Best Of What I Learned About Writing from Interviews Written by Michael Kimball, Ordered to Make a Collage About Sound
It’s no secret that Michael Kimball is one of my favorite fiction writers. What I haven’t yet declared—except perhaps to the people who see my Google Reader shared items—is that he’s also my favorite interview writer as well. Every single time I see a new interview by him, I immediately stop what I’m doing and read it, whether I know who the subject of the interview is or not. Every interview is free of the fluff that fills so many others, instead focusing on the nuts and bolts of the writer’s work and the process that created that work. Below are six of my favorite paragraphs from interviews Kimball did for publications such as The Faster Times and Unsaid, arranged into a short collage essay on sound and language in fiction. The paragraphs themselves are linked, and will take you to the interviews they’ve been taken from, all of which are absolutely essential reading for anyone planning to write words of their own in 2010:
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 magazines such as Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Willow Springs, and Gulf Coast. He is also the editor of The Collagist and of Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web anthology series. He can be found online HERE.
John Madera's fiction may be found in Conjunctions, Opium Magazine, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His criticism may be found in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.
Thanks for this, Matt (and Michael, obviously). I’m actually putting an interview together right now and this is just what I needed. (New Collagist is looking tight, by the way.)
Thanks, John! I’m glad you enjoyed this and Michael’s interviews and the new Collagist. Thank you!