Susan Tepper is the author of Deer & Other Stories and the poetry chapbook Blue Edge. Her work has appeared in Salt Hill, American Letters & Commentary, Green Mountains Review, Crannog, Poetry Salzburg, New Millennium Writings, Snake Nation Press and many other journals. [Read more]

Recently:
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“In advertising, we have a name for writers who get stuck: unemployed. I have a pretty workmanlike view of the creative process. You take what you’ve got, even if isn’t the “big idea” you’re searching for, and develop it and until your crappy little ideas turn into somewhat better ideas, and so on. Eventually you get there, but it’s all about putting in the work.” [read more]

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What makes you want to read a story and how soon does a good story capture you?

Every good sentence in a story buys you about three or four sentences of reading from me. If you follow the math, we’re talking exponential: one sentence buys four, next sentence buys the four after that, and whoa.[read more]

Recently:
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Curtis Smith is the author of two novels (Sound and Noise, An Unadorned Life), a story collection (The Species Crown), and two collections of short-short stories (In the Jukebox Light, Placing Ourselves Among the Living). The coming year will see the release of his next story collection (Bad Monkey, Press 53), novel (Truth or Something Like It, Casperian Books), and his first essay collection (The Agnostic’s Prayer, Sunnyoutside Press). [read more]

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, a fiction collection forthcoming in Fall 2010 from Keyhole Press, as well as The Collectors, a novella, and How the Broken Lead the Blind, a chapbook of short fiction. His fiction has been published or is upcoming in Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Willow Springs, Gulf Coast, and many other magazines. He is also the editor of The Collagist and can be found online at www.mdbell.com. [read

more]

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an Untelevised Revolution” by Rick Moody
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I first met Bob Eckstein through Fictionaut and it was curiosity at first sight, quickly making him my wedding planner for my virtual Facebook wedding. But he’s today’s subject for Fictionaut Five because he is the world’s only snowman expert, author of the popular book, The History of the Snowman and a cartoonist for The New Yorker. [read

more]

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Nelson

Jim Hanas is the author of Cassingle: Five Stories (2009) and Single: Two Stories (2006), two e-book collections of short stories that previously appeared in McSweeney’s, Fence, One Story, The Land-Grant College Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and online at jimhanas.com. [read more]

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In a reversal of roles, today’s installment of the Fictionaut Five features regular interviewer Meg Pokrass in a Q&A with Matt Baker, associate publisher of The Oxford American. Meg is a flash fiction writer and poet who edits for Smokelong Quarterly and serves as a mentor for the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions. Her chapbook Lost & Found was released last week by Bannock Street Press. Meg has published over 100 stories and poems, and she offers writing prompts on her popular blog. [read more]

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Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and grew up there. As Fort Wayne was the site of, at least, nine forts (three each of French, British, and American fortifications, not to mention fortified villages of the Shawnee and Miami tribes), there was fostered in Martone a keen attraction to walls, fences, barriers of all kinds… [read more]

Recently:
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With Keyhole

Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born in Carmel, California to an American father and Japanese mother. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian Studies. Her essay, “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium,” was short listed for Best New American Essays 2008 and anthologized in The Best Creative Nonfiction 3. Her book Picking Bones from Ash was published in October by Graywolf Press; this is her first novel. Read Fictionaut Five with Marie Mutsuki Mockett.

Also on the blog:
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   New: Full-Text RSS Feeds
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