles Ponzi, inventor of the Ponzi Scheme and "The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower.”

- BOOBYTRAPS

This was published by the army in the 40s and 50s (I think) and given to soldiers to teach them how to kill people more efficiently. Some highlights include diagrams for rigging a whistle, a tea kettle, a briefcase, a television, an ink pen or a Barcalounger to blow up when used. I bought this when my friend dragged me along to one of those gun shows at a convention center. I was surrounded by sub-machine guns, bazookas and gun nuts, but I was drawn to the book counter. Other books I should have bought but didn't: How to Make Your Own Fireworks, How to Make Your Own Munitions. Any of these are certain to get you a few odd looks during your next party.

Mel Bosworth

2009-11-21T09:16:00.005-05:00

Mel Bosworth is the author of When the Cats Razzed the Chickens & Other Stories (Folded Word Press, 2009).

what are you reading now

Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez. Me see him read in September. Him read good. Me buy book, shake hand. Words like nerf bullets fired from boom stick. Words fast, hit hard, but always nerf.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Moby Dick by Uncle Melville. I’ve been meaning to read it for years but I have this fear it’s going to bore me to death. But once I sit down and dig in I’m sure I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in a single sitting, but that’s a short one. I’m not the fastest reader in the east, so even if I’m tearing through a book it takes me at least 2-3 days. I like to make friends with the books I read. Take them places. Take naps with them. Age with them. Then when I’m finished it’s kind of sad, like saying goodbye. When I run into them years later I’ll say, “My friend!” (I honestly do this.)

strangest book you’ve ever read

Wow. Hm. Strangest. The strangest movie I’ve seen is Dee Snider’s Strangeland. Or maybe I’m just thinking that because of the word “strange.” Or maybe that was the funniest movie I’ve seen. No, that would be Leaving Las Vegas. Watching Nicholas Cage fill a shopping cart with booze gets me every time. But we’re supposed to be talking about books, right? Books. The strangest book I’ve ever read would have to be… Magick Without Tears by Aleister Crowley. Read it from cover to cover. Not sure why. I don’t think I’ve been the same since.

book you borrowed and never returned

I’m not that guy. Although I did hang onto a copy of Lolita for a couple of years. I recently gave it back.

weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

Well, I once had this dream where I was making breakfast for Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Walt was all grumpy. He may have been hung over. Emily was at the window, talking to a squirrel. I was at the stove pushing around bacon and eggs in a big frying pan. The bacon popped and hot oil landed on my forearm. I screamed and then Walt screamed and then Emily screamed. I turned to see Walt with the squirrel in his mouth. Emily was kneeling on the tile, scribbling furiously on a napkin. Walt pulled a big knife from his boot. He scratched words into the tabletop as he chewed the squirrel. I wrapped my arm in a towel and then served breakfast. Walt didn’t eat because he wasn’t hungry. This pissed me off and I scolded him but he didn’t care. Emily ate a little bit of egg, but she was more interested in having me read aloud what she’d written. So I did:

Whitman is an asshole. He ate my friend, the squirrel. Bad beard, crazy man. Breakfasts, fools, longing for a solitary now lunch.

Walt got all agro for a second and made like he was going to hit her. When she flinched he laughed and then asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I told him to get his coat. When he left the room I apologized to Emily for his horrible table manners. She just shrugged. Then I noticed what Walt had carved into the table:

Wally loves Emily.

Then Dickinson morphed into a rose bush. Walt returned with his coat. When he saw the rose bush he cried and cried and then leapt out the window. I lifted a forkful of delicious looking egg to my mouth and then woke up.

funniest book title

Anna Karenina. I credit Tolstoy for inadvertently inventing the name game.

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

Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends by Mark Helfrich. Well, to be honest, I didn’t buy the book nor was it my coffee table on which it was planted. But I did campaign pretty hard for the purchase and placement. It was enjoyed by men who reeked of hot sauce and chicken wings. A few women may have enjoyed it as well. I don’t know that it truly impressed anyone, but the book had some fans, that’s for sure. I miss that book. I wonder where it is now. I hope it’s safe. I should find its phone number, give it a call, late at night, whisper, weep.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Annalemma. Because it comes from a planet far superior to ours. It has to. No other explanation.

best thing you’ve read online recently

“Attendance” by Eric Beeny.

most anticipated upcoming release

Light and Trials of Light by Cynthia Reeser

recommended reading list:

Ten Books I Read Once, Enjoyed, But May Never Read Again

- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

- The Aeneid by Virgil

- Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.

- Hunger by Knut Hamsun

- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

- The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

- The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess

- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

- Reality Is What You Can Get Away With by Robert Anton Wilson

- Listen, Little Man! by Wilhelm Reich

Molly Gaudry

2009-11-14T10:44:00.004-05:00

Molly Gaudry is the author of We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious, 2009) and she is the fiction reviewer for East&West Magazine, which is based out of Hanoi, Vietnam. Send her an email; if she's not avoiding you, she'll respond – maybe even with a funny photograph.

what are you reading now

I just finished Esther Williams's autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, and I'm really looking forward to having some time to begin a long project about her contribution to synchronized swimming. The idea of synchronicity is interesting. Very Benjaminian (as was first proposed by Synthia Sydnor). And old-timey Hollywood in its heyday is hopefully a great backdrop. I'm trying to watch all her movies in the weeks and months to come, and the ones I've seen lately have been viewed while simultaneously reading Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda, Curtis Smith's The Species Crown (Press 53, 2007), and M. Thomas Gammarino's Big in Japan: A Ghost Story (Chin Music Press, Inc., 2009).

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Bleak House. Or maybe Lolita. These two come highly recommended by my favorite former fiction professor, Michael Griffith. If you haven't read Michael before, learn his name now and buy his novel Trophy as soon as it comes out. One chapter, that I had the pleasure of hearing him read, is titled "A Perfectly Respectable O'clock for Your Turkey." Anyway, I'm supposed to be leading a discussion on The Brothers Karamazov over at Big Other. I might go revise this to Bleak House. Or maybe Lolita. The reading is to begin on the first day of winter.

last book to bring you to tears

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, circa eleventh grade. Singer, man. Whew.

favorite book from childhood

Shel Silverstein's poems. I read all of them, all the time. I want them now on huge white canvases, with his illustrations of course. I would hang them all over my house, if I had a house.

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

Either The Catcher in the Rye or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I've written too many papers on both, which means I've got multiple sets of notes in each. I also have two (or three?) copies of each, but I only write in the already-messy ones.

book you borrowed and never returned

My long-lost friend Drew might kill me for this first-time-ever confession. When I left college a year-and-a-half in, I stole his tattered, coffee-stained copy of Tales of Beatnik Glory. I still have it. Sorry, Drew.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

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

Boring Postcards, and, my god, are they boring. I can't recall actually trying to impress someone specifically, but this was on my coffee table for a long time, all by itself. I'm unsure now what this indicates about me. Interesting.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Ninth Letter, because that's where I discovered Blake Butler, who opened me up to all of this. I'll forever be grateful. Plus, it's just so darned good-looking.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Official Brown MFA Blog #1, which I just discovered yesterday because it was linked from Brandi Wells's blog, and, as always, Christopher Higgs's Bright Stupid Confetti, which I love and look forward to like a crazy woman in a bathrobe.

most anticipated upcoming release

Mine. Am I allowed to say that? I mean, it's true. Like, I will have copies of my first-ever book in less than one month. Twenty-two days from now, I will be standing in Cambridge, MA and reading from it--it will be in my hands--and the next day I will be reading from it in Providence, RI, and maybe Brian Evenson will be there. Brown is my dream school. I do not currently have an MFA. I'm ready to be in a writing program again. I'd like to finish some of these projects that I haven't been able to devote time to because I teach full-time and all I do is grade and read and prep and grade and prep and grade. So it's like, one month, huh? Seriously? It's terrifying. And unbelievable. And I'm really, really excited.

Of course, I am also looking forward to Kate Bernheimer's The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold; Michael Griffith's Trophy; Brock Clarke's Exley; and Kevin Wilson's novel, which, if I'm not mistaken, was only recently submitted to his publisher.

recommended reading list:

Books I Refuse to Leave Behind Any Time I Move to a New City

- Midnight's Children and The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie

- Blindness by José Saramago

- The Baron in the Trees and Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

- Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

- The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold by Kate Bernheimer

- My Happy Life by Lydia Millet

- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

- The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr

- The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories

- Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson

- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

- Light Boxes by Shane Jones

- The Persistence of Objects by Richard Garcia

- Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death by Christopher Kennedy

- Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe

- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

Matthew Simmons

2009-10-31T10:05:00.005-04:00

Matthew Simmons lives in Seattle with his cat, Emmett. He is a blogger (themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com, htmlgiant.com) and the author of A Jello Horse (Publishing Genius Press).

