Jacob Russell

About Me

I live in South Philly, love to cook, tend my little strip of a kitchen garden (tomatoes, basil, cilantro, French tarragon, rosemary, Italian parsley, thyme. Involuntarily retired and living on Social Security, use my time (outside of writing) for political action and community service.

Why do you write?

I write poetry and fiction. I'm interested in the asthetics of process (how literary works come into being--writing as process), science, psycoanalytic theory, philosophy. I have two novels... one very close to complete but still in progress. The first seems to occupy some no-man's land between 'avant' and the (not very) conventional, as I get both praise and rejections from both sides (too experimental, no market for this: sorry, nice work but looking for something more 'edgy'.

I use my blog (Jacob Russell's Barking Dog) to explore ideas about literature and politics, and to keep me connected with recent trends.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Alwasy shifting.. J.M. Coetzee, Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Josopovici, Roberto Bolano, Witold Gombrowicz... the early 20th C. modernists: Musil, Joyce, Woolfe, Mann, Svevo...