Writers at Luna Park examine the present and future of reading. In “Conflict of Interest?” Greg Weiss looks into the seeming discrepancy between the levels of readership and writership in contemporary poetry. And in “Benjamin Kunkel, Benadict Anderson, and the Fate of the Novel,” David Backer responds—in a roundabout, essayic sort of way—to Benjamin Kunkel’s commentary on the past and future of the novel this past summer at n+1.

Gerald Howard’s recent essay on working class writers in the new Class in America issue of Tin House gets some attention from Will Wlizlo at Utne Reader, who writes that Howard’s piece is “thoroughly researched and deftly reasoned.”The essay begins with some interesting, and I think correct, claims:

I don’t suppose anyone has ever done an in-depth study of that interesting form of literary ephemera, the author dust jacket biography. But if they did, I’m sure they would notice a distinct sociological shift over the past decades. Back in the forties and fifties, the bios, for novelists at least, leaned very heavily on the tough and colorful professions and pursuits that the author had had experience in before taking to the typewriter. Popular jobs, as I recall, were circus roustabout, oil field roughneck, engine wiper, short-order cook, fire lookout, railroad brakeman, cowpuncher, gold prospector, crop duster, and long-haul trucker. Military experiences in America’s recent wars, preferably combat-related, were also often mentioned. The message being conveyed was that the guy (and they were, of course, guys) who had written the book in your hand had really been around the block and seen the rougher side of life, so you could look forward to vivid reading that delivered the authentic experiential goods. (Link to full text)

Gabriel Levinson (of Book Bike fame) sent some craft-love to the editors of Annalemma in the form of a journal made from a book of Salinger stories. At right is a pic of the note Levinson sent along with the gift. Can any editor ask for a better response from a reader? Of the gift, I quote Levinson himself: “Well fuck. That’s cool.”

And tantalizing new issues from the bigger of the littles—

The City Issue from Lapham’s Quarterly:

If the city is a sewer of vice and a slough of despond, why do so many people choose to live there? On what toxic landfill does the city stand as the embodiment of its ennobling cognate, civilization?

And the Future Issue of Oxford American:

This fall, The OA brings you our Future Issue. Our visions include the Internet-fueled fears of Jack Pendarvis; William Caverlee calling upon Walker Percy’s prophecies; Anne Gisleson coping with change in New Orleans; a surreal Frank Gehry structure beheld by Matthew Pitt; and Hal Crowther’s version of the apocalypse.

But our greatest fears and unfathomable dreams come to light in our special section: “The Future of Fiction: Visions from 2050” wherein eleven adventurous storytellers probe our all-too-human desire to ascertain what is to come: sexually active nonagenarians, happy pills, viral false information, and deleted childhood memories.

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

On Kari Nguyen’s “Star Anise“
by Michelle Elvy

So here’s what I’ve been thinking: if a story moved you in the first place, if its images struck you hard and its language rocked you gently, if, months later, it is still haunting you, then it’s time to share.  This is how I feel about Kari Nguyen‘s “Star Anise,” posted on Fictionaut back in July.

This story begins on a boat, and from the first hot moment to the steamy pho that is being made throughout, the reader travels on a journey through the life of Lang, a woman who has come from the far shores of Vietnam to present day America. But it’s not only the story of Lang that is so beautiful, it is the way her story is alive in Kari Nguyen’s hands. There is a gentle rocking throughout (‘back and forth, back and forth‘), from innocent girlhood to her present day kitchen where she prepares the family pho, to the at times terrifying boat ride across the wide water to a new life on the other side of everything she knows. The noodle soup metaphor works its magic, threaded with great care and revealing just enough to keep the reader reading more, wanting more. You get small tastes of Lang’s life, glimpses of moments that are tender and frightful and wonderful. Nguyen moves lithely from dreamlike sequences to stark reality, and you get a real sense of Lang’s journey to the present. And, by the end, you gain an enormous feeling of satisfaction, because Ngyuen so gingerly places all the ingredients into the pot and stirs it just right.

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members recommend stories on the site, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Sheldon Lee Compton has started a Fictionaut group in conjunction with the literary journal A-Minor he founded recently. Awesome, Sheldon, thanks.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Sheldon what is the deal, the dilly. What is the dillyo? You started a new literary journal, yes? A-Minor is a group involving this? Elaborate please, inquiring minds want to know.

