Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)

Now in Paperback

2010-03-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

DEAR EVERYBODY is now in paperback. I've been told that it is on display tables at McNally Jackson and other great bookstores, and its now available online at Powell's and Amazon and all that. Everything is the same, even the cover, except it's $5 cheaper and it has that great pull-quote from The Believer review about the book being a "curatorial masterpiece" for which I will forever be thankful.

An Outtake from 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES

2010-03-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

The DVDs of the two documentaries that I made with Luca Dipierro -- 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES and I WILL SMASH YOU -- are now available here.

Words, Andy Devine

2010-03-05T13:30:00.001-08:00

Andy Devine started as my Vegas name back in 2000 and then it evolved into a pseudonym that I've been using for conceptual writing for the last 10 years. It's always been a kind of open secret, so it seems a little silly to be doing this reveal, but I don't want anybody to feel duped. I want everybody to be in on it. Andy Devine's first book, WORDS, will be published by the great Publishing Genius next month.

#98 Chair

2010-03-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

Chair didn’t remember being a tree or being a part of something larger and growing. Chair didn’t remember the sounds of the chainsaws or the limbs cracking and breaking as the tree fell to the ground. The first thing that Chair remembered was being in pieces—the frame and the legs, the back and the slats, the contoured seat—and how strange it felt when the glue was squeezed into its holes. But then Chair felt so big, so sturdy, so grounded when he was standing up on all four legs. Chair thought: I could walk anywhere with four legs. But then Chair realized that his legs didn’t move independently of each other and that he couldn’t move at all without some help from Hand. Hands pulled Chair out and pushed Chair in, which made Chair feel as if he had no control over what happened. Also, Chair wished that he had arms. Sure, sometimes Chair stacked with other chairs, but that wasn’t the same as holding a person or holding another chair. At least, Chair didn’t think so. Chair couldn’t really know. Chair did know that there were others like him covered with fabric or cushions, something soft, but Chair soon realized that his life was going to be hard. Over the years, Chair lost count of how many people pushed him around and sat on him. Usually, it was the same couple of people, but sometimes it could be anybody. And all the people were so much bigger than chair, so heavy and so mushy. But Chair was strong. In fact, Chair was amazed that he could hold up over 400 pounds and not even get tired. And Chair always felt so light, such relief, when people got off him. Over the years, Chair started to creak. It was his back at first and then he got a little wobble in one of his legs. Chair started to come out of his own holes and nobody helped him. Nobody pushed chair back together or tightened him up. That’s when Chair got loose and Chair started making noises that made the people laugh. But Chair didn’t care anymore. Chair thought: Wood and glue. Chair thought: Next time, I’m letting go. And when Chair did, he broke one of his legs and then his back. Chair thought: That didn’t even hurt. Chair thought: I should have done that sooner.

Giant Lecture #5: Language and Sentences

2010-03-03T10:38:00.001-08:00

Lecture #1 is about openings. Lecture #2 is about ways to keep the fiction moving forward. Lecture #3 is about some ways to get yourself to sit in the chair and write. Lecture #4 is about story and plot. Lecture #5 is about language and sentences.

One Reading, One Talk

2010-03-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

On March 4th at 7pm, I'm reading at Atomic Books with Zachary German.

On March 6th from 11:30-12:45, I'm giving a talk--The 1-Hour MFA--at a free writing conference at CCBC-Catonsville (in the Barn Theater).

People Rise Up Out of the Sentences

2010-03-02T10:59:00.001-08:00

I have an interview with Sam Lipsyte up at The Faster Times. We talk about his new book, The Ask, narrators, characters' jobs, and our wives reading our work.

More interviews @ The Faster Times: Gary Lutz, Blake Butler, Rachel Sherman, Laura van den Berg, Ben Tanzer, Brian Evenson, Robert Lopez, Samuel Ligon, Dylan Landis, Joseph Young, Andrew Porter, Padgett Powell, Zachary German, Christopher Higgs.