(I started this a couple of months ago and put it aside. I have decided to see how things have changed for me. Not a lot.)

what are you reading now

Then

For Those Whom God has Blessed with Fingers by Ken Sparling, which is amazingly good.

Now

The Failure Six by Shane Jones appeared in my mailbox last night. I've started it and am enjoying it. I've also been reading The Jerusalem Syndrome by Marc Maron, The Book of Jokes by Momus, and Big Machine by Victor LaValle. I have a roving eye when it comes to reading. It is often my undoing.

Oh, and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte. Holy Smokes, The Ask. Fantastic.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Then

The Idiot by Dostoevsky and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I hope to get them both read this summer.

Now

I didn't. Answer remains the same, though. Add The Third Policeman to it. I have that one on my night table.

last book to bring you to tears

Then

Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball. Blake mentioned one of his other books in his recommended reading list, and I have that one, and now I'm afraid that Michael will make me cry again.

Now

Same. Ablutions was a contender.

funniest book or story title

Then

Funniest book I've ever read is The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes, which is both a satire of academia and a gothic horror novel in one.

Now

Or, wait. Did you mean the funniest title for a book? I'm pretty sure Eeeee Eee Eeee wins that one. Ricky's Anus is pretty good, too.

best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology

Then

Best American Short Stories from 1990. Denis Johnson's "Car-Crash While Hitchhiking." Millhauser's "Eisenheim the Illusionist." Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly, Too" "Typical" by the amazing Padgett Powell. "The Reverse Bug" by Lore Segal. Joy Williams.

Now

Same one. The one from 1990 is a hell of an anthology.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Then

Toss up between New York Tyrant and NOON right now. But I also am obscenely loyal to my friends at Hobart.

Now

I am now just loyal to Hobart. I set up a swear jar in an effort to not be so obscene. And it worked!

best thing you’ve read online recently

Then

The fake Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken twitter feeds.

Now

Michael Martone's 4foraQuarter twitter feed.

most anticipated upcoming release

Then

Amelia Gray's upcoming FC2 book Museum of the Weird.

Now

Also, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell. Kevin Sampsell's A Common Pornography. Everything here is the best thing ever by Justin Taylor. Reality Hunger by David Shields. Aaron Burch just won that Pank contest. Molly Gaudry's novella. Blake Butler's next two books.

I'd also like to see my friend Amy Minton finish the edits on her book of short stories so it can get out there and find a publisher. She's good, that one.

recommended reading list:

Holy Smokes 2009 Has Had Some Good Books

- Ablutions by Patrick deWitt

- AM/PM by Amelia Gray

- Fever Chart by Bill Cotter

- Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

- God's Hazard by Nicholas Mosley

- Everything Matters! by Ron Currie

- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

- Last Days and Fugue State by Brian Evenson

- Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper

- On the Winding Stair by Joanna Howard

- Big World by Mary Miller

- MLKNG SCKLS by Justin Sirois

- Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch

- That Summertime Sound by Matthew Specktor

- Forecast by Shya Scanlon

- Misconception by Ryan Boudinot

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. Mike Young's chapbook, MC Oroville's Answering Machine. Brandon Gorrell's Muu Muu House book. Tao's new book. Too many, really.

Kevin Sampsell

2009-10-26T09:32:00.004-04:00

Kevin Sampsell has run Future Tense Books, a micropress in Portland, Oregon since 1990 (latest release: Put Your Head In My Lap by Claudia Smith). He has worked at Powell's City of Books, the largest bookstore in the country, since 1997. He has written book reviews and essays for Associated Press. His short fiction has appeared widely and is collected in the books, Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets. His memoir, A Common Pornography, is due out in January 2010.

what are you reading now

I usually juggle two or three books at a time. Right now, it's The Impostor's Daughter, a graphic memoir by Laurie Sandell, Scary, No Scary, a poetry collection by Zachary Schomburg, and More of This World or Maybe Another, a debut story collection by Barb Johnson.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Kind of a forgotten classic maybe, but I have Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell in my to-read stack. I read a bunch of stories by him a few years ago and have always meant to go back.

most treasured book in your collection

My favorite book ever is Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz and I have a signed hardcover of the Knopf edition, which I think is hard to come by. I'm lucky to count Gary as a friend as well as an author I've published on my press.

book you borrowed and never returned

Um, if you mean "borrowed" as in stolen, I borrowed a copy of the 1990 Poet's Market from a Spokane bookstore because it was expensive and I was a young starving poet wannabe looking to get published. I highlighted about forty places to send my stuff to (back in the days when you ONLY mailed submissions). I think I did okay with it. Landed some poems in about ten places.

favorite book from childhood

I don't remember having many books around at all when I was a kid. I don't remember my parents reading to me at all and, probably because of that, I definitely wasn't interested in reading when I was young. I do have an odd memory of joining some sci-fi book club where you order ten books for a dollar or something like that. I liked the cover art on those Dune books but never even opened them. Around the time I was in 8th grade, I do remember reading Brian's Song for some reason. I read it very quickly and it made me cry.

secret crush on a writer or literary character

It's not too secret--Miriam Toews knows I have a big crush on her, thanks to her novel, A Complicated Kindness (and its equally crush-worthy main character, Nomi Nickel). My real-life mega-crush is Frayn Masters!

last reading you attended

I go to readings all the time. Part of my job is to host readings at the store. I just introduced Jonathan Lethem. The last non-Powell's reading I went to was at Wordstock, the big lit festival here. I saw Blake Nelson, who wowed a crowd of teens.

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

I think it's fun to have weird reference books around for people to look at. Back when I actually had a coffee table, I think I had this The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers on it. Maybe not to impress someone, but maybe to unsettle them. Hahaha.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Probably NOON, which only comes out once a year but is consistently daring and interesting. I also really enjoy Keyhole and McSweeney's.

best thing you’ve read online recently

I regularly read HTMLGIANT, which is a great literary/culture blog. As far as fiction goes, I really liked Brandi Wells's controversial "Instructional" and "What Happened" by Elizabeth Ellen.

most anticipated upcoming release

I'm lucky that I get review copies of books at Powell's, so I'm always reading books that aren't even out yet. The other day I opened an unassuming package that had a copy of Sam Lipsyte's The Ask in it and I audibly said, "Oh my God" in a shocked voice. I'm so excited to read that.

recommended reading list:

Favorite Memoirs

Because I was working on my memoir so much the past several months and I hadn't really read that many, I started reading more of them, just to see if I was doing it right and to see what worked and didn't work. These are my favorite ones:

- Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett

- Stop-Time by Frank Conroy

- Rock On by Dan Kennedy

- Boy with Loaded Gun by Lewis Nordan

- The Film Club by David Gilmour

- Are You There, God? It's Me. Kevin. by Kevin Keck

- The Sky Isn't Visible From Here by Felicia Sullivan

- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

Joseph Young

2009-10-10T09:40:00.004-04:00

Joseph Young lives in Baltimore, MD. His book of microfictions, Easter Rabbit, is available now for preorder from Publishing Genius, with wide release December 15, 2009. His microfiction has appeared most recently in Keyhole, Caketrain, FRiGG, SmokeLong Quarterly, Grey Sparrow, Lamination Colony, and Wigleaf. E-mail him at youngjoseph21@hotmail.com and visit www.easterrabbit.blogspot.com.

what are you reading now

AM/PM by Amelia Gray. It’s a book of interrelated microfictions (several interrelations going on at once) that’s just beautifully well done. Funny and earnest and smart.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I’d love to get back to Anna Karenina. I started reading it a few years ago and got sidetracked. Problem is, I’d have to start over, I think. Too many names there to just jump back in!

last book you finished in a single sitting

Not sure of any book I’ve read in a single session, none that I can remember. I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in a couple days, a few years ago. It was like living in a waking nightmare, one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read. There’s pretty much no plot, just the man and his son trying to get to the ocean, but it’s intensely gripping. I read A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons in a couple sittings not too long ago. A very moving book.

most treasured book in your collection

A Passage to India killed me. The last 30 pages or so are so incredible, nearly a religious experience. I actually gave it away, though, at a book exchange that was part of a friend’s art opening. But that it exists in another person’s collection makes me feel like I have it even more, somehow.

book you borrowed and never returned

This Is Not a Novel by David Markson. One of the most fascinating books I never finished. And never returned. I don’t think it requires finishing to be good. Or returning.

weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character

I dreamt about Kurt Vonnegut once. We were somehow both involved in a flood, a little seaside town being overtaken by a tsunami. The whole town was covered in beautiful yellow sand. Not sure what Vonnegut had to do with the whole thing, but I know he put in an appearance.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

Probably The Sound and the Fury. It was a challenge worth the effort. By the time I got to Dilsey’s section I thought I’d never read something so impressive.