I started A-Minor in late May because I liked the idea of publishing one story every week. I was already working as a founding editor at The Wrong Tree Review, but I needed a net fix, you know? Wrong Tree is print only, more or less at this time. It’s a very clean way of sharing other’s work and just clean and simple to keep up with. Starting the Fictionaut group here was just a no-brainer because this place is happening, you know? I was happy to see that people were joining and talking and all the good stuff.

Comments, concerns, we care Sheldon. The very moral fabric upon which Fictionaut’s fiber is woven becomes softer yet more durable thanks to our groups. How’s the group going?

The group is growing. We have 24 members or so and some lively talks, not to mention numerous stories that have been sent that just rock and roll. I’m still trying to figure out some of the things available to me to expand on what the group can offer, which is fun. I’m already thinking of challenges, maybe. The groups in general are of vital importance here because although we’re all sort of focused on the same basic thing, there are many unique ways in which we tell stories. The groups wrangle that in and build communities within the community. It’s damn near beautiful.

Did you know that Sophocles claimed that dice were invented by the Greek?

I did not know this. He could have been lying and just taking credit for his folks having invented it. But then again, probably not. If he was going to lie, I’m sure he would have said his folks invented something much cooler, something like the X-Files or, even better, cowboy boots.

Who are you, what are some of your projects, how did you come to writing, how did writing come to you?

I’m just a storyteller. Where I’m from in Kentucky, everybody’s a storyteller. I just write mine down and send them to journals or post them online. They sit on porches or outside stores, gather around kitchen tables and tell their stories. Lately I’ve been working like mad to piece together a collection of flash stories that I call Dysphoria when I’m talking to myself. On the shelf is a collection of southern short stories called A Dark River’s Silt, and a third project is a linked collection of micro pieces based on photographs as more or less prompts. Aside from my own writing, I’m just having a blast working on A-Minor and Wrong Tree and trying to drop a word or two at my blog, Bent Country. Just rolling like all the rest.

Just around the time I stopped posting here last month, news about VQR managing editor Kevin Morrisey’s suicide began to take a strange and I think unhealthy turn. I don’t really want to say more about it, except that, whatever went down at VQR, I think this is a case where most of the media coverage was sensationalized, seeming to cause more confusion than clarity. The best piece I read on the situation was by Steve Almond at The Rumpus. Like nearly all of Almond’s essays there, you should read it, whether you are interested in what happened at VQR or not; it’s not just about that. Really, read it if you haven’t. (And that great bunny-on-the-books picture is from Almond’s essay.)

Another sad thing that happened while this digest was dark was the death of George Hitchcock, founder & editor of kayak magazine (1964-1984), and source of one of my favorite quotes about literary magazines: “Little magazines are the furnace where American literature is being forged.” Hitchcock died at his home in Eugene, Oregon. He was 96.

Amherst College is launching a new print magazine, The Common—a name which may make one think of the creative commons and Larry Lessig, but which according to the editors is aimed to “foster regional creative spirit while stitching together a national and international community through publishing literature and art from around the world, bringing readers into a common space.” You can check out most of their first non-issue, issue zero, online, with work from Ted Conover, Don Share, Marina Tsvetaeva, and more. (FYI, submissions are open for their first issue.)

NewPages—admittedly covering more literary magazine news more continuously than Luna Park has recently—welcomes Jeremy Benson as their new Literary Magazine Review Editor. Well welcome, Jeremy.

Also on the lit mag job front, Barrelhouse is looking for a new art director—or as the mag’s editors put it:

Single, Black and White (Full Color Cover) Literary Magazine Seeks Art Director for Guidance, Production, Hugs, Binge-Drinking.

Finally, I got the below email the other week from Ann Kjellberg, editor of Little Star—and the note was both unusual and nice to receive, as I don’t tend to get such things from literary magazine editors, who (correct me if I am wrong) tend towards the apolitical:

Little Star is deeply grieved by the controversy over the fate of 51 Park Place. Though we are are but small, in a spirit of doing something rather than nothing, we today launch an occasional series of studies of Islamic culture in America in our time, our own little “center” of one, and call upon our fellow word-purveyors to do likewise. Where there is darkness, let there be literature!

If this spirit speaks for you, perhaps you can stand with us online.

http://littlestarjournal.com/blog/

(Here’s a link to a longer post on the subject from Kjellberg.)

