This week we visit with Kevin Brockmeier in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas.
In addition to his latest book, The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; and a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.
For more on Kevin: kevinbrockmeier.com
Kevin's Books on the Bed:
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington
The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
Crash by J.G. Ballard
Matt's Gifts for Kevin:
That's How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor by Damon Young
Little Worlds by Rob Amberg
Yoke & Feather by Jessie van Eerden
Graphic Design by Nathaniel Roy Design
Music by Eliza Edens from her album Time Away From Time (2020)