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

Hmm, I don’t have a coffee table. I might have strewn books on the floor to impress a girl or something but I don’t remember what the books might have been. “Look at my impressive mess” was probably more what I was after.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I subscribe to the Internet, does that count? So many good online journals. I feel too bad picking just one out, whether online or print. Is that a cop out?

best thing you’ve read online recently

Well, this is hard too, just because there’s so much. But I’ll pick one of the very most recent things, Mark Leidner’s poem “Lily Pad” at ACTION YES.

most anticipated upcoming release

This will probably sound like nepotism, but I’m really looking forward to Adam Robinson’s book of poetry, Adam Robison and Other Poems, coming out from Narrow House. These poems are just so effective, and affective. Funny, sincere, and heady all at the same time.

recommended reading list:

Judge a Book: Good Books with Good Art (On the Cover)

- Big World by Mary Miller

- Fences by Ben Brooks

- The Contemporary Art of the Novella series, various books by Melville House

- The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey

- You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers

- Less Shiny by Mary Miller

- Poemland by Chelsey Minnis

- How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace

- The Complete Collection of people, places, & things by John Dermot Woods

- I. by Stephen Dixon

Tim Horvath

2009-09-29T08:02:00.006-04:00

Tim Horvath is the author of Circulation, released by Sunnyoutside Press in 2009, and stories out or forthcoming in Conjunctions, Fiction, Puerto del Sol, Sleepingfish, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. His story "The Understory" was selected by Bill Henderson for the 2006 Raymond Carver Short Story Award, and he has received a Yaddo Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Chester College of New England and Boston's Grub Street Writers, and will be an Associate Prose Editor for a new print journal of prose and photography, Camera Obscura, which opens for submissions in mid-October. His website is http://www.timhorvath.com/.

what are you reading now

I’m reading Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist and Bolaño’s 2666 and Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia.

last book to make you laugh out loud

I’m not a guffawer by temperament and by no means would call myself a giggler, but The Anthologist keeps making me snort with a slight undulation like I’m being tickled.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Anna Karenina. I really wish there was a theme park based on Russian novels and someone had lined up vacation plans for me there. That would force me to read it. It would be like a height requirement—you’d have to have read a certain number of pages. I could ride on the Dostoyevsky-coaster and the Turgenev carousel, but I’d be shit out of luck at the Tunnel of Tolstoy. I suppose there’s always a trip to St. Petersburg.

book you borrowed and never returned

I’m a terrible borrower of books. For someone who’s written a novella from the standpoint of a librarian, I have a pretty wretched track record when it comes to bringing things back. I think there’s something really profound about human nature that’s revealed in my propensity for taking things out and my not bringing them back. But I’m not sure what it is. It has something to do with dopamine. Taking away, the dopamine’s spurting out of my ears. Bringing back, it’s like a deficit. Why does my daughter like pulling stuff out but not cleaning it up? The objects weigh the same.

But to answer your question, I have the Betwixt and Between issue of Conjunctions borrowed from Donna. Sorry, Donna.

all-time favorite novella

Hmmm, maybe Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Or Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata. Hey, I have read some Tolstoy.…

last reading you attended

I saw Nicholson Baker read from The Anthologist. It was exciting in that I roadtripped it with my fiction class and we held workshop for a student story on the highway, successfully I might add. A surly toll-booth operator snarled “Take yer quarter!” and on the return trip she was waiting for us on the southbound side in a classic Seinfeld symmetry, this time cashing out. This context enhanced the reading somehow, the sort of marginalia Baker himself would’ve been attuned to, the drive intrinsic to the experience. Also, we sat right under hulking Baker, his voice dipping and thrumming like a singer of scat. Only afterward, seeing the text, did I realize how much shorter and more intimate his sentences have grown since The Mezzanine. I kind of feel like I’ve grown up with Baker, since my dad handed me The Mezz when it first came out, and I can remember identifying with it because I worked in one of those soulless offices down near Wall Street where there was naught to do but attend to every non-obvious detail of that alien landscape, how guys carried themselves while urinating and so forth, though hardly with Baker’s genius eye. Introducing myself to him after the reading, I made the mistake of saying, “Hey, I was down on Wall Street too, probably reading your book on my lunch hour.” So he signed my copy, “To a fellow Wall Streeter.” Ah, well.

weirdest dream involving a book or literary character

Okay, straight out of el dream journal:

I’m about to meet Jonathan Franzen. He’s got this device that lets him know how nervous the person meeting him is, like those radar signs that tell you your speed. He knows I’m shitting the proverbial pants. But he’s ready for me and has suggestions. One is that I could become “orthodox.” I nod. Another is that I could become better versed in history, and feel more grounded. I have no clue what he means, but I am relaxing. The third is that I could research people who are locked out of their houses and talk to them about what they are doing while locked out, and could sell this to The New Yorker. Now I’m holding up the line, and there’s a woman behind me. She tells me she likes my sneakers, and I look down and see that they’re subpar, really not fit to wear out, and then I realize she’s just trying to get me to haul my ass along so she can get her face-time with Franzen. I start to take off my sneakers just to stall and at this point Franzen raises his voice and yells, “That wasn’t one of my suggestions. WERE MY SUGGESTIONS NOT GOOD ENOUGH?” My urge is to say, “You’re not my dad,” but then I’m not so sure. I turn around to see if the woman is my mom, but she’s gone. Pan out and the whole thing has been at Sea World and the jellyfish are petitioning for brains and Franzen’s like, “Was this happening all along?” That’s it.

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

Coffee table? Planting a book on a coffee table is like painting a bison on your walls to dazzle someone. Today’s coffee table is the book-based social networking site, like Goodreads. My Goodreads shelf is pretty authentic, but if I had a sub-shelf that was Books That I Put Out There To Maybe Just A Little Bit Try To Impress Someone, I’d fess up that maybe I’m not really reading Tournier’s The Ogre right now, even though it says I am. But I started it. Hence. Have I shown you my rendition of a bison?

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Conjunctions, sans doubt.

best thing you’ve read online recently

That would have to be Joshua Cohen’s “North Vain, Bluff” at Harp & Altar. It’s from a thing that I believe is finished—not sure when the whole thing’ll be released— called Two Great Russian Novels (there we go, back to that theme), all of which is to marvel at. If you know Cohen’s amazing Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, you already know him as an avalanche, but one of language and history and humor; here he is literal wintry action scenes in Alaska. Plus there’s a helicopter. I’m way more into it than, say, Michael Chabon’s Sitka Jewish homeland-relocation-noir.

most anticipated upcoming release

The English translation of Macedonio Fernández’s The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, slated for next year—a series of prologues to a book never written. He was Borges’s secret influence/foil/double/_____. He sounds as if he was less responsible than Borges, maybe, and thus got his work out into the world less and didn’t develop a career (Borges always considered himself a lucky imposter as went his own success; maybe he was thinking of Macedonio).

recommended reading list:

Peak Bagging the Mighty Montages

Even though the word “montage” derives etymologically from “mounting,” I’d like to take it a step back further and think of mountains, that when a story feels more like a collage than a straightforward narrative, it gives you that sense of adrenaline and liberation and perspective you might get leaping from mountain to mountain. So, here are books that make a few, but not too many, concessions to linearity or to consecutiveness, that squeeze white valleys onto the page in order to disrupt the reading experience—but also to propel you forward, and thus make it more like memory, more like the way I, at least, experience daily life/thought/the past.

- Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

- Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

- The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser

- Speedboat by Renata Adler

- The Atlas by William T. Vollmann

- Doctor of Silence by Robert Kelly

- Mating by Norman Rush

- The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Representative stories: Rick Moody’s “Demonology,” Heidi Julavits’s “Marry the One Who Gets There First,” David Means’s “Coitus,” Matt Bell’s “Ten Scenes from a Movie Called Mercy.”