#255: The Alphabetical Andy Devine

2010-03-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

Andy Devine was born in Flagstaff, Arizona and it is probably significant that his first name begins with the letter A. From an early age, Andy loved to play with his wooden letter blocks and as he got older he would alphabetize them into walls of letters. In kindergarten, he was mesmerized by the alphabet that hung over the chalkboard—both the uppercase and the lowercase. Andy did not talk much, though, so it was a while before his parents realized that he had a speech impediment, a kind of stutter (which some have sited this as a possible explanation for his conceptual fictions). When he was 8, there was a terrible incident concerning the family’s baby being killed, though it is unclear how and who killed the baby. It is known, however, that Devine was sent to live with his maternal grandparents in Toms River, New Jersey after this and worked in the family grocery store growing up there. He spent a lot of the daytime in the backyard where he taught himself to sit so still that birds would land on him and squirrels would crawl over him. In middle school, Andy started reading a lot of books, his favorites being dictionaries, encyclopedias, and thesauruses—anything that arranged the material alphabetically. In high school, Andy was a small forward on the basketball team and a middle-distance runner on the track team. He began to notice girls and fell in love with girl after girl whose names started with the letter A—Abby, Alice, Amy, Angie, Ann, Anna, Audrey (in that order). The first girl he ever kissed was named Birdy. In college, Andy played in a punk band called Babylonia that only played covers of songs that were written in languages they didn’t understand. And Andy studied library science and, after graduating, worked for a time at the main branch of the New York Public Library, but he eventually became disenchanted with the Dewey decimal system as an organizational system. While living in NYC, Andy developed a hatred for actors and a taste for a thoughtfully constructed indexes. In his late 20s, his girlfriend Zooey broke up with him and she was the last woman that he ever loved. Andy tried to read novels to console himself, but he felt as if novelists were choosing the wrong words. In response, Andy started creating lists of words that should and shouldn’t be used in fiction, works that became implicit critiques of contemporary writing and publishing. In spring 2010, Publishing Genius will bring out his first book, WORDS. Other acknowledgments of his remarkable work are the fact that Andy Devine Avenue (in Flagstaff, Arizona) is named after him and his mention in a Frank Zappa song (“Andy”). Someday, there will probably be a bridge or maybe a mountain that is named after him.

[Read Andy Devine’s chapbook, As Day Same That the the Was Year. Pre-order Words by Andy Devine.]

Gigantic #2: America

2010-03-01T11:02:00.001-08:00

I just received my contributor's copies of Gigantic #2 and it's an amazing looking book-object. Plus, there's stuff from Lydia Millet, Adrian Tomine, Sam Lipsyte, Robert Coover, Leni Zumas, Thomas Doyle, Thomas Allen, Meg Pokrass, Luke Goebel, Brian Allen Carr, Harriet Calver, Ben Siegel, Brian Beatty, Sibyl O'Malley, Able Brown, Ravi Mangla, Stuart Downs, Dylan Godwin, Marc T. Wise, Blake Butler, Claudette Bakhtiar, Dylan Nice, Ben Stroud, Reese Kwon, Luca Dipierro, I. Fontana, Sasha Fletcher, Max Fenton, Andre da Loba, Jordan Bruner. Plus, there is a section of collectible biographies of famous Americans as written by Deb Olin Unferth, Clancy Martin, Stephen O’Connor, Margo Jefferson, Ken Sparling, Joe Wenderoth, and mine is called "Edgar Allan Poe, as Told in the First-Person and Today's Language, Even Though I'm Dead."

Word-Things

2010-03-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

I interview Ingrid Burrington at Hobart about protest signs, Venn diagrams, and other word-things.

DEAR EVERYBODY, in Paperback

2010-02-26T11:39:00.001-08:00

DEAR EVERYBODY gets its paperback release next week. The official pub is March 1, but I'm already hearing reports of it being displayed on tables at McNally Jackson and other bookstores, and its already available at Powell's and Amazon and all that. Everything is the same, even the cover, except it's $5 cheaper and it has that great pull-quote from The Believer review about the book being a "curatorial masterpiece" for which I will forever be thankful.