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

Password Incorrect figured out an easy way to get your favorite Fictionaut stories onto your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, or other ePub-capable device. The solution involves Instapaper, an app that can be used to transfer any web page for offline reading.

Take a look and let us know how it’s working for you.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Hey Michael. How is the new group going?

Michael J. Solender: Hi Nicolle. I’m excited to see that the group has built up quite an impressive membership in just a few short days. I think part of the reason is food resonates with each of us, sometimes in very strong and personal ways.

I’m not at all surprised that Food Writes is connecting with ‘naut-heads. I’m more surprised given the role it plays in our lives we didn’t already have a food related group. I’ve got some freshly baked chocolate chippers out front hoping to entice even more of our writers to c’mon over.

We are a fiction based crowd but we do also eat. Why is food writing interesting, important, awesome?

Food, like language defines culture and people in so many deep and profound ways. More than mere nourishment or sustenance, our relationship with food, how we feed each other and ourselves, says a great deal about us.

Growing up in a Jewish household, food was center stage for me. Every important and even not so important event in my life was food-centric. Babies were born – we ate. People died – we ate. Birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, Weddings, Holidays – all occasions for feasting. Food was synonymous for love in my family and I know this is repeated across many different cultures, religions and peoples all over the world.

Many of us have powerful life experiences and relationship touchstones that involve food. I can’t smell cinnamon without thinking about my Granny and the love she put into her apple pies and strudels she made for me as a child. She had this gnarled apple tree in her back yard that wasn’t much to look at but produced the best baking apples on the planet. When that tree was struck by lightning and died, my family literary mourned its passing. We sat Shiva for that apple tree.

Writing about food is a natural extension of the food experience. We want to describe our first romance and include the special meal we had or how describe the sensual experience of sharing foods in ways that are analogous to how we write of lovemaking. Food verbs are wonderfully utilitarian and applicable in so many sexual ways, lending yet another layer of meaning. Who doesn’t appreciate a lover that cooks or can melt you with one look?

Writing about food has a dynamic that immediately connects with people. We all understand hunger, heat, sweetness and briny goodness.

I challenge you to find any great novel of any period in history that doesn’t involve significant food references, you can’t do it. Moby Dick was really just a story about big ole Burger King Whaler.

Any plans for the group? A cookbook?

I’m curious to see how things evolve. I may, to borrow a term from Bobby Flay, toss out some throw downs and put up some food related prompts to see what might develop. For now in our nascent stage it’s all about welcoming new members and providing another fresh platform for some work that has been hiding or looking for a new audience.

A cookbook is a cool idea. Can I have your recipe for Moo Goo Gai Pan?

Please tell us about you here. Your projects, history, favorite Padma Lakshmi quote?

Padma is a bit tense for me. The whole celebrity/food/competitive cooking scene really cuts two ways for me.

On the one hand shows like Top Chef, Chopped, the Next Food Network Star and Iron Chef have brought exotic and fascinating culinary perspective and POV to the common man. We all have benefited from greater access to more and varied produce, local farmers markets and ingredients that even five years ago no one other than the snootiest foodie knew existed. I’ll admit I have a guilty pleasure of watching Food Channel into the wee hours when I should be sleeping.

The other side of the coin is that some of these shows take it too far. Cooking is about the love, people. It isn’t a competitive sport, it is not about whipping up a twelve course meal in twenty minutes and continually topping yourself. Sure experimentation in cooking, just like writing, is a good thing. Push yourself, try new recipes. Just as in writing, learn from failures and things that did not work out.

As far as my favorite food writes, anyone who knows me knows I am obsessed with tomatoes. Homegrown tomatoes. I live for them. I write a fair amount of nonfiction and write a weekly column for the local paper here, the Charlotte Observer. My editor indulges me and lets me write one tomato column a year. The heat wave in the south this year was disastrous for the home gardener. Here is my personal tale of tomato woe.

One other quick plug is an essay in a regionally published book coming out in October. Topograph – New Writing from the Carolinas and the Landscape Beyond features some great Carolina writers and is getting some nice advance press. The book is being published by Novello Festival Press. My piece, Unaffiliated, explores my struggle with religion, spirituality and being a secular Jew.

In the kitchen, we are having guests this Sunday and I’m already developing the menu for brunch.

Bon Appetit!

