Interview with Laura van den Berg at Baltimore Fishbowl

I had so much fun interviewing Laura van den Berg at The Baltimore Fishbowl, and I'm even more excited to host her and fellow writer Katharine Noel at Starts Here! (An Ivy Bookshop reading series; January 7th, 7 pm, Artifact Coffee). Laura's second collection of fiction, The Isle of Youth (FSG), a collection of "lost" narrators in often-exotic vistas, is fantastic. Although she is unsentimental, there is a particularly sensitivity to her stories that devastates. Each word has the weight and height of a water balloon and bruises your heart like a brick. So what is Laura's isle of youth?

A place where Law & Order is on every single channel day and night and where there is an infinite supply of red wine and gourmet tacos and good, weird books.

I actually think each story is its own kind of “isle”—a place where I go to at once get away from something and to discover something that surprises me.

To read more of the interview, go here. For more information on the reading, go here.

The Tide King makes 2013 Top Ten Fiction at Baltimore City Paper

The Tide King made the 2013 Top Ten Fiction at Baltimore City Paper. So thrilled and honored to be included with Rachel Kushner, Karen Russell, George Saunders, and Laura van den Berg:

5. Tide King, by Jen Michalski (Black Lawrence Press) Michalski joined the big leagues with this stupendous novel whose magical realism is heavy on the realism as she follows her characters through war, love, and a cross-country country-music tour. Gorgeous. We’re lucky to have Michalski before the rest of the world discovers her. But they will.