To celebrate, a little, I have two events coming up. On March 4th at 7pm, I'm reading at Atomic Books with Zachary German. On March 6th from 11:30-12:45, I'm giving a talk, The 1-Hour MFA, at a free writing conference at CCBC-Catonsville, in the Barn Theater.

#60 Kim Chinquee: Fully Formed

2010-02-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

Kim Chinquee was three weeks late being born and she was a big baby when she finally arrived. She started reading before anybody else in her class and was the salutatorian of her middle school, but her parents divorced when she was 14 and Kim stopped studying in high school. She preferred sports, boys, and parties. When she graduated, she didn't go to college. She couldn't afford it and nobody had told her about financial aid. She was going to join the Navy, but the recruiter wasn't there, so she joined the Air Force instead. She didn’t want to fly planes, but she didn't really want to be a medical lab technician either--it was her 10th choice. She married another lab tech and they had a son a little over one year later. Technically, they were married for 7 years, but they were separated for the last 4 years of their marriage because her husband wouldn't sign the divorce papers. He couldn't believe that she actually wanted to leave him. The divorce finally became official and Kim left the Air Force too. She joined the Reserves, but the next few years were a difficult time. She was a single mother working multiple jobs, taking classes toward her college degree, and paying for food with food stamps. She took her first creative writing class because it filled a general education requirement and has been a writer ever since--though she never admitted that fact until she won the Henfield Prize and the 5K dollar award that goes with it. Now she is a creative writing professor at Buffalo State College and has published a great book of tiny stories called OH BABY. She may have started her writing life a little late, but she has arrived fully formed.

[Update: Kim Chinquee's beautiful second book, PRETTY, is now available. Kim Chinquee also recently became the fiction and creative nonfiction editor at elimae.]

[Also: Kim Chinquee's blog. And: Kim Chinquee's OH BABY.]

Kevin Sampsell Week @ HTMLGIANT

2010-02-25T11:46:00.001-08:00

I interviewed Kevin Sampsell for Kevin Sampsell Week at HTMLGIANT.

60 WRITERS @ LA Times' Jacket Copy

2010-02-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

There's a nice write-up of 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES at the Los Angeles Times' Jacket Copy. Caroyln Kellogg says, among other things, that "the idea is so beautiful." If you're not in a city where we are planning an upcoming screening (Atlanta, Los Angeles, Austin, and Saginaw are in the works) and you want to see it, there are now copies available here.

Smash Cuts and Non Sequitors

2010-02-24T10:54:00.001-08:00

I have an interview with Christopher Higgs up at The Faster Times. We talk about his new book, The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, issues of authorship, and why stories are boring.

More interviews @ The Faster Times: Gary Lutz, Blake Butler, Rachel Sherman, Laura van den Berg, Ben Tanzer, Brian Evenson, Robert Lopez, Samuel Ligon, Dylan Landis, Joseph Young, Andrew Porter, Padgett Powell, Zachary German.

#188 R

2010-02-23T10:08:00.001-08:00

R was born on an Army base in New Jersey where his father was stationed. His early childhood seemed great. Everybody took care of him and his little sister. They were always laughing and roaming around the neighborhood. R didn’t know that his father was a drug addict or that the family was poor. Over the years, R has forgotten most of his life between ages 6 and 11. All he remembers is the fighting and trying to stop his father from hitting his mother even though R was never big enough to stop him. At 12, the family moved to Baltimore and R started getting into trouble. He was a white kid living in a neighborhood of mostly black kids. He tried to fit in by cracking jokes and playing sports, but everybody knew that he didn’t belong. R didn't like school, so he dropped out in 9th grade. He didn’t think he was ever going to be anything. R had no supervision, so he started hanging out with the drugs dealers in the park. They seemed so cool. This led to R smoking crack, becoming a crack addict, and, eventually, shooting a drug dealer, while trying to rob him of his stash. After that, R spent most of his 20s in prison for assault with a deadly weapon. In prison, R got his GED and learned how to use computers (he’s now an animator in Hollywood). R says that prison isn’t as bad as people think. After R got out, he met B in line at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Getting married and having kids best thing that ever happened to R. R likes having somebody to be responsible to, somebody to be responsible for. He doesn’t want to let B down. Also, to have somebody love you like a child does is amazing. It made R slow down. The kids are a reason to live. There is so much more to life.