Jane Hammons has taught writing for a really long time and is a recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley, something she’s proud of. She’s also been writing for a really long time. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of places: Alaska Quarterly Review, A Twist of Noir, Crimespree Magazine, decomP, JMWW, Southwestern American Literature, and Word Riot, as well as Brain Child, Columbia Journalism Review and San Francisco Chronicle Magazine.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What story or book do you feel closest to?

There have been times in my life when I’ve put certain books by my bedside not because I’m reading them, but because I want to sleep near them, hoping to dream elements of them into my writing. That sounds a little weird as I say it and is perhaps more literal than you intend. Alice Munro’s The Beggar Maid; Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son; James Joyce’s Dubliners; Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing–all collections of short stories that at different times I have loved for different reasons. My touchstone is Larry McMurtry’s Moving On, not one of his better-known novels. I’m from the Southwest, and when I began writing, there were not a lot of writers that affirmed for me that as a place the Southwest could be as interesting as New York or California or The South. It has plenty of cultural cachet now, but that wasn’t always true.

Do you have a mentor? Do you yourself mentor?

My first mentors were my mother and her mother. Neither of them write, but they were interested in the fact that I was writing, and also in the act of writing. When I was a little kid, they gave me time and space to write in. And a typewriter. Several years ago when he was the fiction editor for Taint Magazine, Michael Kimball read a story of mine in Alaska Quarterly Review and asked me to send a story to Taint. The one I sent him, “Party Line” (which is posted at Fictionaut), he eventually published after working over the telephone and online with me. He also edited a couple of other stories that I published there, always patient and encouraging. He might be surprised to know that I think of him as a mentor, or that I saw that as mentoring, but he’s a fantastic editor as well as writer, and I learned a lot in the couple of years that I was sending him stories. I’ve taught writing–mainly composition at different levels–for a very long time, and over the years there have been some students I’ve stayed in touch with and tried to support in their writing, but I don’t know that I’ve actually mentored anyone.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck”?

I have no tricks. I just write all the time. Or I don’t. I have quit writing for fairly long periods of time. During those times the absence of writing becomes a huge and uncomfortable presence. And then I start again. I guess I’m fortunate to have a zillion unfinished stories and a few unfinished novels to mine for short pieces.

What are your favorite websites?

For writing: Writer Unboxed. The Millions. Fictionaut, of course. HTMLGIANT. I’m also kind of a news addict and take a lot of inspiration for stories from history and current events: AlterNet, Columbia Journalism Review, The American Prospect, Nieman Reports

What is happening now that you would like to share in your writing world?

I’m looking forward to the publication of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer, edited by Robert Swartwood and due out from W. W. Norton sometime in November. I’ll be in there with some other Fictionaut writers like David Erlewine, Kathleen Ryan, and Jenn Alandy (and probably some I don’t know or have left out). We’ll be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Stuart Dybek, Ron Carlson, and Tess Gerritsen, which I think is cool. In mid-October, I’m attending Bouchercon By the Bay, a convention for mystery and crime writers, being held this year in San Francisco. I’ve always read a lot of noir and crime fiction, but only recently started writing it.

How has your ongoing experience as a writing teacher changed your own writing, if it has? I’d love it if you would talk a bit about working with a large cross section of students like you clearly have?

At this point in my life, it is hard to separate writing from teaching writing. I know a lot of people feel that teaching is a drag on writing, and I do, too, some days when I’d rather be writing than prepping for class or reading student essays. But I’ve learned so much about writing by teaching it. As a teacher, I have to constantly articulate–some times in a variety of ways–why a sentence doesn’t sound right, or why one word might work better than another in a way that I don’t have to as a writer. So while I’m clarifying for students, I’m also clarifying for myself. And there is really nothing better than showing people who don’t think they can write that they can, that it can be learned and that every writer can always be a better writer. I also have a lot of very bright accomplished students who energize me and open my eyes to new ways of thinking about writing as well as the things we read together. Teaching keeps me honest. I can very quickly feel like a fraud if I’m not walking the walk, so to speak, in my own writing.

What other career would you have chosen? If you could clone yourself, what would you choose to explore that is not writing-specific?

I’m really interested in documentary work. Some of that involves writing, but documentary photography and film are something I’d love to try my hand at. Since Kodachrome film will no longer be developed after the end of this year, I may actually have to learn how to develop film. I love my digital camera, but I love film cameras more.