John Dermot Woods

2009-09-17T09:06:00.003-04:00

John Dermot Woods is the author of the novel The Complete Collection of people, places & things and the forthcoming comic chapbook The Remains (Doublecross). He writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared in The Indiana Review, Hobart, 3rd Bed, Salt Hill, American Letters & Commentary, No Colony, Lamination Colony, and many other places. He edits the arts quarterly Action,Yes and organizes the online reading series Apostrophe Cast. He is a professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College on Long Island.

what are you reading now

Acme Novelty Library #19 by Chris Ware, Moby Dick by Melville, re-reading Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy, Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales by Kurt Schwitters (with my daughter)

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Moby Dick

last book to make you laugh out loud

The Schwitters book is pretty hilarious.

book you borrowed and never returned

Nails by Lenny Dykstra (it's about his time on the Mets not as a stock trader)

if you could write yourself into any novel

Not really a novel, but I'd love to get into a Calvin and Hobbes strip.

favorite book cover design

I have a lot: Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, Nadja by Breton (the Grove English translation), those new Penguin editions done by comics artists are pretty amazing; Adrian Tomine's best work is on covers.

most challenging book you’ve ever read

Excluding volumes of theory, Finnegan's Wake – doing it with a team and guide

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

American Letters & Commentary (but that could change each day – because there's a bunch I love – Hobart, Sleepingfish, No Colony, etc.)

best thing you’ve read online recently

"Summer of the Raccoon" by Rachel Yoder in the last Action,Yes – just reread it and it's even better than I remember when I published it a couple of months ago.

most anticipated upcoming release

Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (it might be available already)

recommended reading list:

Literary Highlights of the New York Mets

– The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (Auster's dedication to the Mets is apparent in a lot of his work)

– The Curious Case of Sidd Finch by George Plimpton (April Fool's joke turned novel)

– Believeniks! by Jonathan Lethem and Christopher Sorrentino (this book is so esoteric, it took a name like Lethem's to get it published)

– If at First by Keith Hernandez (the most distinguished writer on the list)

– Samuel Beckett's attendance at a Mets doubleheader in 1964 during his one trip to America (they won both games)

– "How's that, Umpire?" by P.G. Wodehouse (actually a cricket story, but when he wrote this, Wodehouse had moved to Long Island and had become an avid Mets fan)

Stefanie Freele

2009-09-09T08:47:00.006-04:00

Stefanie Freele's short story collection Feeding Strays was just released by Lost Horse Press. She also has a new chapbook available through Bannock Street Books titled MOTEL. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in wonderful literary magazines like Glimmer Train, American Literary Review, Wigleaf, Night Train, Literary Mama, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, FRiGG, Dogzplot, and Hobart online. Stefanie has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. She is on the editorial staff of SmokeLong Quarterly and is also the Fiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

War and Peace – Will I read it? Maybe. Who knows. Perhaps when the world stands still and gives me a week or two off. And when it does, no, I won't do your laundry.

last book to make you laugh out loud

I think Russell Edson's The Song of Percival Peacock – which I'm not yet done with. It has made me laugh so many times I just can't believe it.

book you borrowed and never returned

Can't think of any. But, whoever borrowed Scott Poole's Hiding From Salesmen wouldja please give it back?

most treasured book in your collection

There isn't one. I have a "favorites shelf.” The left hand side of the shelf is most likely the most treasured bunch because they are fabulous books by authors I either know well, have met or have sent an e-mail to two to: Ray Vukcevich's Meet Me In the Moon Room, Barry Yourgrau's Wearing Dad's Head, Randall Brown's Mad to Live, Tania Hershman's The White Road, several by David Wagoner, Bruce Holland Rogers, Susan Zwinger.

There are also a bunch of authors I don't know personally, but would love to: Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn), Donald Barthelme (Sixty Stories), Cormac McCarthy (The Road). I need a bigger shelf.

secret crush on a writer or literary character

Some secrets are not meant to be told.

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

I don't have a coffee table nor do I want one. People are usually impressed by how I dress. My mother describes my personal style as "Eccentric Camper." I've been known to wear flannel shirts, hiking boots and even the occasional bandana.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Too hard and painful of a decision. I love lit mags and I want to subscribe to tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of them.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Best? Oh, there is so much! Starting with Wigleaf's Top 50 and on. There is some fabulous writing online these days. I can't keep up with all of it.

recommended reading list:

Cool Sounding Small Press Books That Haven’t Yet Come Out, But I Know the Authors’ Work And They Are Damn Good, So Therefore I Will Preorder And So Should You

- In an Uncharted Country by Cliff Garstang (Press 53)

- Beasts and Violins by Caleb Barber (Red Hen Press)

- Rattlesnakes and The Moon by Darlin Neal (Press 53)

- Now Playing by Shellie Zacharia (Keyhole Press)

- The Book of Want by Daniel Olivas (University of Arizona Press)

- The Mansion of Happiness by Robin Ekiss (University of Georgia Press)

Laird Hunt

2009-09-03T10:41:00.006-04:00

Laird Hunt is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Currently on faculty at the University of Denver, he is the author, most recently, of Ray of the Star.

what are you reading now

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

Where Did You Sleep Last Night? by Danzy Senna

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I’m not entirely sure Don DeLillo’s Underworld counts as a classic – perhaps a contemporary classic. And it’s actually a book I’ve been reading for 5 years. Every summer I say I’m going to finish it and every summer I read another 100 or 200 pp and put it back down. So this is not necessarily a classic book that I’ve been meaning to read.

last book you finished in a single sitting

Eunoia by Christian Bök

book you borrowed and never returned

Madison Smartt Bell’s Waiting for the End of the World. Borrowed a decade ago from an old writing friend Chris Baer and then we lost touch and I haven’t yet had the opportunity to give it back to him. It still sits on my shelf. Awaiting its rightful owner.

most treasured book in your collection

There are two:

A first edition, sans dust jacket, of The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien and The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald – My first U.S. edition copy is signed and has, tucked into its pages, both sides of the brief correspondence we had.

if you could write yourself into any novel

I would love to appear as one of the melancholic obsessives Sebald visits in The Rings of Saturn. I could sit gazing out of one window and he could sit opposite me gazing out of the other. A tea kettle would be bubbling away in the background. There would perhaps be the smell of something burning. A draft coming in through a crack in the window. A child could be sitting in a quiet corner drawing pictures of women with tornadoes in place of hair.

Or

I would love to appear as one of the punctuation marks (maybe a semi-colon) in Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans.

Or

As a character in the expendable chapters section of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch.

strangest book you’ve ever read

I believe that strangeness is the sine qua non of goodness in books. Life: A User’s Manual by Perec is a deeply strange book. So is Berg by Ann Quin. Moby Dick is extremely strange. It doesn’t get any weirder than Hamlet. Emily Dickinson’s selected poetry is really bizarre. Cane by Jean Toomer is strangeness squared.

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

I once planted a copy of a writer’s book on a coffee table to impress him/her when they came over. My wife, noticing, raised her eyebrow, scooped it up and put it away.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Brick Magazine

best thing you’ve read online recently

The opening pages of Robert Lopez’s second novel Kamby Bolongo Mean River.

most anticipated upcoming release

Joanna Howard’s On the Winding Stair

recommended reading list:

Books I Teach Every Year Because I Dig Them So Much

- Gargantua by François Rabelais

- The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje

- Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire

- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

- Persepolis (I) by Marjane Satrapi

- Cane by Jean Toomer

- Rose Mellie Rose, Hotel Splendid, or Forever Valley by Marie Redonnet

- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar

Owen King

2009-08-28T22:49:00.005-04:00

Owen King is the author of We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, and co-editor (with John McNally) of Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology of superhero fiction by literary writers. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as the Bellingham Review, One Story, Paste Magazine, and Subtropics. He has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and his story, “Nothing is in Bad Taste,” was cited in the 2009 Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories.

what are you reading now

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, and it’s brilliant. The premise is awesomely, wonderfully strange, and the prose is faultless, so crisp and so rich at the same time.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.

last book to bring you to tears

I definitely welled up a few times while reading Little Dorrit this spring. The part where Little Dorrit tells Maggy the story of the tiny woman who keeps a secret shadow – a hopeless love – is the sort of moment that earns Dickens the opprobrium of hard ass academics, but it gets me in the gut.

favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer

My sense is that a lot of people find Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers over-the-top. It’s a gory little yarn about a married couple on vacation in Venice who fall into the company of a pair of malevolent charmers. (Probably all you need to know is that Christopher Walken plays the male charmer in Paul Schrader’s film adaptation, and he brings all of his considerable powers of weirdness to bear on the part.) To me, the book has that combination of the profoundly eccentric and the totally awful that makes Grimm's Fairy Tales so undeniable even now, however many years after they were written.

most treasured book in your collection

My favorite book is the copy of an anthology I co-edited that I've been obsessively trying to get all the contributing writers to sign.

If there was a fire, I would, of course, rush the family out before I worried about any of our possessions. Which is why I have drilled our three cats in an elaborate evacuation procedure for the book. (It’s pretty cute.)