Giant Lecture #4: Story and Plot

2010-02-19T11:45:00.000-08:00

DVDs Now Available

2010-02-18T11:30:00.001-08:00

DVDs of the two documentaries I made with Luca Dipierro, 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES and I WILL SMASH YOU are now available here.

Time Out New York calls 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES "innovative ... striking ... poignant ... humorous." City Paper says that "60 Writers is a wonderful example of literary thinking becoming a visual language" and calls both films "disarmingly engaging."

Double Feature @ Creative Alliance: February 21st

2010-02-18T10:30:00.001-08:00

Bret McCabe says, "60 Writers is a wonderful example of literary thinking becoming a visual language." He calls both "Smash" and "60" "disarmingly engaging" and that both films "subtly acc[rue] an emotive force." Time Out New York calls 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES "innovative ... striking ... poignant ... humorous."

Plus, the good Aaron Henkin (aka The Voice) and I talk about both I WILL SMASH YOU and 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES in the last segment of WYPR's The Signal.

The double feature at the Creative Alliance is Sunday, February 21st (doors at 6:30, screening at 7:30). I hope to see you there.

Elizabeth Ellen Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard): #250 Andrea Kneeland

2010-02-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

Andrea Kneeland was born in Hayward, California in January of 1980, which means she just turned thirty. Andrea grew up without siblings and her childhood was difficult and isolating. She didn’t do things most other kids did, like go to slumber parties or high school or prom. When she was thirteen, her first real boyfriend held a loaded gun to her head. At the time, she didn’t think this was strange and didn’t break up with him. She thinks this says a lot about how she viewed relationships the first twenty-five years of her life. When she was fifteen, she enrolled in community college. When she was eighteen she met her first husband, whom she married two years later. She doesn’t like to talk about either her childhood or her first marriage publicly. Her second husband told her when he left that he’d kill himself if he had to stay married to her. He had been abusive for a while at this point, and her friends no longer liked to be around them. Andrea believed she was being patient, waiting for things to go back to how they were in the beginning. She would try to hug her husband and he would push her to the ground. She didn’t understand this was an unacceptable way to be treated. These sorts of relationships were all she knew, and thus what she preferred. It wasn’t until she got out into the world and saw how other people lived that she understood what it means to be treated with kindness and respect. She had to learn to value herself, which is something she still struggles with today. When she was in her mid-twenties, Andrea went back to school and got her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. She had intended to study Creative Writing, but didn’t find the classes particularly interesting or useful. She preferred Anthropology, which was similar to Creative Writing in that in Creative Writing you take things that are not real and make them seem real and in Anthropology you take things that are real and make them seem not real. Since then, Andrea has published many stories online and in print, but the one she is most proud of and which she feels is most representative of her is “Pinocchio Discovers Jealousy,” as it touches on the themes she finds herself most obsessing over: birds, fairy tales, misogyny, technology, memory, sex, torn apart relationships, and anatomy. Mostly, Andrea just wants to write stories and poems that are beautiful but accessible, so that when people read them they say, “Oh, that’s beautiful because it’s so strange, but it’s even more beautiful because the strangeness is so familiar.” Andrea feels similarly about birds. She thinks there is very little difference between reading a poem and watching a bird in flight. Andrea currently lives in San Francisco and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area her whole life. She can’t imagine living anywhere else. Five months ago, Andrea met a man through an online dating service and she loves him like crazy and thinks it’s one of the luckiest things that’s ever happened to her. Together they plan on making a trip to Spain later this year. It will be the first time Andrea has left the country. She is excited to see what Spanish birds look like and is happy her boyfriend speaks Spanish so she won’t have to learn another language.

