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Happy 60th Birthday, Brian Evenson!: 60 Reasons to Celebrate Brian Evenson

  • John Madera

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    Brian Evenson has been a meaningful presence in my literary life for many years, not only through my reviews and interview with him but through an ongoing friendship and a sustained engagement with his work that has included conversations, publications, and the pleasure of watching his remarkable career unfold. I first interviewed Brian for Rain Taxi in 2009, around the time of Fugue State, and reviewed Fugue State for Open Letters Monthly, as well as Baby Leg for The Rupture. Over the years, Big Other has also published his work and featured him in various ways. I’ve also had the pleasure of watching Brian’s work—and our literary friendship—develop across the years, most recently including his generous endorsement of my own Nervosities.

    What continues to astonish me about Evenson’s writing is its peculiar combination of precision, intelligence, severity, playfulness, and dread. He is one of those rare writers who can repeatedly make a sentence feel like a trapdoor: seemingly straightforward until, suddenly, the floor gives way. His fiction moves restlessly among horror, science fiction, literary fiction, the weird, crime, and philosophical speculation, while his translations and critical work reveal an equally adventurous reader and thinker. His stories make the familiar strange, the strange intimate, and certainty suspect. So here are at least sixty reasons to celebrate Brian Evenson on his 60th birthday:

     

    1. Altmann’s Tongue (Knopf, 1994)
    2. The Din of Celestial Birds (1997)
    3. Prophets and Brothers (Rodent Press, 1997)
    4. Father of Lies (1998)
    5. Contagion and Other Stories (2000)
    6. Dark Property (2002)
    7. Understanding Robert Coover (2003)
    8. The Wavering Knife (2004)
    9. The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press, 2006)
    10. Fugue State (Coffee House Press, 2009)
    11. Last Days (Underland Press, 2009)
    12. Baby Leg (New York Tyrant Press, 2009)
    13. Dead Space: Martyr, as B. K. Evenson (Tor, 2010)
    14. Immobility (Tor, 2012)
    15. Windeye (Coffee House Press, 2012)
    16. Dead Space: Catalyst, as B. K. Evenson (Tor, 2012)
    17. The Lords of Salem, as B. K. Evenson, with Rob Zombie (Grand Central Publishing, 2013)
    18. Ed vs. Yummy Fur: Or, What Happens When a Serial Comic Becomes a Graphic Novel (2014)
    19. A Collapse of Horses (Coffee House Press, 2016)
    20. The Warren (Tor.com, 2016)
    21. The Deaths of Henry King, with Jesse Ball and Lilli Carré (2017)
    22. Feral, as B. K. Evenson, with James DeMonaco (2017)
    23. Reports (Cupboard Pamphlet, 2018)
    24. Song for the Unraveling of the World (Coffee House Press, 2019)
    25. The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (Coffee House Press, 2021)
    26. Black Bark (Black Shuck Books, 2023)
    27. None of You Shall Be Spared (Weird House Press, 2023)
    28. Good Night, Sleep Tight (Coffee House Press, 2024)
    29. Salt Lake City (Sacred Parasite, 2025)
    30. Phantom Limb (Coffee House Press, forthcoming 2026)
    31. The Brotherhood of Mutilation, the novella that became the first part of Last Days
    32. “The Second Boy”
    33. “A Collapse of Horses”
    34. “To Breathe the Air”
    35. “Nameless Citizen”
    36. “The Sanza Affair”
    37. Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (2018)
    38. His Translation of Jules Romains’s Donogoo-Tonka, or the Miracles of Science (2009)
    39. His translations of Christian Gailly
    40. His translation of Jean Frémon’s The Botanical Garden
    41. His translation of Claro’s Electric Flesh (Soft Skull)
    42. His translation of Jacques Jouet’s Mountain R (Dalkey Archive Press)
    43. His translations of Eric Chevillard
    44. His translations of Antoine Volodine
    45. His translation of Manuela Draeger’s In the Time of the Blue Ball (Dorothy Project)
    46. His translations of David B.
    47. His translation of Gerard Macé’s The Last of the Egyptians (2011)
    48. His interview with The White Review
    49. His interview with Soutwest Review
    50. His Lightspeed Magazine Author Spotlight
    51. His conversation about A Collapse of Horses on Between the Covers
    52. His discussion of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell on Wake Island
    53. His conversation with The Losers’ Club about horror, body horror, and Stephen King
    54. His appearance on Beyond the Zero
    55. His three O. Henry Prizes
    56. His NEA Fellowship
    57. His Guggenheim Fellowship
    58. The Shirley Jackson Award for Song for the Unraveling of the World
    59. World Fantasy Award for Song for the Unraveling of the World
    60. Glitch (Pink Beam Press, 2026)

     

    • John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024) and Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press, forthcoming in 2026).  His  fiction is also published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, Hobart, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His poetry is also published in elimae, Sixth Finch, Contrapuntos, and elsewhere. His criticism is published 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, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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