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

I can’t recall having done this, but recently, I moved my Baseball Encyclopedia off the coffee table, where it had been living for three months, and I’m pretty sure that impressed my wife.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I’m a One Story devotee. The combination of the back-pocket format and the consistent high quality of the work is tough to top.

most anticipated upcoming release

The new novel by my old classmate Jessica Shattuck, Perfect Life. Her first novel, The Hazards of Good Breeding, was a favorite.

recommended reading list:

Ten Stories That Are Ready For Their Close-Up

In the Bedroom (from Dubus’s “Killings”) and Brokeback Mountain (from the Annie Proulx story) are great examples of why, in general, most short stories probably make more sense as subjects of film adaptation than most novels. I’m not sure that the reason for this is all that complex. Turning a novel into a film usually requires a screenwriter to do lots of paring down, whereas a short story adaptation usually asks for rounding out. Neither thing can be easy, but I feel like the former needs a ruthless attitude that’s especially rare.

Anyway, here are ten short stories that have a sort of wonderful “roominess” – full, terrific characterizations, and narratives extended enough to bear the weight of elaboration – that makes them ripe for the motion pictures! (Come to think of it, for the same reasons, all these stories could be enlarged into novels…)

- “Death Defier” by Tom Bissell

- “The Man Who Knew Dylan” by William Gay

- “Flower Garden” by Shirley Jackson

- “Aerogrammes” by Tania James

- “The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link

- “Intervention” by Jill McCorkle

- “Gators” by Mark Poirier

- “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” by George Saunders

- “Batting Against Castro” by Jim Shepard

- “Blue Yodel” by Scott Snyder

Caitlin Horrocks

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Caitlin Horrocks’ fiction has appeared in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, The Paris Review, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Epoch and elsewhere. Her stories have been short-listed in Best American Short Stories and won awards from the Atlantic Monthly and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and online at www.caitlinhorrocks.com.

what are you reading now

I staggered home from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference this summer with a suitcase full of wonderful fiction that I’m slowly making my way through. Currently in the stack: Things That Pass for Love by Allison Amend, The New Valley by Josh Weil, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson, What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi, and more. It’s a big stack.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. It’s one of those books I know enough about to occasionally reference: “forerunner of post-modernism etc. etc. etc.” But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to talk about books I haven’t actually read, so I’m hoping to get to it soon and replace the taste of fraud with the taste of delicious 18th century narrative innovation.

most treasured book in your collection

I really treasure the various half-remembered children’s books I’ve been able to hunt down online. I spent years ransacking my parents’ attic for The Little Monster’s Bedtime Book by Mercer Mayer, because I remembered tiny creatures hidden in the illustrations saying, “We’re rock cooties. Count us!*” Then the internet made it possible to order an out of print copy.

I also hunted down Jack Prelutsky’s Nightmares, which I’d listened to only once on a borrowed audiotape. My parents had given me permission to spend the night in a tent in our backyard, and listening to this tape outside, in the dark, gave me such nightmares I erased the book’s title from my memory. Turns out I was right to be terrified. Sample stanza: “He cracks their bones and snaps their backs/and squeezes out their lungs,/he chews their thumbs like candy snacks/and pulls apart their tongues.”

* There are nine.

book you borrowed and never returned

My mother is a librarian: I always return my books. But I got into a ridiculous argument with a friend once over a copy of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I was moving away and calling in the books I’d lent. Our phone plans made it cheaper to send text messages than call, so we traded a series of increasingly ridiculous texts. There are only so many polite, mature ways to write: “You have my book,” “No I don’t,” “You have my book,” “No I don’t.” By the end of it I was questioning the whole friendship; how had I once associated with a bald-faced liar who was now trying to steal a book that I loved? Then finally he typed, “oh! thought bel canto was CD. gave yr CDs back weeks ago. book right here will bring it.” Which made me feel like a moron incapable of speaking on a phone and resolving basic interpersonal conflicts via actual words.

strangest book you’ve ever read

Possibly The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, written in 1584. Sample chapter title: “Certeine popish and magicall cures, for them that are bewitched in their privities.”

collected stories of

Flannery O’Connor. No question.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Hayden’s Ferry Review. I used to be an editor there, so I’m completely biased, but it’s a great journal. There’s a consistently interesting blog, too.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Forrest Anderson’s wonderful short story “Hey Bubba” in Blackbird. It’s heartbreaking. Go read it.

recommended reading list:

Smörgåsbord Short Story Collections

There are a lot of story collections I enjoy while I’m in the midst of reading them, but then look back on later and find the stories have blurred together in my mind. I have an especial love for collections that offer up a lot of distinct pleasures, whether the author is consciously working with different subjects and styles, or just producing a selection of really kick-ass stories.

- The Hotel Eden by Ron Carlson

- Equal Love by Peter Ho Davies

- Here We Are in Paradise by Tony Earley

- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

- The Good Life by Erin McGraw

- Permanent Visitors by Kevin Moffett

- The Train to Lo Wu by Jess Row

- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (I know, it’s a novel, and I know, everybody already knows it’s great. But it’s the book that taught me what a short story is, so I can’t let it go unmentioned.)

Clifford Garstang

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Clifford Garstang’s short story collection, In an Uncharted Country, will be published in September 2009 by Press 53 and is now available for pre-order at http://CliffordGarstang.com and www.Press53.com. His stories have appeared in Cream City Review, Wisconsin Review, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. A former international lawyer specializing in Asia, he has an MA in English from Indiana University and an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte.

what are you reading now

The New Valley by Josh Weil, published earlier this year. It’s unique—a collection of three novellas set in Southwest Virginia—and disturbing, which is about all I can ask of fiction. Josh is a friend from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and we’re doing a joint reading at the New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September.

Because I usually have both a fiction and a non-fiction book going at the same time, I’m also reading Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. It’s about the Buddhist spiritual path and is a sequel to his A Path With Heart, which I recently finished.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

There are several, I’m sorry to say, but the one classic I wish I could say that I’ve read is Remembrance of Things Past. Not sure when that’s going to happen, but it’s on my shelf, waiting.

last book to bring you to tears

That doesn’t happen very often, but I recently re-read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and that book is a killer. And it doesn’t help that I’ve heard O’Brien read from it and he gets emotional in the reading, so how can I not do the same?

book you borrowed and never returned

Who, me?

if you could write yourself into any book or story

I’ve always been interested in reincarnation, so maybe that would be The Sea of Fertility, the amazing tetralogy by Yukio Mishima, which follows a single “character” through successive lives.

best book-to-film adaptation

I don’t see a lot of films, but when I see an adaptation I’m often disturbed by what’s been left out, although I know the best books are much bigger in scope than a typical film. So I think Brokeback Mountain would be my choice here since it was based on a story rather than a novel, and I thought did an excellent job of capturing the whole work, even improving on the story in some ways.

favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer

I don’t think my reading has had the depth to do justice to this question, but Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion is an amazing book, and I think most people only know One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

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

This is maybe not quite what you mean, but for a while I had a couple of very nice books about Angkor Wat on my coffee table and wouldn’t have minded if someone had asked me about my trip there.

best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology

Pushcart. I like both of the other anthologies, too, but I use the Pushcart Prize volume each year to update my rankings of literary magazines (which I post on my blog in early December), and for that purpose I like their somewhat more democratic approach.

collected stories of

Grace Paley. But really, there are so many short story writers I admire and whose collected stories I either own or would like to own: Russell Banks, Richard Yates, William Trevor, Flannery O’Connor. It’s a very long list.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Ploughshares. And you didn’t ask for a reason, but I’d choose Ploughshares because it has more Pushcart Prize winners and Special Mentions than any other magazine this decade. By far.

most anticipated upcoming release

I’ve heard very good things about Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, which is coming out later this month, but I know that both John Casey and Tim O’Brien have new books that they’ve been working on for some time and I’m looking forward to seeing both of those.

recommended reading list:

Chinese Novels in Translation

(Because I’ve spent so much time in Asia, I’m drawn to work set anywhere in the region, and Chinese literature offers a treasure of new settings and ideas.)

- Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

- Red Sorghum by Mo Yan

- The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan

- To Live by Yu Hua

- Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua

- Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong

- Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong

- Rice by Su Tong

- Farewell My Concubine by Lilian Lee

- Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang

Shya Scanlon

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Shya Scanlon’s fiction and poetry have appeared in Mississippi Review, Literary Review, New York Quarterly, and elsewhere. His novel FORECAST is being serialized across 42 online journals and blogs. His prose poetry collection In This Alone Impulse will be published by Noemi Press in 2009. He received his MFA from Brown University in 2008, where he won the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction. Visit him online at www.shyascanlon.com.

what are you reading now

Right now I’m juggling a number of different books. I can’t tell if this is because none of them have grabbed me entirely, or whether my mood has been fluctuating, or perhaps that my attention span is a victim of the amount of time I spend online. Likely it’s a combination of all these. At any rate, I’ve got bookmarks in:

Driftless by David Rhodes
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
Ninety-two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane
Tumble Home by Amy Hempel
Vermeer in Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler
… and a variety of journals, including the new Fence, the new Puerto del Sol, and the first issue of Dewclaw

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Well, to answer that honestly would be a long list. I never really got a classical education, even in high school, and I didn’t study English in college, so I simply haven’t read all the books most of my peers consider essential. So let this thought experiment suffice for an answer: think of ten canonical classics. Chances are, I’ve probably read no more than one of them. Huh. Not much of an experiment, is it.

last book you finished in a single sitting

I never finish a book in one sitting.

book you borrowed and never returned

Oh, I’ve done this a lot. And it’s been done to me a lot, too. Frankly, I don’t really keep good track of books, whose are whose, etc. It’s all part of a big book continuum, for me. I have books for a while, then I don’t. But because I’ve avoided your last two questions, I’ll get specific here and tell you the last book I think I’ve failed to return: Mayordomo by Stanley Crawford.

favorite book from childhood

I suppose I can determine what stage of childhood we’re talking about here. One of my all-time favorite picture books is The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang. Just beautiful and giddy. Makes me think of growing up in Maine. Running naked through the woods.

longest book you’ve ever read

Huh. I don’t know. I don’t really think about that. I’ll tell you the longest book I’ve ever started and stopped reading: The Runaway Soul by Brodkey. I really wanted to be captivated by this book, and maybe that was the problem. The reading was so slow that every page I turned made me painfully aware of how many more there were to go. It was like being stuck in time. I don’t think I made it past 50. I’ll probably pick it up again when I’m old and crave that slowness.

secret crush on a writer or literary character

I think Lorrie Moore’s women are sexy as hell. They’re all broken yet strong and brilliant and hilarious. I don’t really picture them in my mind, though—in fact, I rarely picture characters in my mind unless the author drives it home (and even then I try to forget about it if possible). I like characters to remain nebulous, shifting word-arrangements. Though this doesn’t mean I like characters to be abstract. In fact, I’ve been increasingly disinterested in “abstract” fiction these days. I like characters, I find. Characters that seem real. I like plot, though it doesn’t have to be the driving force of the book. Action, then. I like things to “happen.” I want to write some Lorrie Moore fan fiction with long, elaborate sex scenes.

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

Hopefully, someday, my own.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I don’t subscribe to literary journals. I prefer to browse and buy from the rack. But I think I might use this opportunity to plug Monkeybicycle, which has kind of against all odds found a way to not only survive, but thrive, and which is dear to my heart for a variety of reasons. I look forward to each issue Steven Seighman creates.

best thing you’ve read online recently

How about this: I’ve recently been invited to join the online non-fiction site The Nervous Breakdown, and I’ve really been enjoying the memoir-type personal essays there. There’s a great variety of voices, experiences and perspectives, and it’s been kind of a nice reprieve from the dense, language-focused writing prevalent on many of the online journals I’m familiar with (and enjoy).

most anticipated upcoming release

Man, we’ve had a pretty good year so far, right? There are a number of books recently out that I haven’t read, so maybe I’ll list those instead. Inherent Vice, of course. How to Sell by Clancy Martin. Lowboy by John Wray. Okay, I’ll say this: I want to read Happy Rock by Matthew Simmons, when it comes out. It has yet to find a publisher, though, as far as I know, so I might have to wait a while. Any takers? Contact Matthew at http://themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com/.

recommended reading list:

Adult Books to Read to Your Child

My criteria: these books all use very simple language, and in most cases, very simple syntax, to create wildly imaginative fictions. I think in some cases a child might even have an easier time understanding it than most adults.

- Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling

- The End of The Story by Lydia Davis

- Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett

- Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate

- Vanishing Point by David Markson

- The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka (especially the really short ones)

- The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt by Wilhelm Genazino

- The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Amelia Gray

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Amelia Gray is a writer living in Austin, TX. She is the author of AM/PM, published by Featherproof Books, and Museum of the Weird, due Summer 2010 through Fiction Collective 2. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, DIAGRAM, and Caketrain, among others. She blogs at ameliagray.com.

what are you reading now

I got a bunch of great books in the course of driving around on tour, and I'm sampling all of them at once like I'm at the counter at Luby's. Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas is warmed-up slaw. Big World by Mary Miller is an ice cream scoop of cottage cheese. The Show that Smells by Derek McCormack is crispy macaroni. Thomas Cooper's Phantasmagoria is banana pudding.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was chosen for a book club that I was in about six months ago. The moment it was chosen, the book club immediately dissolved under its weight. Maybe we'll get the club back together and do it. It was a good choice. Classics deserve to be read by a group that will sit quietly and talk about them.

last book to make you laugh out loud

The Cradle by Patrick Somerville has a line in the middle that caused me to laugh out loud on an airplane.

book you borrowed and never returned

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. I was told to keep it after I took it into the bath. I intended to never return Jesus' Son but my plan was discovered. Actually I think that I was supposed to give Phantasmagoria back. Sorry, everyone.

strangest book you’ve ever read

Historical prize goes to As I Lay Dying. New blood goes to Gary Lutz. I'd say Ulysses but I think of it more of a brick you bury in a foundation rather than a book.

last audiobook you listened to

The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I listened to it while driving from San Antonio to El Paso at the end of 2007. I had to consult my email archives to figure out exactly when. I said this on 1/3/08: "The best book on CD was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I didn't get through all of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter but my god it sucked." In hindsight, I was not in the right place emotionally for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

favorite book from childhood

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin immediately comes to mind because I just read part of it again, aloud, in a van. It sort of holds up in terms of some cleverness and puns but I think it is a little too repetitive. Children's literature stoops down too low today. Let's return to the golden age when the weirdest writing out there was for the kids. Twain, Kipling, Stevenson. I'll continue below.

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

Persepolis. I think I wanted to prove that I knew the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel. It worked!

best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology

Dzanc's Best of the Web

collected stories of

Shirley Jackson. My friend has a piece of one of her bones.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Keyhole, for spreading their Digest around Nashville and for picking Phantasmagoria as a book.

best thing you’ve read online recently

"Meat From a Meat Man" by Lindsay Hunter at Eyeshot.

most anticipated upcoming release

How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace (Rose Metal Press). I heard him read some of it in Chicago at the beginning of the year and I think it's going to be just what I need to get through some weeks.

recommended reading list:

Children's Books That Will Drive Your Shit Insane

The Golden Age of Children's Literature happened sometime between 1865 and 1910, when the Victorians were just coming up with the idea that childhood was an actual period of life and that children could have special clothes and books that weren't all about sweeping chimneys and dying young. Writers during this time had no idea how to handle this idea and immediately wrote some of the weirdest fiction possible. Not everything from this list is from the Golden Age but all of it either informs it or draws heavily from it.

- Der Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann

- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

- The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

- Children's and Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

- Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

- Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

- The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

- Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Suzanne Burns

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Suzanne Burns has published two full-length poetry collections, Blight (Archer Books) and The Flesh Procession (Bleak House Books). Pudding House Press recently published her poetry chapbook, Vacancy, which chronicles infamous events that took place in famous hotels throughout history. Her debut short-story collection, Misfits and Other Heroes, was published in June by Dzanc Books.

what are you reading now

I am a serial book rotator. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Immortality by Milan Kundera.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Damn Proust and double damn Tolstoy. I get so confused so quick. After I saw Paris for the first time last year I was all, "Proust! Proust! Proust!" But, like, wow, he's a little boring. Then I asked my husband for a copy of Anna Karenina as a Valentine's Day present. Wonderfully pretentious request. I was lost by page two. I want to take a marker and change all the names to Sally and Bob and Troy. Then I just might "get" it.

last book to bring you to tears

I've never cried over a book. Maybe I've been a little misty over parts of The Catcher in the Rye. If you mean bore me to tears, how about anything by Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf.

best book you’ve read so far this year

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera and Vera & Linus by Jess Ball and Thordis Bjornsdottir and The Blue Life Sketches by Jonathan Treadway (throwback books).

if you could write yourself into any book or story

I'd be Holden Caulfield's best girl. We'd go to a lousy movie together and hold hands through the newsreel and the cartoon. Then I'd be Esther Greenwood's confidant (The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath). I'd beg her to warn her shadow self to steer clear from handsome future British poet laureates so I could snag Ted Hughes for myself.

collected stories of

Shirley Jackson. The most underrated writer of all time ever. Who else can make a cocktail party so terrifying and so mesmerizing?

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

I succumbed to this trickery in my late teens and early twenties. The tried and true trinity of Maus, The Book of the SubGenius and any issue of Sandman. (I worshipped THOSE kind of boys.)

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I don't buy or read lit journals. I know, shame on me. I love books. Books. Books.

best thing you’ve read online recently

The blogs at The Nervous Breakdown.

recommended reading list:

Beautiful Stories for Ugly Times

Though these books are very dark and sometimes disturbing I find them all wonderfully life affirming.

- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

- Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, et al. by Ray Bradbury

- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera (plus everything else of his all the time)

- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

- Anything by J.D. Salinger

- Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday by Steinbeck, plus Tortilla Flat of course

- Any and all Kafka

- The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

Joanna Scott

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Joanna Scott is the author of nine books, including The Manikin, which was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Various Antidotes and Arrogance, which were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; and the critically acclaimed Make Believe, Tourmaline, and Liberation. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Award, Scott lives with her family in upstate New York. Her most recent novel, Follow Me, was published by Little, Brown in April.

what are you reading now

Fallen Giants by Stewart Weaver and Maurice Isserman

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

Germinal by Émile Zola

most scribble-ridden book in your collection

My Complete Stories of Kafka (Schocken) finally fell apart and I’ve had to get a new copy, to which I’ve been adding new scribbles.

if you could write yourself into any book or story

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa — not only would I like to experience the scenes she so vividly renders, but I would welcome the chance to compare my impression of the place and people with her version.

most treasured book in your collection

A paperback copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Rolfe Humphries’ translation) that my husband gave me when we were still in college.

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

Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

May I finagle two subscriptions? I depend on Conjunctions and Black Clock for my basic literary nourishment. In real life, my list of necessary reading is long — the condensed list includes Cincinnati Review, Subtropics, Threepenny Review, and The New York Review of Books. Also, The Nation and its literary section is essential.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Female Convents: Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed, compiled from the autograph manuscripts of Scipio de Ricci by Mr. De Potter, edited and condensed by Thomas Roscoe. With whole libraries and archives coming online, all sorts of secrets are on the verge of being disclosed…

most anticipated upcoming release

Forthcoming in the fall, The Rags of Time by Maureen Howard — the fourth and final volume in her tetralogy of novels.

recommended reading list:

Ten Books to Read Before Writing Your First Novel (or Ten Books I Wish I’d Read Before Writing My First Novel)

- An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

- Middlemarch by George Eliot

- Our Ecstatic Days by Steve Erickson

- This is Not a Novel by David Markson

- Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

- Life of Pi by Yann Martel

- Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud

- Blindness by José Saramago

- Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald

- The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Jessica Anthony

2009-07-23T22:55:00.006-04:00

Jessica Anthony's debut novel The Convalescent was published by McSweeney's Books in July, and will be translated into Italian by Rizzoli/USA. Her fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, Best American Nonrequired Reading and elsewhere. She currently lives in Portland, Maine with her husband, Jon, and their dog, Roxy.

what are you reading now

Right now I'm reading The Women by T.C. Boyle, and loving it. I am an enormous Boyle fan. His prose is so hairy and big-gutted and his characters never try to be everything all at once.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

The great thing about finishing a novel is that you rediscover all these giant hunks of time in your day to read again. So I've been whittling away at my list. I just finished Jude the Obscure. I bought that book in 1997 and literally carried it around the world with me for 12 years. I've finally read it, and liked it quite a bit. I also just finished Lady Chatterly's Lover, which was hilarious. I was in Edinburgh, Scotland, riding the upstairs of a double-decker bus and laughing my ass off. Everyone was always about to come to their "crisis." Fantastic. Next up on my list of classics is Cyrano de Bergerac.

last book you finished in a single sitting

The Verificationist by Donald Antrim. An out-of-body experience with a gathering of psychologists in a pancake house. I mean come on! Couldn't put it down.

book you borrowed and never returned

I still owe my friend Rick Wormwood his first-edition copy of Nabokov's Speak, Memory. He will never get it back. He lives only a few miles from me and could break into my house and take it. Once Wormwood left a half rack of Corona in my garage with a note: Rick Wormwood moves like a thief in the fucken night, and despite even this generosity he will not be seeing his Nabokov again.

strangest book you’ve ever read

You and Your Retarded Child by Samuel A. Kirk, Merle B. Karnes, Winifred D. Kirk. This book was published in 1955 and given to me by the writer Tom Hopkins. He knows I like weird stuff, but this book was downright bizarre. They even use the word "mongoloid," and have a chapter entitled: "How Retarded Is Your Child?"

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

Herzog by Saul Bellow. The dust jacket is missing, and there it sits with its scruffy tan cover and green letters. I have read only the first chapter. It's looking at me now. It seems depressed.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

It would have to be Hannah Tinti's One Story. One Story is delivered in these amazing little pastel-colored packets, and each issue contains only one short story. It's nice to read short fiction without digging through advertising, or without a story having to bounce off other poems, other unrelated stories (or worse, essays). It is one selection of short fiction in its simplest (and strongest) form.

best thing you’ve read online recently

"Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood" by Michael Chabon. (I read it online, though it was published in The New York Review of Books a week ago.) It examines something now seeming to be lost to all of us: the ability for children to wander freely and create the rules that govern their own worlds.

most anticipated upcoming release

I am looking forward to reading Daniel Nester's How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of essays by Soft Skull Press.

recommended reading list:

Books I Know My Dog Would Like If She Could Read

A few years ago, my husband and I adopted a brown lab/bluetick coonhound mix from a rescue shelter in Georgia.

- The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

- The Zoo Story by Edward Albee

- I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

- The Sun is My Undoing by Marguerite Steen

- The Room by Harold Pinter

- Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Stephanie Johnson

2009-07-19T11:08:00.003-04:00

Stephanie Johnson's short fiction collection One of These Things is Not Like the Others is available from Keyhole Books.

what are you reading now

I'm reading Italo Calvino's Difficult Loves and an advance copy of Shellie Zacharia's Now Playing, which is Keyhole's next book release. The voice in Zacharia's work is amazing -- playful and a pleasure to read. Kevin Wilson's Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is next.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Is this a trick question? It sounds like a trick question. I once admitted that I hadn't read One Hundred Years of Solitude (which I have since read) and was mocked openly and repeatedly as a "literary virgin." I don't think I should answer this question until I know that you're friendly...

last book to bring you to tears

I'm not sure what the last book was, but Larry Brown's short story "Facing the Music" kills me every single time I read it.

book you borrowed and never returned

I have trouble reading books other people have lent me or that I get from the library because I'm a book hoarder. I usually assume that if you're telling me to read something it's because you think I'll like it. When I like a book, I have to have a sense of mine, mine, mine! Borrow my car, eat all the food in the fridge and have a beer while you're at it, none of that bothers me.... but I'm incredibly possessive about my books and I (probably incorrectly) assume other people feel the same way, so "book-borrowing" isn't really in my vocabulary.

strangest dream involving a book or literary character

As soon as I put this on paper, I'll feel a need to dissect it using Freudian or Jungian analysis. Or, worse yet, someone with actual psychoanalytic dream-analysis expertise will uncover a deep-seated and horrifying element lurking in my unconscious mind... Either way, it's not going to be pretty...

I don't often dream of characters, but sometimes I dream about writers. I quit smoking when I found out I was pregnant with my son, but I'm still a smoker when I dream. Most of the dream-plots are pretty boring (I have a lazy unconscious-dream-mind), but I find them pleasant because they usually involve someone asking me if I want to go outside and smoke a cigarette.

favorite book from childhood

Like most kids, I was completely taken with Dr. Seuss. I also was addicted to Choose Your Own Adventure books.

longest book you’ve ever read

Infinite Jest. I had a wicked-bad literary crush on David Foster Wallace, and I read the book cover-to-cover when it was first released.

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

I don't have that kind of forethought anymore. If I know someone is coming over, more often than not, I'm trying to reduce the chaos -- not haul more out. However, I tend to get along well with people who have books by James Joyce or Flannery O'Connor on *their* coffee tables.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

Keyhole.

most anticipated upcoming release

I need to get a copy of Suzanne Burns's Misfits and Other Heroes and I'm looking forward to Laura van den Berg's What the World Will Look Like When all the Water Leaves Us.

recommended reading list:

Literary Comfort Food

I read an interview with David Foster Wallace where he suggested (and here I'll paraphrase poorly, I'm sure) that fiction's work is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. That stuck with me as a noble goal -- both in terms of writing and reading. Below, are some of my favorite "comfort food" collections/books.

- Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

- The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

- Dubliners by James Joyce

- Big Bad Love by Larry Brown

- Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

- Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

- Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace

- Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera

- Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel García Márquez

- The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

- Valentines by Olaf Olafsson

- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Nicolle Elizabeth

2009-07-14T22:46:00.002-04:00

Nicolle Elizabeth is a baker and bike mechanic. Her work has appeared in Elimae, Keyhole, Wigleaf, Night Train and others. Her chapbook, Threadbare Von Barren, is forthcoming on Paper Hero Press. She writes about translated literature at Words Without Borders.

what are you reading now

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. I’m not even kidding. I’m writing a YA novel and needed what seemed like a solid example of storytelling. It's woven together in a very straight-forward formulaic way which just flows so beautifully. It's a great example of how to transition complicated material from one scene to the next, plus the prose is quite poetic. I needed a generally accepted non-weird example of “how to write a novel” because I have no idea what I’m doing so I thought if I’m going to try to write a novel I’d better teach myself how to write a novel first or like at least see how a novel works. I took a novel workshop last year to try to learn but ended up writing an 81 page book told in short-shorts. I mean I loved the class but still. It’s weird, I have to print it out and look at it on the floor. Someone recently told me that’s how Aaron Sorkin wrote The West Wing. He had to put it all out on the floor and cut it up to get himself to see it all. I think I remember he was arrested at an airport with mushrooms in his briefcase like ten years ago or something? I asked Michael Cunningham a few years ago, when I realized I was going to write this YA novel I’m now finally just starting on, if it was hard to switch from one form to another. He looked at me like it was an absurd thing to ask and was like, “Well if it’s what you have to do then it’s what you have to do.” I usually write first-person shorts. I could care less if I make myself look ridiculous, but these characters are like people I owe something to. I mean, yes, I love shorts but this is so completely different. Another thing Michael Cunningham said was during the filming of The Hours, it was written that Juliet Lewis’s character was going to have a gun and shoot herself, and Michael was like, “No, she just wouldn’t do that. This character would never do that.” I’m starting to understand more deeply how important this relationship is. I’ve always had a good relationship with my characters, I love them, I respect them, but this project is pushing me so much harder. So, Michael went to Juliette Lewis and said, “Don’t you think she’d never do that?” And Juliette Lewis said she wouldn’t come to the set unless they rewrote the gun scene a different way. Stopped production of the film and everything. Two points here: don’t be scared to experiment in other forms, and get a celebrity to help. The Hours is a good book, btw. I’m really digging the existential musing/longing in Virginia Woolf’s head.

classic you’ve been meaning to read

I’m aching to read Mary Gaitskill’s collection Don’t Cry. It’s been out for a minute I just haven’t gotten to it yet. Is that a classic? I’ve never read Elektra, can you believe it? It seems like something I would have read in detention hall.

last book to make you laugh out loud

Oh god. For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide (translated by Sawako Nakayasu) made me laugh hysterically but it was so sad too.

book you borrowed and never returned

In my possession, and I cannot believe I am admitting to this, is the only copy the Boston Public Library had of Murakami’s book of shorts. I am so sorry, BU freshman. I moved and found it years later, now it’s grown on me. “Barn Burning”, “The Iceman”, these are excellent short stories. I get in fights about his novels being too “targeted at male readers and too wordy-indulgenty” but those shorts are damn something. I should get a copy from the Strand and send the new one over there. Is that a felony? I just got up to see what it’s next to on my shelf. I’ve moved so things are a mess. The Day of the Locust by West and Train by Pete Dexter are the answers.

favorite book from childhood

Eloise at the Plaza. Still drives me wild. Never underestimate a wild daredevil brunette with big hair and a skate key. You go girl, imagine all you want. Actually, I also simultaneously think it’s one of the saddest books of all time. I mean, she was like, alone. I had an ex-boyfriend who felt she had some kind of illness. Dumped him.

most treasured book in your collection

My mom did a semester at a community college in the Bronx when she was 18. It was actually this huge honor a few years ago when I got to go back to this exact campus and teach literacy classes to kids who were failing out on Saturdays. I cried on the way every morning, true story. So my mom is quite possibly one of the most talented minds of all time, but she’s just not an academic, not her thing. Some people like cheese, I hate cheese. So for her semester of school, this was 1970 in the Bronx where she’s from, she bought herself a paperback copy of Webster’s Dictionary. It’s on my desk right now. I never keep it less than a desktop away, because I don’t know everything and sometimes need to look things up in it.

secret crush on a writer or literary character

That Blake Butler. He knows how I feel about this. I harass the shit out of him every chance I get. Ghost with the most, no doubt. I’m sure there’s a fan club somewhere. I’m sure half our contemporaries are secretly seethingly jealous of him. He’s smart but he’s got this Southern thing about him, whoooboy. He’s a good boy, it’s sweet. One time, we had this massive argument about David Foster Wallace, he was so pissed at me he had to excuse himself from the room. So we’re in a cab on the way to another ball of wax, and I have to have the cabbie pull over because I’m going to return the gin and tonics I’d been drinking all night back into the world, and it’s the dead of winter (and by the way I ruined my totally rad dress) so Blake jumps out of the cab and rubs my back. We’re standing in like six inches of slush its three in the morning, all of this after we’d had this major blow-out argument, and I look up at him through freezing tears and puke, and the face he’s making isn’t “I’m so pissed at you about earlier” or “what is this, high school?” The face he’s making is “I know, kiddo. I know.” I think this is a part of why people love him. That was like three minutes without me harassing him, too long. Attn Blake: HJ?

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

I love this question! It’s more like a “I want to share this book with everyone who sits on my couch” than an impress someone thing. It’s impossible for me to be impressive. Spend an hour with me I guarantee you’ll be annoyed and/or disappointed. I’ve accepted it. Recently, I overheard this guy ask another guy, “Have you read my book?” Think about that for a second. My roommates could be like Q: “Hey Nicolle, those cookies you forgot about in the oven that set on fire are still in the oven.” I’ll be like, “Have you read my book?” Q: “How do you feel about this whole Iranian election?” “Have you read my book?” Q: “Ma’am that will be twenty dollars for the groceries.” “Have you read my book?” Q: “We’re here, you can get off the bus now” “Have you read my book?” I actually adore art books a great deal. Robert Bergman who has portraits of people, a few are in MoMa, so my boss gave me a book of his. That was alright for conversation, people like that one. I have a manual on do-it-yourself electrical wiring which is a hard cover and nice on a coffee table, and on top of it The Collected Stories of Mark Twain, always Twain. Then there’s a rotating list. I had the graphic novel The Awake Field on there for a while, have you seen it? It’s meta. I bet if I put it in between the electrical wiring book and the Twain it'll make the lights flicker.

if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I love like probably 100 of them. I owe a lot of things to a lot of literary journals, like, you’ll see something in one and go, “Holy crap, you can do that?” literary journals are some of the best teachers we have. It’s not only that, there’s this actual friendship and mentorship chain of support that exists too. People who give feedback, all of these people are generous with their hearts and time, who I owe a debt of crap too. I love them a lot. They’re sort of like family, that I would sleep with, if they didn’t have hotter wives than me, who would probably beat me up. It’s like an army of good people shooting rainbows as snot rockets. They work their asses off for literature because they love it. There’s like no money in journal publishing realistically. As a fan there’s this "want to use the work as a blanket and roll around" side, and as a writer there’s this "these people will work with you" side.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Brian Foley in Front Porch 11, which is the Texas State MFA program’s journal. There’s this line at the end of the poem that’s about this guy shining a flashlight down an alley.

And shows what really stands
In your place when you leave

most anticipated upcoming release

Speaking of Bolaño, The Skating Rink is closer to The Savage Detectives and coming out soon. I know it’s passé to love Bolaño now, but I don’t care, I liked it anyway. Not as much as 2666 but still. Somebody told me “he speaks to mediocre readers” recently. That hurt my feelings. You know I heard Nicolle Elizabeth has a chapbook forthcoming on Paper Hero Press called Threadbare Von Barren. I might check it out. Cough.

recommended reading list:

Theme Stuff I Just Got Into This Year

Everybody has to read Three Cities of Water by Raúl Zurita. He was Bolaño’s nemesis, you know. At the end of Nazi Literature in the Americas, the guy Bolaño was hating on so much (the General) was supposed to be Zurita. Some people actually say that he ripped Zurita off a ton. They loathed each other. There’s this legend that Zurita had written a poem Bolaño was jealous of, so in the 70s Bolaño had it sky-written from a plane over New York City with the credit given to himself for the poem. How hysterical is that? True story. He looks sort of like Castro, or a wizard. I think he teaches at Tufts and that he’s banned from most countries for being so political. I mean the books are banned but he is too, as a human, which I love. It’s so glamorous to be banned from an entire country for being loud. Anyway, so he was reading at NYU this year and I was taking notes and I wrote down the sentences, “I sang with my mouth sewn shut. In the distance, the ocean.” And I couldn’t figure out which Zurita poem it was from. It drove me crazy. I called half the staff of BOMB. I emailed ten translators. Nobody knew. Turns out, I wrote those sentences, while listening to Zurita. Read Zurita. He’s damn inspiring. Read the collected stories of Paul Bowles, read the latest Jorie Graham.