[Andrea Kneeland is an editor at the great Hobart and here is her chapbook in the fine Fox Force 5.

[Note: You can Elizabeth Ellen's postcard life story here.]

Giant Lecture Series #3: The Rough Parts

2010-02-15T10:05:00.000-08:00

Lecture #1 is about openings. Lecture #2 is about ways to keep the fiction moving forward. Lecture #3 is about some ways to get yourself to sit in the chair and write.

Double Feature @ Creative Alliance: February 21st

2010-02-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

510 Readings

2010-02-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

Season 3, Episode 2 of the 510 Readings is February 20th at the Minás Gallery. It's Kevin Sampsell, Jane Satterfield, Ron Tanner, and Meghan Kenny. There is information, author bios, etc. at the link.

Kim Chinquee Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard): #248 Shya Scanlon

2010-02-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

Shya Scanlon was born on July 29, 1975 in Augusta, Maine, and spent the first ten years of his life on a rural commune. This was the happiest time of his life: sheltered, idyllic, with nothing but fond memories. When he was ten, his family moved to Seattle, which was surreal and shocking, and he wasn’t prepared for the reality; he felt betrayed, and began to take it out on his brother Colin, these acts becoming his biggest regret. He was always very physical, until a mountain bike accident at 15, when he suffered a concussion and tests found a birth defect in his vertebrae. Surgery failed to correct the problem, and he wore a neck brace. He became more bookish, falling into an alternative crowd and writing, reading, doing drugs and smoking, petty crime: leading to a path of self-destruction. He felt above-the-law and kept spiraling. He dropped out of high school at the beginning of junior year, and when his parents were away on vacation, he broke into their car and drove to San Francisco, bought drugs, then drove to Rhode Island to sell them and make enough to fix the car, the excursion landing him in a juvenile detention center in Wisconsin. His parents’ response was a wake up call—Shya wasn’t in trouble, and he realized the impact he had on people he cared about, especially his brother, and he wanted to turn himself around. He eventually attended an alternative school, which provided him with the kind of opportunity he needed. He attended college in Indiana, but felt isolated and moved back to Seattle, where he studied German. He spent six months in Germany, but felt depressed and isolated, so eventually went back to Indiana and finished his degree at Earlham College. He picked up writing to be part of a girlfriend’s world, mostly poetry. At the end of college, he moved back to Seattle, stopped writing, then quit his job to write a book. He decided to move to New York, which meant for him a commitment to writing. He applied to Brown, lived in NY for a while, then met his girlfriend, Erin, who worked for Jane magazine. He was accepted to Brown, moved to Providence, and when Jane folded, Erin moved to Providence with him. He couldn’t deny the truth: her “amazing force of good,” her joy, and the vitality in everything she does. He lives with her now, and in NY again, where he writes and does freelance editing. He’s most proud of his decision to reorient his life path, and of his book Forecast, and hopes to someday make a living from his writing.

[Shya Scanlon’s website and his YouTube channel.]

[Note: You can read Kim Chinquee's postcard life story here.]

Robert Thinks Bill Murray

2010-02-09T14:27:00.000-08:00

I have an interview with Zachary German up at The Faster Times. We talk about his new book, Eat When You Feel Sad, autographs, the use of "about," and what the main character does, thinks, and says.

More interviews @ The Faster Times: Gary Lutz, Blake Butler, Rachel Sherman, Laura van den Berg, Ben Tanzer, Brian Evenson, Robert Lopez, Samuel Ligon, Dylan Landis, Joseph Young, Andrew Porter, Padgett Powell.