Do you have anything you’d care to share about your experience with Fictionaut?

Fictionaut is the only writer’s site I belong to where the main purpose is to post writing, read, and comment. Other sites provide different things, places to blog, for example and to communicate with other writers about marketing or conferences. It is interesting to get to know people, in a way, through their writing and the back and forth that happens in the commenting. The act of writing and inviting others to read and comment is an intimate one, I think, and Fictionaut is kind of magic in the way it supports and cultivates that intimacy. Magic. I guess that’s the difference.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Mashable, “the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture,” profiled Fictionaut for their Spark of Genius series, which highlights unique startups.

What makes Fictionaut special is both the superb quality of the work (see Jane Hammon’s “Making It Right,” for instance) and the community itself. The network has thus far attracted roughly 2,500 emerging and established writers (including names like T.C. Boyle, Ann Beattie, Frederick Bathelme and Robert Olen Butler), readers, editors, agents and various literary magazines and small presses, who have collectively shared about 10,000 pieces of short fiction. The community is thoughtful, supportive and non-competitive; individuals seem to be genuinely interested in each other’s work, not just broadcasting their own — a rare achievement for any sizable online community these days.

Read the article.

Two Fictionauters walk into an inbox. One says to the other, “Nice sentence.” The other one says, “Ah, writing. Life sentence.” BADA-BING. Susan Tepper and Gary Percesepe wrote a book together. I kept thinking the Dori was painter Dori Ashton but it’s not which I’m glad we cleared up in this interview, among other things Gary and Susan enlightened me with.

Have you a collaborating active? Holla at me, but after you read this work, which is a take on perspective, gender, time, art, reality, conscious. The usual.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Hi Gary, Hi Susan. You’re both Fictionaut oracles and now you have a new book out together and that is very exciting. Please update us with what’s new, how things are going and what the new book is all about?

ST: Our new book is a steamy love story told in letters exchanged between the artist Jackson Pollock and a fictional young woman we named Dori G (the G to make her sound more mysterious, and also anonymous, which is kind of how Jackson likes her, though he states otherwise in the novel.)

GP: Yo, Nic, here’s the thing that people don’t understand about being an oracle, ok? The pay is lousy and somebody always wants something from you. But on the other, sure, what Susan said. Except the character Dori is probably more “mysterious” and “anonymous” to Susan and to readers than she is to me, for two reasons: I wrote her (from the inside out), AND I based her on a girl from New Jersey who was my almost girlfriend back when I used to troll the Garden State. (Met her mother too, I think she liked me.) So anyway, I wrote this novel to see if I could find this girl from Jersey who in my mind has not aged a day-still a willowy blonde with green eyes sitting down to breakfast with me in a quiet corner of a dark house. I’m hoping she will find the book and meet me a reading somewhere in Jersey, or maybe down the road at the Bada Bing, up on that pole. See? I’m saying I wrote the damn book to get Dori back, Jackson Pollock be damned.

Have you always been interested in the lives of painters?

ST:  I have always been incredibly interested in painting and the lives of painters.  Before I was doing any writing at all, I saw this Woody Allen Movie where Nick Nolte plays a wild expressionist painter.  I was mesmerized by the character and never forgot it, and that was a pivotal moment where I began to change course, moving from being an actor to a writer (at least in my mind).  I did a few plays after that but had also begun writing seriously.  As for Jackson Pollock, well, for me, his work is like no other.  He forever changed the course of Modern Art.  And that is no small feat.  So when Gary changed the game-plan (last second) and told me to write Pollock– YIKES!  At first I argued strenuously against the idea.  But Gary has a persistent nature and so I gave in and wrote Pollock and he wrote Dori.

GP: Who is Jackson Pollock?

What advice can we fiction writers and readers learn from also paying mind to non-fiction?

ST:  Well anything that jiggles your mind, stays with you, be it a story or something non-fiction, something in real life, well that is always a help toward your fiction writing.  Life is just a bowl of cherries (as someone said) and so you get to cherry-pick which parts scream to you and that shows up in the work.

GP: I cannot believe Susan is misquoting Erma Bombeck and jiggling. Anyway, I read and write a lot of non-fiction. I wrote four books in philosophy, back in my addled youth. I read widely in philosophy, medicine, law, physics, eye surgery manuals, theology, and geography. Mostly to pick up women, it is true. Dori, are you listening? Fuck Jackson Pollock, I’m the one you want.

