Caleb Das

About Me

I'm a fiction MFA student at Rutgers-Newark. I'm from Vancouver BC. I teach freshman comp, a class I've commandeered to research the effect of academic writing on metacognitive ability via literature on war and trauma. I play in a black metal band. I'm one of StoryQuarterly's student editors.

Why do you write?

“Fear, love, loss, laughter and loneliness – above all, loneliness,” Theodore Sturgeon said in an interview once, “You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody’s an expert on that one. Sometimes it’s called alienation, but it’s something more than that. It’s loneliness, not being separate from the whole world. It’s a seeking, a searching for somebody who’ll understand you.”

Any favorite authors? Books?

I'm currently reading Louis De Bernieres' Birds Without Wings.

I started reading because of Ted Sturgeon, Marcel Pagnol and Kurt Vonnegut. I'm concerned with similar things as Don DeLillo, Steve Erickson and Richard Van Camp.