Texas gets a bad rap because it's filled with assholes, but really if you take any area the size of Texas anywhere it will be filled with assholes, because that's what people are.​

Of course, I think that Mark Twain is true.   I think that Samuel Clemens is the lie.  Only a dishonest person wants you to know that a story they are telling "really happened."

Spend enough time on Twitter and you will eventually discover there is within it an odd, alternate world of very funny, 140-character prankster surrealists. A shortcut to discovering them: Go to

A short interview about punk rock and aging with NoMeansNo drummer John Wright & guitarist Tom Holliston

In 2010, Michael Martone began conducting a series of interviews. Each of these interviews was written under the pen name Matthew Baker, each of these interviews was titled “An Interview with

"I think I'm just trying to be a good listener."

An interview with Ted Sanders, author of No Animals We Could Name.

Chelsea Martin is easily one of the sweetest persons I know, as well as one of the funniest. She’s so quiet and seemingly unassuming, you don’t see it coming. It sneaks up on you,

Tom Williams: What do you find funny?

John Warner: I find lots of things funny, and have pretty broad tastes, but you know who I think is the number one comedic genius of the last

We are working toward converting all of the old into the new. We are not forsaking our past! But... it's going to take time. In the meantime...

the ARCHIVES!

What follows is a conversation with Stacey Levine. I have wanted to talk to Levine about her amazing work for a long time, and have generally found myself too hypnotized by it to try to unpack it.

Doug Nufer is one of the foremost constraint-based writers in the United States. You could even say he's part of the definition of constrained writing. Seriously, type it into Wikipedia and see

Its been quite a few years since I first met fellow Michigander Davy Rothbart. I, a bookseller in Seattle. He, a collector and presenter of found objects, the man behind FOUND MAGAZINE, a

Dark Sky is a fine new publisher whose books are strange and stunning and uncommonly good. Their most recent release, Ryan Ridge’s kinetic collection of short stories, Hunters & Gamblers,

The epigraph to Alex Shakar’s Luminarium could be a request or a demand; “Lead me from the unreal to the real.” For Fred Brounian, it is a plea. Fred finds himself in the middle of “a spiritual

Julia Wertz's first two books are called Fart Party, a great, attention-grabbing title. I remember grabbing the book off the shelf at the comic bookstore, poking my boyfriend and laughing

Exley, Brock Clarke’s third novel, is the story of Miller le Ray, a boy whose father may or may not have left Miller and his mother to go and serve in Iraq.  Told from Miller’s point of view — and

Memory is its Medium: 
A Conversation with Bradford Morrow

Bradford Morrow's latest novel, The Diviner's Tale, uses some tropes of the traditional murder mystery and elements of the

Editor’s Note:

The following interview was sent to Hobart unsolicited and un-pitched. It was also un-emailed. I was sent it through the mail, and it was the only file on a 3 ½”

Once upon a time, there was a journal called Monkeybicycle. There is, of course, still a journal called Monkeybicycle, but there used to be one, too. And way back when, one of the guys editing that

One of the things that initially got me excited about The Orange Eats Creeps, before I had any notion of what it actually would be, was the incredible list of “inspirations” you compiled in

Is the world ending? Do you know something I don't?

I'm not sure what I know that you don't, but certainly nothing in re this. And yes, the world is absolutely ending. It's just a question of

We have a protagonist who traipses about Budapest with a copy of Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth; we have the chord pulled on a jukebox playing “Strange Fruit” in a bar called Eve and

A Conversation with Laird Hunt (cont'd)

(read part one of the interview here)

THE REIFICATION OF FICTION
 

Ruland: When last we talked, you recommended some

I was thinking about your book and its readers, and I thought about how there are three audiences. One is very large: people who have never met you. The second is very small: people who have known