Anything else you’d like to tell us here. I have an inner ear infection from swimming in a lake so I see two computer screens. Trippy.

ST:  It was an amazingly cool experience doing this book.  I literally felt “taken over” by Pollock all during the writing, as if Pollock wanted this book to be written.  I know this sounds crazy, but it is what I truly felt.  Because I was writing a voice that was so new to me, and a male voice of a famous painter (I’m not a painter).  It’s kind of mentally confusing to analyze:  a woman writing a man who is in love with a woman.  And vice-versa (Gary): a man writing a woman who is in love with a man.  If you think that can’t jangle your brain a while, well, believe me it did.  But we love our characters so much.  And when Gary wants to manipulate me, he writes me emails from “Dori.”  It makes me want to strangle him!  But Gary can be persistent.

GP: It’s true, Susan regularly tries to strangle me, and this may be the first book tour in history where co-authors try to kill each other. As for the rest, I have no idea what she is talking about, all this man-woman-man literary stuff. It’s creepy. Sounds like bad porn. Here is what actually happened, how I wrote my part of the book: I would get a letter from Susan-as-Jackson. I would ignore it. I would then write a new letter based on my feeling for Dori (who is frickin’ HOT!) I mean, I tried to get inside her, in every way, and this is the honest truth. Nothing literary about it. I want to do a reading at the Bada Bing. If Dori shows up I am a happy man. Or Marisa Tomei. Up on that slippery pole, sure. I can see the future.

Folks, buy the damn book. It is so HOT. Support your local Fictionaut oracles. We cannot make it without you. Plus, will pay my cover charge at the Bing. The book is available NOW!

Sean Ferrell is the author of Numb (HarperPerennial, August 2010). His short fiction has appeared in The Cafe Irreal and won the Fulton Prize from The Adirondack Review. He lives and works, in no particular order, in New York City. You can find him online at www.byseanferrell.com

What story or book do you feel closest to?

This is a tough question. I don’t think I can bring myself to one definitive answer. So many swirl to the top of the list only to be replaced by another piece just ast good. “Perfect Day for Bananafish” by Salinger is up there. Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Gravity’s Rainbow. The later works of Philip K. Dick. The First Man by Camus, and The Plague. I have to stop there, or I won’t be able to stop.

Do you have a mentor?

Do you mean an actual, “Hey, I know you exist”-mentor, or a “This person may even be dead but I have chosen them in spirit”-mentor? The former, no; the latter, many. Not all of them are writers. There are painters, musicians, directors, actors in there as well. Anyone who demonstrates talent harnessed with practice and focus.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

I write every day. As long as I keep myself in the practice of writing something always comes out. It may be garbage, but it comes. I may not use it, but it comes. And I actually enjoy getting myself into a corner, having to really puzzle my way through something, which is the opposite of the type of “stuck” I think you mean.

I think the kind of “stuck” to which you refer is the nothing coming out of the pen kind of stuck, and I was there about ten years ago. I handled it by becoming horribly depressed. That was fun. I came out of it by realizing that I would only ever be a writer if I wrote, so I started to write.

To keep the pump primed I read, dabble (horribly, unsuccessfully, and excitedly) with drawing and painting. Walking is part of my habit. Most of the time you see me on the street I’ll be talking to myself which is how I find my way through dialogue and plot issues. Nothing like acting crazy to get your characters sane.

What are your favorite websites?

Millions, The Nervous Breakdown, Twitter, Fictionaut, Rumpus, Electric Lit.

What is new? Tell us about your novel?

What novel?

Oh, right.

My novel was just released. It was tagged, so we’ll track it and see how it interacts with the other novels out there. It was good to finally have it leave the nest–it was getting tough talking about it being out instead of just having it out. I’ve also been working on new stuff and so Numb was feeling kind of old to me. Having it come out has reawakened my love of it, which is nice. I’ll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival in two weeks and doing an event with Jess Walter, which is making me nervously excited. So far it’s all been terrifying and fun.

Other new things: My son just had a birthday. He’s five. Heads to kindergarten in a few weeks, so clearly I am old. Summer vacation was a rain-washout. Non-vacation days have been dry, high heat, blistering and beautiful.

I’ve been working on edits to a new novel called The Man in the Empty Suit, and another, Invisible Towers, is undergoing some early revisions.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.